Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster.

AuthorDeckoff, Anthony
PositionREQUIRED READING - Book review

CATASTROPHE & CULTURE: THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF DISASTER Susanna M. Hoffman and Anthony Oliver-Smith, eds. (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2002), 300 pages.

In this intriguingly titled volume, the editors have compiled ten scholarly papers in which respected anthropologists apply their analytic tools to a provocative and eclectic variety of case studies, all dealing with societal responses to natural and man-made disasters. The intellectual approaches represented are as diverse as the cases themselves, but all highlight recent strides made in the analysis of complex sociological phenomena.

As noted by Hoffman and Oliver-Smith, both in the introduction and in their respective contributions, disasters offer unique opportunities to the anthropologist as they serve to expose cultural structures and assumptions that may otherwise be left buried and latent in the context of ordinary social interactions.

The case studies addressed include cultural analyses of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Oakland firestorm of 1991, the chemical disaster at Bhopal and two long-term drought studies. Also examined are the mindset and coping devices of the Israeli nation in the face of persistent terror threats and the attitude of nuclear energy professionals toward what they perceive to be public hysteria in the post-Chernobyl world. Researcher Gregory Button analyzes the media's skewed handling of the cancer...

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