January 2014 – Page 7 – American Disasters

January 15, 2014December 16, 2020

Approaches to Studying the History of American Disasters

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Focus Question: What are different historical approaches to studying the history of American disasters?

Disaster is, as Bergman puts it, “ubiquitous yet indescribable.” It is difficult to exactly characterize disaster, as we saw in our class list on Tuesday. Everything from hurricanes to terrorism was lumped under disaster. The definition and study of “disaster” has evolved. Early on, supernatural events were thought to bring about disasters. Disasters were not natural; they represented God’s displeasure with humans. Then the language around disasters shifted to science. Disaster descriptions were couched in purely secular terms.

Even more recently, there has been focus on “human ecology” or the link between human and non-human worlds. Several scholars, such as Matthew Mulchay, think this intersection of natural and human forces precipitates disasters. Some even call modern disasters “unnatural.” It seems a bit extreme, however, to call every disaster unnatural. For instance, humans do not cause most hurricanes. Despite more recent emphasis on humans affecting weather patterns, there still appear to be some events humans did not cause. It reminds me of the old saying, “If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound?” If humans were entirely uninvolved, there could still be hurricanes. They might not directly cause humans trouble, but perhaps hurricanes could be considered disastrous for the nature and wildlife they impact.

Disasters seem to reveal failings in society. David McCullough writes about the Johnstown Flood as the clash of social problems and nature, which seems more reasonable than the “unnatural” category. A combination of human and natural events caused the Johnstown flood. If there had been no improperly built dam, the heavy rain would not have had such a disastrous effect. If there had been no heavy rain, the dam might not have failed. Other scholars maintain nature or man alone causes some disasters. There has been a general movement to increasingly describing disaster in cultural or social frameworks. The piece by Kenneth Hewitt continues this cultural trend. He emphasizes the geography of disasters, which often highlights the rift between the impoverished and wealthy. Disasters in poverty-stricken areas typically produce higher death rates and reveal the limited political voice of people. Disasters form a window to study race, class, gender, politics, and governmental structure.

January 15, 2014December 16, 2020

What’s it’s place?

The name of this course first interested me because of its seemingly ambiguous connection to historical thought and traditional historical research. The definition of disaster, the category of disaster and the scholarly research of disaster were all foreign to me and until Bergman’s reading, very unclear in their applications. Bergman spikes my mind when he claims that the study of disaster was carried on by a variety of disciplines, including geography, anthropology, ecology, meteorology, psychology, sociology, and, more recently, history (935). It immediately took me to the beginning of class on Tuesday when we were all introducing ourselves and our interest in the course. Unlike more traditional history classes with possibly more distinct and popular topics and curriculums, this class garnered a much different response. These responses directly reflected Bergman’s overview of the history of this study and the intrigue behind the study of disaster.

These student responses garnered interests from historical perspectives, anthropological perspectives, environmental perspectives, and health and international relief views. The unclear nature of this study and its defined role as a certain discipline, lends itself to so much study and comparison. These differing interests in class represent all the different ways disaster can be interpreted and therefore, studied. Because disaster has no common creed currently, it is relatively up in the air and has the ability to lend its research to many different fields of study. My point is that this class opens up a whole new way of thinking about disaster. Because this field is so multi-dimensional, it can enhance so much research in so many different fields of inquiry. The potential for this field is massive and probably why is it getting so much attention as of late.

However, as a history major, I must explain the interest it stirs in the field of history. Beyond its role as a category of analysis is it’s even more important influence on the study of history, its use as a tool of historical study to enhance conventional historiographies and shine a fresh light on traditional topics (940). This field could have an enormous effect on new historical scholarship. This new angle of research will allow historians to go and view topics that have been somewhat exhausted and write about it from a new perspective. History is all about how you view it and perspective, this new category allows historians to delve into a very different and unique subsidiary viewpoint. It could even continue into a new sub-category is history which has yet to be named. Atlantic history or disaster history have been mentioned and, in my opinion, deserve some serious attention and seem like pretty cool inquires of new study.

