disasters – American Disasters

April 30, 2014December 16, 2020

A Fragile Environment

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The video “The Plow that Broke the Plains” places a clear emphasis on the human role in the Great Plains disaster. Nate rightly suggests that there are both natural and manmade elements to this disaster. The narrator repeats phrases such as “high winds and sun” throughout the film, clearly suggesting that the editors and directors of the film believed that the fragility of the Great Plains made the Dust Bowl disaster predictable. In this way, the makers of the film implied that man essentially set himself up for disaster by settling on a dry land with “little rain” and “high winds and sun.” When put that way, it doesn’t seem that surprising that the plains dried out.

This argument relates back to one our previous class discussions about settling in places that are prone to natural disaster, such as San Francisco. When people choose to settle in fragile or unstable locations, and then in this case change their environment, are they setting themselves up for disaster?

The makers of this film seem to believe that that is the case. They trace the narrative of capitalism in relation to the Great Plains. Demand for wheat increased significantly with World War I, taking a great toll on the Great Plains. Newspaper titles flashed across the screen reiterate the human role in the Dust Bowl Disaster, as the war was clearly a result of mankind.

Film provided a new method of propaganda that had the unique ability to utilize visual imagery as well as sound to convey meaning. The newspaper titles, narration, as well as music all serve to echo the argument of this film.

March 26, 2014December 16, 2020

“Seismic Denial’s” Ripple Effect

A theme common to both Steingburg and Davis’s articles is the role of man in both causing and intensifying the effects of natural disasters. In “Smoke and Mirrors: the San Francisco Earthquake and Seismic Denial,” Steinberg argues that the alliance between California’s business class and politicians served to redefine the San Franciscan earthquake of 1906 by placing the blame for the majority of the destruction on the ensuing fire. As nakindig discussed in his post, this “seismic denial” was a common boosters, who popularized it in an effort to protect San Francisco’s image. In order to describe the effects of this “seismic denial,” Steinburg articulates the immediate changes in building codes after the 1906 earthquake and the subsequent easing of the building codes in later years. He argues that “such lenience stemmed directly form the conspiracy of seismic silence that remained a major preoccupation of San Francisco’s business community well into the 1920s” (Steinberg 112). Steinberg’s use of the word “conspiracy” reinforces his argument that the blame for much of the damage in later earthquakes should be placed squarely on the shoulders of man.

Steinberg also pulls in a class-power argument through his discussion of how “pyrotechnics of property destruction have eclipsed the truly deadly story”- that is, the unequal distribution of the earthquake’s damage on the population of San Francisco. Steinberg emphasizes that the poor and ethnic populations were more affected by the earthquake and likewise, more impacted by the “seismic denial.” The decision to undermine the role of the earthquake in the decimation of San Francisco is responsible for the loss of even more lives (Steinberg 121). This argument suggests that until building codes and other necessary preventatives were standardized and updated, deaths resulting from post-1906 earthquakes are essentially the responsibility of man and not nature.

March 10, 2014December 16, 2020

Where’s the Fault?

Throughout The Johnstown Flood, McCullough alludes to the roles that weak or inattentive authorities played in the flood. He suggested that the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club ignored reports that the dam was weak and a danger to the population (74). Additionally, he repeats throughout the novel that people were desensitized to the possibility of the dam breaking and therefore many authorities as well as civilians discounted reports that there could be or was a problem. McCullough essentially suggests that if authorities had perhaps taken more care in prevention, this entire disaster could have been circumvented.

As the action escalades through chapters 4-6, McCullough readdresses the role of effective and ineffective authority figures in a blatant juxtaposition of the management of two trains at East Conemaugh Yard. McCullough states that the only train to have “no fatalities among its passengers” was the mail train, which was due in large part to the “good sense of the crew” (123). In fact, the conductor of the mail train warned the passengers of the potential danger, giving them the opportunity to prepare for escape. McCullough states that “Warthen… at least made it sound serious” to the people onboard as opposed to the other authority figures who said “that the dam was an old chestnut” and that the people were “not to think any more of it” (123).

McCullough is clearly highlighting the differences effective authority figures can make through his in-depth comparison between Warthen’s decisions in the midst of the disaster as compared to the rest of the conductors. His detailed comparison between the two as well as his repetition of the preparedness of the mail train’s passengers emphasize his belief in the power authorities have in natural disasters. Catherine also mentions the role authorities have in disaster prevention and management in her post.

