Disasters

Abstract

The chapter’s objective is to summarize various theoretical and substantive contributions that researchers working in the tradition of Symbolic Interactionism have brought to disaster studies. We begin by discussing the advantages of conceptualizing disasters from a social constructionist perspective in public and political discourse. Next, we continue our review by turning to constructionist and interactionist thinking (or lack thereof) with regard to disaster perception at the micro level. In a third step, we consider the importance of examining culture, a traditional stronghold of interpretive social research, when studying disasters. Lastly, we conclude our review by assessing constructionist framings of vulnerability and resilience, two current key concepts in the field of disaster studies. Overall, we strive to show that the symbolic-interactionist perspective can help disaster scholars formulate and answer important research questions, as well as solve problems in the real world.