January 14, 2014December 16, 2020

When the Levees Break: The Revelatory Powers of Disaster

What is a disaster? And more importantly, who or what is responsible for it? Jonathan Bergman explores various perspectives and themes concerning how scholars have addressed these questions in his article “Disaster: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” He notes how there has never been an established answer for either question. Before 1900, disaster was commonly accepted as divine retribution, with a vengeful God casting his judgment on a select community or area. More recently, however, scholars have contended that human agency is present in every “natural” disaster. Matthew Mulcahy aptly reflects this view, noting “disasters become disasters only when natural forces meet human ones.” (936) Regardless of these definitions, Bergman argues that disasters can serve as tools of revealing societal trends and civil conflicts.

While Bergman may jump the gun a bit in describing disasters as “useful,” his analysis makes interesting points on how natural and man-made disasters often fit into political debates. Conflicts triggered by American disasters, especially in the twentieth century, bear a remarkable resemblance to ones seen today. The Dust Bowl contributed to ideological divide between the traditional view of “rugged individualism” and rising New Deal progressivism. The influx of the Spanish Flu in the early 1900s led to controversy concerning immigration and social homogeneity- concerns that have yet to subside. Bergman notes an evident parallelism between Mississippi Delta flooding in the 1920s and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the 2000s. Both ignited fiery debates concerning race, wealth, and governmental disaster relief. Overall, Bergman indicates that the “usefulness” of natural disasters lies in how they reveal social, economic, and political patterns that have adapted little over the course of time and are still prevalent today.

January 14, 2014December 16, 2020

Defining disasters and their study: a topic of multidisciplinary interest

In this week’s readings, both Bergman and Hewitt ponder the characteristics of disasters: how are they defined? What are their prominent elements? What are their implications? How do they fall within the delineations of academic inquiry?

I found Hewitt’s analysis succinct and focused, and therefore more useful. Perhaps most usefully, Hewitt distinguishes between the routine–highway, smoking, lifestyle related deaths–and the more unexpected ‘extreme events’ (Hewitt 5). These fall into the major categories of natural, technological, and war-related disasters. He also suggests some important characteristics of disasters such as their concentrated death and injury; their wont to catch individuals or societies unaware, and perhaps represent a new, previously unknown, threat; and their natural tendency to overwhelm previously functional societal and governmental systems.

Bergman’s work, more so than Hewitt’s, is a historiographical analysis. Analyzing, or at least mentioning, a wide variety of historiography on disasters, Bergman asserts clearly that disasters are necessarily social and human. Furthermore, he argues that those analyses which separate the human from the exogenous cause of the disaster are incomplete. Indeed, I believe this to be true: in their history of the disasters and upheaval in reformation Europe, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe, Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell argue the illogic of trying to find every early modern disease’s contemporary counterpart. Convincingly, they write that the disease is no more the bacterium or virus that causes it than it is the experience of the disease itself. For example, syphilis in 2014–many years after penicillin–bears little resemblance, in terms of experience, to syphilis in 1500. Likewise with disasters: the greatest earthquake or flood is no disaster without the human experience, regardless of its other effects.

Compellingly, one might argue that this definition is more inclusive than it might seem at first. Human compassion may include many disasters which cost no human lives, directly or otherwise: the Exxon-Valdez spill comes to mind.

Eventually, it seems the definition of a disaster will lack some specificity, such that it may include the wide variety of events which the humans who experience them deem disasters. I believe that to be acceptable: historians (and geographers) can continue their study of those events that they, or others, deemed disasters in their own experience.

January 6, 2014December 16, 2020

Welcome

Welcome to the history of American Disasters of the Gilded Age, taught at Davidson College in the Spring of 2014. This space will function in lieu of a Moddle forum – as a place for you to register weekly opinions on the reading, drop in interesting links. The blog is not indexed with Google, but it is still accessible to any who might stumble upon it. To that end, if you don’t want your posts to be searchable by your Davidson handle, feel free to change it (users>your profile>nickname) and send me the name you’ll be posting under.