Oliver-Smith, Anthony. 1996. “Anthropological Research on Hazards and Disasters.” Annual Review of Anthropology 25 (1996): 303–28.

• reading notes

The increasing frequency and severity of natural and technological disasters particularly, but not exclusively, in the developing world place them in the center of debates on human-environment relations and issues of development and sustainability. Disasters occur at the interface of society, technology, and environment and are fundamentally the outcomes of the interactions of these features. In very graphic ways, disasters signal the failure of a society to adapt successfully to certain features of its natural and socially constructed environment in a sustainable fashion. (303)