By Michelle Hines, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-5371
Posted 5-26-09
GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The 1889 flood in Johnstown, Pa., killed 2,200 people.
More than 650,000 households sought FEMA assistance after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.
When Tunguahua, a volcano in Ecuador, erupted in 2006, 15,000 people were in shelters without sufficient sanitary facilities. Schools were taken over by those needing shelter, putting classes on hold.
Eric Jones and Art Murphy, anthropology professors at UNCG, have long been intrigued by the intersection of natural disasters like these and the socio-economic backdrop that frames them. What factors enable one area to recover smoothly while others remain mired in the aftermath? How do the “Haves” in a society fare versus the “Have Nots”?
Their interest in how power and wealth distribution impacts disaster recovery, has led them to compile and edit a new collection of articles by diverse experts in the fields of anthropology, sociology, economics, political science and geography. The book, “The Political Economy of Hazards and Disasters,” grew out of a conference on the politics and economics of natural disasters that UNCG hosted in 2007.
“The thing that meeting solidified and emphasized was the idea that what we call natural disasters today are the consequences of human activity,” Murphy says. “Humans are putting themselves in the way of Mother Nature, and the cost of recovery has reached a point where society is not going to be able to deal with it.”
Murphy and Jones say post-disaster inequity is almost inevitable. For example, wealthy homeowners who lose their homes to California wildfires will surely fare better than poor Ecuadorian farmers forced to live in volcanic danger zones at the margins of society or low-income renters left homeless after Katrina, but it is the role of external assistance that can make all the difference.
“We’re looking at how government involvement plays out, for better or worse,” Jones says. “It’s about linking people’s daily lives to what governing elites do. The elites in a society can’t make decisions for everyone without consequences. We’re interested in how, in a disaster setting, elites are scrambling to put things back together. The same elites can’t stay in power unless they find a way to get other classes on board and help meet most people’s needs, whether material or psychological. And disasters and even chronic hazards are particularly challenging that way.”
Although the wealthy and those who distribute essential goods generally fare better than most in a natural disaster, Jones adds that viewing globalization or capitalism as the cause of all ills is “kind of myopic. A next step for us is to look at a number of societies in different times, and to look for patterns of how societies construct vulnerability. It’s a little too simple for us to say the commoner is getting the short end of the stick.”
“The Political Economy of Hazards and Disasters” (Altamira Press, 366 pp.) includes an article by Shelly Brown-Jeffy and Steve Kroll-Smith, both sociology professors at UNCG. Brown-Jeffy and Kroll-Smith wrote about inequality in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.