As we discussed previously in class, it is important to keep in mind that neither man nor nature can be isolated as the cause of a disaster. Rather it is almost exclusively the interplay between these two characters that allows disasters to occur.

January 25, 2014December 16, 2020

The perverse and often baffling economics of disasters

As someone who has completed an economics minor, I can tell you little about the economy or economics or finance or international trade with much confidence. I can, however, say with complete confidence that economics is an odd discipline. It’s hyper-rationality embraces only empirical judgments of the economy while simultaneously validating people’s subjective values as determinant of welfare. In Kevin Rozario’s “What Comes Down Must Go Up: Why Disasters Have Been Good for American Capitalism,” we catch a glimpse of the strangeness of economics, and indeed of capitalism itself.

Rozario seeks to show how disasters, but especially the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, had positive economic impacts, among other effects. He makes the case that with a disaster, the destruction of existing capital draws in funds from elsewhere to rebuild an even more productive environment. Though this may be true, anyone can easily tell that a disaster is not good news in the broadest sense. Resources exist and can be destroyed; that loss does not disappear once the city is rebuilt. At the very least, readers can acknowledge that, economics aside, a disaster represents the loss of natural resources, and the person-hours that were put into the construction and development of that capital. Moreover, it often results in the loss of human life.

Most interestingly, Rozario draws parallels between disasters and capitalism. Both are destructive: disasters raze buildings and destroy the capital within, while capitalism encourages the constant renewal of technologies and spaces to better produce the newest and most effective widgets. He points out, as examples, the ability of Bostonians to widen their streets after one fire, or more prominently, the efforts of progressives to improve San Francisco’s urban space in the aftermath of the earthquake and related fire.

In examining the opportunity offered by a disaster to sculpt the urban landscape, we see that the desires of those sculptors was inherently opposed to the capitalist ethos: Haussmann and the progressives of San Francisco wanted to make permanent changes to the city, for a variety of purposes. They wanted to create cities which withstood the test of time and served to benefit the city (and the owning class). Yet, the vision of cityscape which endures the test of time stands in direct opposition to capitalism, which desires the continual renewal of technology, business, commerce, and therefore urban spaces.

It is also telling that the so-called progressives of San Francisco cared as little about the effect of their plans on the working class as did Haussmann, though at least they did not blast away their housing with cannon. Indeed, throughout his article, Rozario makes it clear that the poor suffered, even as the economy, the city, and the business class benefitted in the aftermath of the ravages of disasters.

I enjoyed CT’s analysis of the art on the spoons at the State of Emergency exhibit, and I think that he is apt in his analysis of the spoon and its role in the artwork: as a domestic item, it seems particularly at home depicting a tornado, perhaps because so much of the destruction of tornados, as CT points out, happens in the midwest, away from major bodies of water. Such areas tend to be less urban, and often symbolize the domestic of American society.

January 15, 2014December 16, 2020

The Multifaceted Impact of Disasters

Hewitt describes the study of disasters and their impact as truly interdisciplinary. He takes the geographical point of view because he is a geographer, and he looks at disasters in a very scientific manner. Bergman, on the other hand, looks at disasters in a social aspect. Disasters have profound scientific and social implications, so looking at the subject from either style of study is completely valid. Bergman says the the disciplines that focus on natural disasters include “geography, anthropology, ecology, meteorology, psychology, sociology, and, more recently, history” (Bergman, Disaster: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis, 935). This claim properly explains the interdisciplinary nature of the study of disasters. The impact of disasters go beyond one or even two related fields.

Because people examine disasters from these many different fields of study, the definition of a disaster is hard to realize. I think it is easier to look at disasters at a case by case basis because not every disaster encompasses all of the aforementioned disciplines. Taking one disaster and using the disciplines it encompasses is easier than trying to define disaster in order to satisfy all of them. A meteorologist can learn more about the impacts of a hurricane as a disaster when s/he sees the ecological impact; a historian can learn more about the impacts of the same disaster when s/he sees the sociological impact. It’s practically impossible to know all of the causes and effects of disasters, but we can gain more understanding about each one by looking at it from many different points of view.

January 15, 2014December 16, 2020

Approaches to Studying the History of American Disasters

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

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.