|
Showing 1 - 4 of
4 matches in All Departments
American Lecture Series, No. 444. American Lectures In Objective
Psychiatry.
American Lecture Series, No. 444. American Lectures In Objective
Psychiatry.
Scholars who have studied rural people and places often have
focused on a snapshot in time as they attempt to understand how
human beings are impacted by change at the local community level.
Community once was declared dead as a unit of analysis for social
science scholars, yet the citizens who live in these places find
that their attachments to place and to other people in these places
are crucial to their lives. Too often those who study such
phenomena fail to examine the longterm impacts of shocks to place
and people. This methodological failing often leads to exaggerated
estimations of the impacts of disasters on communities and their
residents. Human beings and the social structures they create are
resilient. In this book, the author fills some of the gaps in our
knowledge when he returns repeatedly to Buffalo Creek for several
years, long after the flash flood departed in 1972. It is not often
that a scholar with empathy for rural citizens returns to a place
for many years to understand the longer term implications of
disasters for individual well-being. This book provides a view of a
place long after the tragedy has taken place. It illustrates how
community residents struggle to re-create community and well-being
after a serious ecological shock. The resilience of the human
character and the adaptability of community structures form the
core of this book. Taking us through the days before the flash
flood at Buffalo Creek, the author paints a portrait of human
failings and of growing environmental danger. He draws on the
voices that were there on the scene. He also gives us a detailed
review of newspaper accounts, government documents, and research
studies, including Kai Erikson's classic disaster study, Everything
in Its Path. From these many sources, we get a multi-faceted
account of how the disaster occurred and how dozens of local,
state, and federal agencies responded to it. After the Disaster
provides detailed discussions with local residents, survey data,
and a gift for integration that allows the reader to gain an
understanding of how disasters impact communities in the short term
and in the long term. The latter is one of the most important
contributions of this book.
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.