Category: Week #4

REMEMBER THAT ACTS OF GOD WAS PUBLISHED IN 2000 AND OUR PAPERBACK VERSION IN 2006.   “[N]atural disasters do not always just happen; they are often produced through a chain of human and natural occurrences” (151). It is still common to define “natural disasters as unforeseen acts of nature—as opposed to complex interactions between the natural…

“self-inflicted catastrophe” (82) “’[M]an-made’ changes, not natural ones, are responsible for the increased destruction” of recent hurricanes” (118) “federalization of risk” (81) “the transformation of natural disaster from a localized problem into a national one” (81) “the U.S. government’s efforts to underwrite life on the edge of obliteration” (81) “[W]hat the flood should have taught…

“My argument is not simply that natural disasters bear a strong human component, but that those in power (politicians; federal, state, and city policymakers; and corporate leaders) have tended to view these events as purely natural in an effort to justify a set of responses that has proved both environmentally unsound, and socially, if not…