The denial of the naturalness of disasters is in no way a denial of natural process. It is difficult, so soon on the heels of such an unnecessarily deadly disaster, to be discompassionate, but it is important in the heat of the moment to put social science to work as a counterweight to official attempts to relegate Katrina to the historical dustbin of inevitable “natural” disasters.įirst, causes. This is not simply an academic point but a practical one, and it has everything to do with how societies prepare for and absorb natural events and how they can or should reconstruct afterward. Hurricane Katrina provides the most startling confirmation of that axiom. In every phase and aspect of a disaster-causes, vulnerability, preparedness, results and response, and reconstruction-the contours of disaster and the difference between who lives and who dies is to a greater or lesser extent a social calculus. It is generally accepted among environmental geographers that there is no such thing as a natural disaster.
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