Citation

May PJC. Int. J. Mass Emerg. Disasters 1989; 7(3): 281-303.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1989, International Sociological Association, International Research Committee on Disasters)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing volume of social science literature that is relevant to the issue of how we think about risk and disasters. Sociologists have debated the definition of a "disaster" and have attempted to classify the variation in responses to hazards This paper addresses three perspectives -- labeled in what follows the "cultural," "systems," and "individual choice" perspectives -- that have emerged within the social science literature as distinctive perspectives about the simultaneous choice of risks and disaster preparedness. The cultural perspective, most closely associated with Douglas and Wildavsky, defines risks in terms of shared values which legitimate social choices including such things as efforts to prepare for disasters. The systems perspective, most closely associated with Perrow, considers technological risks in terms of the organizational and social properties of technological and ecosystems. The individual choice perspective most closely associated in the hazards literature with Kunreuther and his colleagues characterizes risk and preparedness levels for low probability, high consequence events as individual choices made under uncertainty and with limited information.