The Social Life of Disasters: An Anthropological Approach

In this chapter in the book Disaster Research Associate Professor Birgitte Refslund Sørensen and Ph.d.-fellow Kristoffer Albris give an anthropological approach to the social life of disasters

About the Book

Given the tendency of books on disasters to predominantly focus on strong geophysical or descriptive perspectives and in-depth accounts of particular catastrophes, Disaster Research provides a much-needed multidisciplinary perspective of the area.

This book is is structured thematically around key approaches to disaster research from a range of different, but often complementary academic disciplines. Each chapter presents distinct approaches to disaster research that is anchored in a particular discipline; ranging from the law of disasters and disaster historiography to disaster politics and anthropology of disaster. The methodological and theoretical contributions underlining a specific approach to disasters are discussed and illustrative empirical cases are examined that support and further inform the proposed approach to disaster research.

The book thus provides unique insights into fourteen state-of-the-art disciplinary approaches to the understanding of disasters. The theoretical discussions as well as the diverse range of disaster cases should be of interest to both postgraduate and undergraduate students, as well as academics, researchers and policymakers.

Birgitte Refslund Sørensen and Kristoffer Albris: "The Social Life of Disasters: An Anthropological Approach" in Disaster Research (ed. Rasmus Dahlberg, Olivier Rubin, Morten Thanning Vendelø), Routledge, 2015