**Anthropology in Natural and Man-Made Disasters: Preparedness,
Response, and Recovery**

*Honors Seminar*

**Roy E. Roper, Ph.D.** rroper25@comcast.net

Adjunct Professor of Anthropology 1-724-869-8833

Honor\'s College

Duquesne University

Pittsburgh, PA

Class: Tuesday Evenings 6 - 8:40 PM Office Hours: By Appointment

Fisher Hall Room 705

This course offers students an overview of a variety of natural and
man-made disasters and how society prepared for, responded to, and
recovered from specific events from an anthropological perspective. This
course will allow students access to scientific storytelling, social
research, and advanced theory on disasters. Students will gather an
increased appreciation of the complexities associated with planning for
and responding to natural and man-made disasters. Students will also
learn how disasters emerge from the confluence of hazard, risk, and the
social construction of vulnerability.

Anthropology is inherently a study in comparisons and contrasts on a
worldwide basis from the historical present to the prehistorical past,
from the level of a single individual to that of nation-states. This
course will use a series of baseline readings on discrete disaster
events such as floods, heat waves, and epidemics. Each of these baseline
readings will be accompanied by shorter readings on similar disaster
events. The readings will move the student from one historical time and
geographical place to another while holding the general type of
"disaster" relatively constant. The notion of discrete, time-bound
"disasters" will be placed into the larger flows of human history. The
readings will be adjusted as we move through the course and we will take
advantage of current events to highlight issues from the readings.

General questions to be addressed through the readings and classroom
interaction are:

> •What can we learn about culture and society from the study of past
> disasters?
>
> •How can we use information on past disasters to better prepare for
> and respond to emergent disasters?
>
> •What is the role of humankind in creating disasters or the conditions
> for disasters?
>
> •How does humankind create its own vulnerabilities?
>
> •Who benefits from these vulnerabilities and why are they maintained
> even after repeated disaster events?

Specific issues to be examined through the readings and weekly
discussions will include:

> •The type of natural and man-made disaster events, their causes,
> physical impact and implications, and the similarities and differences
> between them
>
> •The perception of disaster events by the human species
>
> •The impact of disaster upon community, public health, and trust
> infrastructures
>
> •How risk and damage are assessed in disaster events
>
> •The post-disaster continuum of impact and intervention - from initial
> response efforts through recovery
>
> •Disaster response in different mass casualty incidents (e.g.,
> earthquakes and flu)
>
> •The man-made disaster of complex humanitarian emergencies and health
> of displaced populations
>
> •The special topic of biological insults to humankind (flu, plague,
> SARS)

One area of emphasis will be the potential impact of biologically-based
disasters upon community and public health infrastructures. This has
special relevancy given the current national distress over the uses of
biologically-based weapons of mass destruction \-- bioterrorism. This
emphasis is even more poignant given the recent "near-miss" of SARS, and
the continued movement of West Nile virus throughout the United States.

Course Activities

The course has an extensive reading list. These weekly readings are
critical to each student's success in the course and the seminar's
success as a unit in discussing the readings. These readings or
"vignettes" of specific disasters will help students gain a better
perspective on what actually occurs during disasters. These readings
will also help students understand how human affairs can change
ecological systems, the built environment, and cultural systems in
potentially devastating ways.

Early in the semester, the class will be broken into research groups to
begin their semester long investigations into current challenges in
disaster preparedness, response and recovery. A recent seminar studied
SARS in Hong Kong, the Paris heat wave, and the well water pollution by
arsenic in India, North Vietnam, and Bangladesh.

The course has approximately 14 total face-to-face sessions, or one per
week. Students should expect a significant compression in the reading
assignments. Students are expected to have done a thorough reading of
all materials prior to coming to class.  Please be prepared for
discussions!

Course Grading

Students will be graded on class attendance, active participation,
assigned presentations, and projects (either individual or group).

Class Schedule

Session 1: Course Introduction: Disasters Who, What, When, Where and
Why\...

