Introduction to the International Handbook of Disaster Research

Abstract

The objective of this International Handbook of Disaster Research is primarily twofold: first to enable Asian perspectives generate a surge of ideas which correlate, diversify, or question a firmly entrenched western determinism or American exceptionalism in disaster studies. Determinism is characteristic of an approach which suggests that one is a captive of a particular way of thinking and their responses to different situations are quite the same as could be anticipated. Seymour Martin Lipset in his work American Exceptionalism: A Double Edged Sword (1997) has explained it in detail. One could pick up any work on disaster management prepared in the last decade to see that Asian narratives are rare entries even though their experience with disasters is much more varied, deep, and diversified in social, ecological, and community-centered strategies. Second objective is to formulate some kind of a holistic and all-encompassing transdisciplinarity among multifaceted studies in disaster management which have so far remained confined quite ineffectively yet arrogantly within their exclusive silos. Once transdisciplinary interaction or a dialogue begins, disaster management would no more remain a meandering dervish (A Sufi who is always in search of a universal spirit) or an epicurean technological hedonist (a pleasure seeking, money earning glorified scholar). Keeping the two objectives ahead of the plan for this handbook, there are 12 parts led by transdisciplinary expert scholars who have worked together as a team and generated synergy within the sections for an effective disaster management for planet earth like a Noah’s Arc for us. The message from this work is that no one can do it alone and decisions in disaster management should follow a democratic, non-hierarchical, and communicative spirit with an understanding about the limitations of planet Earth rushing toward its concluding detonation.