An anthropologist’s view of the question of socio-cultural change or continuity post-disaster: old thoughts and new perspectives
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Susanna Hoffman
Chair, Risk and Disaster Commission IUAES United States of America
susanna@susannahoffman.com
Author(s):
Disaster that devastate or threaten human populations have become of increasing concern in all the social sciences. Disasters disrupt physical, social, and emotional worlds. They cause loss, bereavement and increasingly displacement and resettlement. Reconstruction after any disaster is fraught with difficulty and ambivalence. As a consequence, the question of social cultural continuity or change concerns all those involved in the calamity, from survivors to those not harmed, from officials and aid workers to the scientists studying the event. Early research in disaster generally promoted the point of view that calamities bring little social or cultural change. Studies tended to be ahistorical. They looked at disasters within a short span of time, with narrow topics and an eye to major shifts, rather than viewing calamities as processes that continue long after initial upheaval that affect almost every arena of human existence. When I first wrote about the concern, I offered that the extent to which disasters cause consequential cultural change is largely determined by size or magnitude of the disaster, whether the manifestations of change are scrutinized in short or long term, and whether the change occurs within the deep structures of a culture or merely surface regalia. I further touched on resistance to change. In light of seriously changing global conditions, along with an anthropologists long often on-sight field research, I recently expanded my observations to add no thoughts on the question of cultural change after a disaster. My observations pertain both to general theories of culture continuity and change and to today’s altered global situation.
Rethinking disasters and social change: Beyond hope and despair