Contextualizing Disaster offers a comparative analysis of six recent "highly visible" disasters and several slow-burning, "hidden," crises that include typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, chemical spills, and the unfolding consequences of rising seas and climate change. The book argues that, while disasters are increasingly represented by the media as unique, exceptional, newsworthy events, it is a mistake to think of disasters as isolated or discrete occurrences. Rather, building on insights developed by political ecologists, this book makes a compelling argument for understanding disasters as transnational and global phenomena.

A consistent problem that confronts disaster reduction is the disjunction between academic and expert knowledge and policies and practices of agencies mandated to deal with the concern. Although a great deal of knowledge has been acquired regarding many aspects of disasters, such as driving factors, risk construction, complexity of resettlement, and importance of peoples’ culture, very little has become protocol and procedure. Disaster Upon Disaster illuminates the numerous disjunctions between the suppositions, realities, agendas, and executions in the field, goes on to detail contingencies, predicaments, old and new plights, and finally advances solutions toward greatly improved outcomes.

An essential resource exploring orality and literacy in the pre-Hellenistic southern Levant and the Hebrew Bible Situated historically between the invention of the alphabet, on the one hand, and the creation of ancient Israel's sacred writings, on the other, is the emergence of literary production in the ancient Levant. In this timely collection of essays by an international cadre of scholars, the dialectic between the oral and the written, the intersection of orality with literacy, and the advent of literary composition are each explored as a prelude to the emergence of biblical writing in ancient Israel. Contributors also examine a range of relevant topics including scripturalization, the compositional dimensions of orality and textuality as they engage biblical poetry, prophecy, and narrative along with their antecedents, and the ultimate autonomy of the written in early Israel. The contributors are James M. Bos, David M. Carr, André Lemaire, Robert D. Miller II, Nadav Na'aman, Raymond F. Person Jr., Frank H. Polak, Christopher A. Rollston, Seth L. Sanders, Joachim Schaper, Brian B. Schmidt, William M. Schniedewind, Elsie Stern, and Jessica Whisenant. Features Addresses questions of literacy and scribal activity in the Levant and Negev Articles examine memory, oral tradition, and text criticism Discussion of the processes of scripturalization

Storms, floods, fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other disasters seem not only more frequent but also closer to home. As the world faces this onslaught, we have placed our faith in “sustainable development,” which promises that we can survive and even thrive in the face of climate change and other risks. Yet while claiming to “go green,” we have instead created new risks, continued to degrade nature, and failed to halt global warming. Unnatural Disasters offers a new perspective on our most pressing environmental and social challenges, revealing the gaps between abstract concepts like sustainability, resilience, and innovation and the real-world experiences of people living at risk. Gonzalo Lizarralde explains how the causes of disasters are not natural but all too human: inequality, segregation, marginalization, colonialism, neoliberalism, racism, and unrestrained capitalism. He tells the stories of Latin American migrants, Haitian earthquake survivors, Canadian climate activists, African slum dwellers, and other people resisting social and environmental injustices around the world. Lizarralde shows that most reconstruction and risk-reduction efforts exacerbate social inequalities. Some responses do produce meaningful changes, but they are rarely the ones powerful leaders have in mind. This book reveals how disasters have become both the causes and consequences of today’s most urgent challenges and proposes achievable solutions to save a planet at risk, emphasizing the power citizens hold to change the current state of affairs.

Grounded in the best science available, this essential volume presents practical guidelines for effective clinical intervention in the immediate, intermediate, and long-term aftermath of large-scale traumatic events. Vital lessons learned from a variety of mass traumas and natural disasters are incorporated into the book's thorough review of strategies for helping specific victim and survivor populations. The editors and authors include over 40 leading experts in disaster mental health. Of crucial importance, they clearly summarize the empirical evidence supporting each intervention and provide other guidance based on experience and consensus recommendations.

Analyses the impact of the 2015 Nepal earthquakes and the need to understand disasters in their cultural and political context.

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.

Catastrophic Diplomacy offers a sweeping history of US foreign disaster assistance, highlighting its centrality to twentieth-century US foreign relations. Spanning over seventy years, from the dawn of the twentieth century to the mid-1970s, it examines how the US government, US military, and their partners in the American voluntary sector responded to major catastrophes around the world. Focusing on US responses to sudden disasters caused by earthquakes, tropical storms, and floods—crises commonly known as "natural disasters"—historian Julia F. Irwin highlights the complex and messy politics of emergency humanitarian relief. Deftly weaving together diplomatic, environmental, military, and humanitarian histories, Irwin tracks the rise of US disaster aid as a tool of foreign policy, showing how and why the US foreign policy establishment first began contributing aid to survivors of international catastrophes. While the book focuses mainly on bilateral assistance efforts, it also assesses the broader international context in which the US government and its auxiliaries operated, situating their humanitarian responses against the aid efforts of other nations, empires, and international organizations. At its most fundamental level, Catastrophic Diplomacy demonstrates the importance of international disaster assistance—and humanitarian aid more broadly—to US foreign affairs.

​This handbook is a comprehensive source of information, analysis and directions in disaster studies. It goes beyond the oft-explored issues of management and science related to the topic and explores policies, governance, law and decision-making combined with the processes of implementation and enforcement, all the while integrating the latest science and technology updates related to the topic, such as artificial intelligence and early warning systems. It brings together studies which relate to sociology, politics and institutional economics, which work under the impact of resource availability, issues of leadership and international laws. Disasters are trans-boundary and disaster studies are trans-disciplinary. It is this aspect which would form the fulcrum of contributions and present a new, refreshing and innovative design for the handbook. The transformatory pedagogy which started with the Hyogo Framework for action 2005-2015 and The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 outlines seven clear targets and four priorities for action to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risks. The four priority areas around which the book would revolve are (i) Understanding disaster risk; (ii) Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk; (iii) Investing in disaster reduction for resilience and; (iv) Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response, and to "Build Back Better" in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.