Introduction: Thirty-Two Years of Disaster Study Under the Sequin Belt: The Enduring, The Fading, The New

Abstract (English)

Introduction: After Thirty-Two Years of Disaster Study: The Enduring, The Fading, The New
Susanna Hoffman
Time, research, expanded understanding, and new circumstances have shifted, deepened, widened, and altered many central platforms in the anthropology study of risk and disaster over the last decades. Some postulations remain pertinent and valid. Others have become less accurate and efficacious. Still others, once clear in definition, have become muddled or merged. From the thirty-year perspective of my particular engagement, this introduction to the panel addresses a few of the concepts, foci, assumptions, terms that have evolved, shifted, risen, or come into question over the last decades. These include among others, all hazard, probably/ possibility, induction/deduction, vulnerability/precarity, with more to follow from the participants.