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Disaster: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis by Jonathan Bergman and Regions of Risk: A Geographical Introduction to Disaster’s introductory chapter by Kenneth Hewitt explore the questions of what is a disaster and what is it to study disasters. Hewitt makes an explicit argument that the disaster narrative is a social construction, while Bergman more generally explores disaster studies and provides claims that can be used to support Hewitt’s argument. Hewitt uses previous disasters such as the Johnstown Flood, the Dust Bowl, and the cholera epidemics of the 19th century as evidence for his claims, but more importantly within those disasters he focuses not on the capital and lives lost but rather the portrayal and memory of the disasters. Bergman takes a different approach and while he does talk about the societal reaction to various disasters, he analyzes the disasters by using more data driven metrics and focuses on the societal perception of risk.
Hewitt’s argument that disasters are a social construction is very strong because much of how we process and perceive disasters is through institutions such as media and government and through other social constructions like class, race and religion. Hewitt’s claim that “disasters therefore should be rightly understood as triggering mechanisms revealing flaws in environmental and social systems” is a uniquely interesting point because many things like building codes and emergency exits would not exist if a disaster had not come around to expose the flaw in the system. (Hewitt 936) I also really liked Bergman’s division of societal maladies into routine and non-routine events and that when threats “overwhelm whole communities” rather than just affect one person or a small group they are then perceived as a disaster. (Bergman 5) Overall both Hewitt and Bergman analyze disaster studies in interesting ways but Hewitt makes a more succinct and compelling argument that disasters are a social construction.