Causality and "Natural" Disasters
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3863128 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert A Stallings (Department of Sociology University of Southern California, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 223-227 |
| Publication date | 2006-05-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0094-3061 • E-ISSN: 1939-8638 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/009430610603500305 |
| OpenAlex | W2091307623 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 5 |
power from the church and assumed primary responsibility for response, recovery, and rebuilding. In the process, a void was created that would later open the way for a naturalistic explanation of disasters to rival the prevailing belief that they were acts of God. In 1755, the priests of Lisbon continued to preach that the earthquake was divine retribution for the of Portugal (Dynes 2000b, p. 14), and, as predictions of future earthquakes mounted, clerics of the Portuguese Inquisition held an auto-da-f6 on June 20, 1756, in order to avert further catastrophes (see Arouet de Voltaire 1966 [17591, p. 12 and footnote 3, same page). By the time Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August 2005, the cultural repertoire of causal explanations for disasters had grown considerably. Four ideal-type models were available: natural disasters as acts of God, as acts of nature, as products of human agency, and as merely chance or coincidence. All were put to use to explain what had happened to the city of New Orleans. Evangelical ministers preached that God was punishing the city for past sins and for plans to host a gay and lesbian convention. Several scientists and environmentalists speculated that the intensity of Katrina and the subsequent parade of hurricanes including Rita and Wilma demonstrated that indeed the balance
Environmental ethics · Geography · Natural disaster · Parade · Political science · Sociology · Disaster Management and Resilience · History · Law · Philosophy · Risk Perception and Management
| Citations per year | 0.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2020 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |