Citation

Kreps GA, Drabek TE. Int. J. Mass Emerg. Disasters 1996; 14(2): 129-153.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, International Sociological Association, International Research Committee on Disasters)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The United Nations proclaimed the 1990s as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. This proclamation, and the activities it generates, highlight the necessity of exploring the conceptualization of disasters. We propose that disasters are best conceptualized as nonroutine social problems: social problems because they involve conjunctions of historical conditions and social definitions; nonroutine because they usually are ignored by the public until articulated as dramatic events. We begin by linking the origins of disaster research to social problems theory and, in particular, the functionalist tradition. We explicate how functionalism has provided the implicit assumptions for most sociologically focused disaster studies, but not an analytical treatment of disasters as social problems. Rather that treatment has been stimulated by the social constructionist tradition within social problems theory. We propose that social constructionism informs rather than undermines the conceptualization of disasters as non-retain social problems.