Natural Disasters Cultural Responses

Author : Christof Mauch
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739134612
Total Pages : 395 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Natural Disasters, Cultural Responses written by Christof Mauch and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009-03-16 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catastrophes, it seems, are becoming more frequent in the twenty-first century. According to UN statistics, every year approximately two hundred million people are directly affected by natural disasters_seven times the number of people who are affected by war. Discussions about global warming and fatal disasters such as Katrina and the Tsunami of 2004 have heightened our awareness of natural disasters and of their impact on both local and global communities. Hollywood has also produced numerous disaster movies in recent years, some of which have become blockbusters. This volume demonstrates that natural catastrophes_earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc._have exercised a vast impact on humans throughout history and in almost every part of the world. It argues that human attitudes toward catastrophes have changed over time. Surprisingly, this has not necessarily led to a reduction of exposure or risk. The organization of the book resembles a journey around the globe_from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and from the Pacific through South America and Mexico to the United States. While natural disasters appear everywhere on the globe, different cultures, societies, and nations have adopted specific styles for coping with disaster. Indeed, how humans deal with catastrophes depends largely on social and cultural patterns, values, religious belief systems, political institutions, and economic structures. The roles that catastrophes play in society and the meanings they are given vary from one region to the next; they differ_and this is one of the principal arguments of this book_from one cultural, political, and geographic space to the next. The essays collected here help us to understand not only how people in different times throughout history have learned to cope with disaster but also how humans in different parts of the world have developed specific cultural, social, and technological strategies for doing so.

Author : Katrin Pfeifer
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9400750005
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Forces of Nature and Cultural Responses written by Katrin Pfeifer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-20 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do and how did people perceive, manage and respond to natural disasters? How are the causes of natural disasters explained in history, how are they explained today? This volume investigates relationships between forces of nature and human culture in a multidisciplinary context bridging science and the humanities. Forces of nature and cultural responses is divided into four sections: (1) ball lightnings, (2) earthquakes and tsunamis, (3) volcanic eruptions and plagues, and (4) hurricanes and floodings. Specifically, Section 1 investigates theories and case studies of ball lightning phenomena. Section 2 includes a psychological study on the impact of earthquakes on academic performance, a study on tsunami vulnerability and recovery strategies in Thailand and a study on the social and economic aftermaths of a tsunami and a hurricane in Hawaii. Section 3 consists of a chapter on volcanic eruptions and plagues as well as cultural responses in Ancient Times and a study on contemporary vulnerability and resilience under chronic volcanic eruptions. Section 4 investigates the impact of hurricane Katrina on the current jazz scene in New Orleans and cultural responses to floodings in The Netherlands in Early Modern Times.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Natural Disasters and Cultural Responses written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : John Grattan
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134604912
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Natural Disasters and Cultural Change written by John Grattan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-08-27 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human cultures have been interacting with natural hazards since the dawn of time. This book explores these interactions in detail and revisits some famous catastrophes including the eruptions of Thera and Vesuvius. These studies demonstrate that diverse human cultures had well-developed strategies which facilitated their response to extreme natural events.

Author : Fred Krüger
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317754646
Total Pages : 299 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cultures and Disasters written by Fred Krüger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the people of the Zambesi Delta affected by severe flooding return early to their homes or even choose to not evacuate? How is the forced resettlement of small-scale farmers living along the foothills of an active volcano on the Philippines impacting on their day-to-day livelihood routines? Making sense of such questions and observations is only possible by understanding how the decision-making of societies at risk is embedded in culture, and how intervention measures acknowledge, or neglect, cultural settings. The social construction of risk is being given increasing priority in understand how people experience and prioritize hazards in their own lives and how vulnerability can be reduced, and resilience increased, at a local level. Culture and Disasters adopts an interdisciplinary approach to explore this cultural dimension of disaster, with contributions from leading international experts within the field. Section I provides discussion of theoretical considerations and practical research to better understand the important of culture in hazards and disasters. Culture can be interpreted widely with many different perspectives; this enables us to critically consider the cultural boundedness of research itself, as well as the complexities of incorporating various interpretations into DRR. If culture is omitted, related issues of adaptation, coping, intervention, knowledge and power relations cannot be fully grasped. Section II explores what aspects of culture shape resilience? How have people operationalized culture in every day life to establish DRR practice? What constitutes a resilient culture and what role does culture play in a society’s decision making? It is natural for people to seek refuge in tried and trust methods of disaster mitigation, however, culture and belief systems are constantly evolving. How these coping strategies can be introduced into DRR therefore poses a challenging question. Finally, Section III examines the effectiveness of key scientific frameworks for understanding the role of culture in disaster risk reduction and management. DRR includes a range of norms and breaking these through an understanding of cultural will challenge established theoretical and empirical frameworks.

