Abstract:

Our paper is organized around three central questions: What can be conceptualized as a
disaster?  What are important conditions that generate these occasions?  What are major consequences of disastrous occasions?

In the first part of the paper we show that from a conceptual point of view, disastrous occasions (whether they involve natural and/or technological agents) are usefully dividable into "disasters" and "catastrophes." In particular the quantitative and qualitative differences between both everyday emergencies and "disasters" as well as between "disasters" and "catastrophes" are explained.

Next, we briefly discuss the important social factors or conditions that facilitate or generate all disasters and catastrophes.  It is especially noted how disastrous occasions are rooted before impact in the ongoing social changes and trends or developments already existing in societies.  Such projected changes almost assure that in the future we will have more and worse disastrous occasions.

This part is followed by a very brief noting that disasters and catastrophes affect social development, especially at the macro level of societies.  But we particularly emphasize that there is considerable differentiation in if, where, and how, disastrous occasions affect social change and development.

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