Author : Edwin Schmitt
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1443843008
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Disasters and Cultural Stereotypes written by Edwin Schmitt and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the second attempt by a joint international research team (consisting of Bulgarian, Chinese, Russian and American ethnologists) to contribute to the domain of ecological anthropology. The editors of and contributors to this collection share the understanding that catastrophic events challenge society to rework a specific methodology, and to activate a specific resource, to adapt to and cope with crises ecologically, socially and ideologically. The main aim of this volume is to reveal the important role of studying and taking into account the cultural stereotypes in this process. Through detailed analysis of different case studies, the contributors further generalize the definition of disasters and critical situations as situations that arise from the violation of a balance in individual and collective life, as any deviation from “normality” in the particular context of each discreet culture. This interpretation informs a structural grouping of the materials in this collection into three main parts. The section on “Cultural Responses to Natural and Biological Disasters” (specific case studies) follows the “Conceptualization of Cultural Knowledge about Disasters”. The contributors to the collection share the conviction that the ecology of social crises (presented in the volume’s third section on “Cultural Management of Social Crises”) is a valuable and necessary addition to the field of natural and technological, bio- and man-made disasters. They believe this is proved by the texts presented in this volume. The empirical data employed in the volume and the forms of disasters researched include materials from the Tibetan Pastoral area and the Pamir Plateau in Asia, the Rhodopes and Strandja Mountains in the Balkans, Macedonia and Central and Western Bulgaria, to ethnic minority areas in Central and Western China, Ukraine and Moldova.

Author : John Grattan
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134604904
Total Pages : 441 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Natural Disasters and Cultural Change written by John Grattan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-08-27 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human cultures have been interacting with natural hazards since the dawn of time. This book explores these interactions in detail and revisits some famous catastrophes including the eruptions of Thera and Vesuvius. These studies demonstrate that diverse human cultures had well-developed strategies which facilitated their response to extreme natural events.

Author : Hanneke van Asperen
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789048557707
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dealing with Disasters from Early Modern to Modern Times written by Hanneke van Asperen and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disasters are as much cultural as natural phenomena. For centuries, news about catastrophic events has been disseminated through media such as chronicles, pamphlets, newspapers, poems, drawings, and prints. Nowadays, we are overwhelmed with news about the cataclysmic effects of recent forest fires, floods, and storms. Due to the ongoing climate crisis, extreme weather events will likely have ever greater impacts on our lives. This volume addresses cultural representations of catastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and earthquakes over the centuries. In the past as now, artists and authors try to make sense of disasters, grasp their impact, and communicate moral, religious, or political messages. These creations reflect and shape how people learn and think about disasters that occur nearby or far away, both in time and space. The parallels between past and present underline how this book contributes to modern debates about cultural and creative strategies in response to disasters.

Author : National Research Council
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309045460
Total Pages : 85 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Safer Future written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1991-02-01 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Initial priorities for U.S. participation in the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, declared by the United Nations, are contained in this volume. It focuses on seven issues: hazard and risk assessment; awareness and education; mitigation; preparedness for emergency response; recovery and reconstruction; prediction and warning; learning from disasters; and U.S. participation internationally. The committee presents its philosophy of calls for broad public and private participation to reduce the toll of disasters.

Author : Andrea JANKU
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136476253
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Historical Disasters in Context written by Andrea JANKU and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-12-21 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing concerns about climate change and the increasing occurrence of ever more devastating natural disasters in some parts of the world and their consequences for human life, not only in the immediately affected regions, but for all of us, have increased our desire to learn more about disaster experiences in the past. How did disaster experiences impact on the development of modern sciences in the early modern era? Why did religion continue to play such an important role in the encounter with disasters, despite the strong trend towards secularization in the modern world? What was the political role of disasters? Historical Disasters in Context illustrates how past societies coped with a threatening environment, how societies changed in response to disaster experiences, and how disaster experiences were processed and communicated, both locally and globally. Particular emphasis is put on the realms of science, religion, and politics. International case studies demonstrate that while there are huge differences across cultures in the way people and societies responded to disasters, there are also many commonalities and interactions between different cultures that have the potential to alter the ways people prepare for and react to disasters in future. To explain these relationships and highlight their significance is the purpose of this volume.