"Risky Business" Exercise in Risk Perception

Assigned Reading:  Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (How to Read
Ethnographically)

Session 2: Discussion: Cannery Row

Assigned Readings: The Plague by Albert Camus

The Haitians of Immokalee (ch. 2) in New Species of Trouble by

Kai T. Erikson

Anthropology and the Angry Earth: An Overview in The Angry

Earth by Anthony Oliver-Smith and Susanna Hoffman

Session 3: Discussion The Plague

The Haitians of Immokalee (ch. 2)

Anthropology and the Angry Earth: An Overview

Assigned Readings: The Barbary Plague by Marilyn Chase (intro - pg. 141)

"What is a Disaster?" Anthropological Perspectives on a

Persistent Question (ch. 1) in The Angry Earth

Session 4: Discussion: The Barbary Plague (intro - pg. 141)

"What is a Disaster?" (ch. 1)

Assigned Readings: The Barbary Plague by Marilyn Chase (pg. 142 - 216)

Being Homeless (ch. 5) in New Species of Trouble

Constructing Vulnerability in the First World: The Northridge

Earthquake in Southern California, 1994 (ch. 5) in The Angry Earth

Session 5: Discussion: The Barbary Plague (pg. 142- 216)

Being Homeless (ch. 5)

Constructing Vulnerability in the First World

Assigned Readings: The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough

Yucca Mountain (ch. 7) in New Species of Trouble

Session 6: Discussion: The Johnstown Flood

Yucca Mountain (ch. 7)

Assigned Readings: Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community\
in the Buffalo Creek Flood by Kai T. Erikson

Session 8: Midsemester: Perspective Discussion

Group Projects - Midsemester Presentations

Assigned Readings: The Buffalo Creek Disaster by Gerald Stern

The Objibwa of Grassy Narrows (ch. 1) in New Species

of Trouble

Session 9: Discussion: Everything in Its Path

The Buffalo Creek Disaster

The Objibwa of Grassy Narrows (ch. 1)

Assigned Readings: "Tell Them We're Hurting": Hurricane Andrew, the
Culture of

Response, and the Fishing Peoples of South Florida and Louisiana

(ch. 11) in The Angry Earth

Session 10: Discussion: "Tell Them We're Hurting"

Assigned Readings: The Worst of Times, The Best of Times: Toward a Model
of Cultural

Response to Disaster (ch. 7) in The Angry Earth

Session 11: Discussion: The Worst of Times, The Best of Times

Group Projects

Session 12: Discussion: Group Projects

Assigned Readings: A Dangerous Place: California's Unsettling Fate by
Marc Reisner

Session 13: Discussion: A Dangerous Place

Group Projects

Session 14: Discussion: Group Projects - Final Presentations

Class Summary:

Course Evaluations:

Course Required Readings (in reading order) (\*\*=amazon.com search
w/out s&h)

Steinbeck, John \[1945\] 1994 Cannery Row. New York: Penguin Books (Book
Store)

Camus, Albert \[1947\] 1948 The Plague. New York: The Modern Library
(Book Store)

Oliver-Smith, Anthony and Susanna M. Hoffman (eds.) 1999 The Angry
Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective. New York: Routledge
(\*\*\$17.00)

Chase, Marilyn 2003 The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San
Francisco. New York: Random House (\*\*\$4.00)

Erikson, Kai. \[1994\] 1995 A New Species of Trouble: The Human
Experience of Modern Disasters. New York: W. W. Norton & Company
(\*\*\$3.95)

McCullough, David 1968 The Johnstown Flood. New York: Touchstone Book
(\*\*\$5.95)

Erikson, Kai T. 1976 Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in
the Buffalo Creek Flood. New York: Simon and Schuster (\*\*\$2.00)

Stern, Gerald M. The Buffalo Creek Disaster. \[1976\] 1977 New York:
Vintage Books (\*\*\$4.97)

Reisner, Marc. 2003. A Dangerous Place: California's Unsettling Fate.
New York: Pantheon Books.

Additional Readings:

Barry, John M. \[1997\] 1998 Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of
1927 and How It Changed America. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Davis, Mike 1998 Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of
Disaster. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Hallowell, Christopher (2001 Holding Back the Sea: The Struggle for
America's Natural Legacy on the Gulf Coast. New York: HarperCollins
Publishers.

Garrett, Laurie 1995 The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Disease in a
World Out of Balance. New York: Penguin Books).

Klinenberg, Eric. 2002 Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in
Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kolata, Gina 1999 \-- Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of
1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It. New York: Touchstone
Books.

McKee, Jeffrey K. 2003 Sparing Nature: The Conflict between Human
Population Growth and Earth's Biodiversity. New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press.

McPhee, John 1989 The Control of Nature. New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux.

Monnonier, Mark. 1997. Cartographies of Danger: Mapping Hazards in
America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Reisner, Marc. 1990. Cadillac Desert: The American West and its
Disappearing Water. New York: Vintage/Ebury.

Tenner, Edward. \[1996\] 1997 Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the
Revenge of Unintended Consequences. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Williams, Holly Ann (ed.). 2001 Caring for Those in Crisis: Integrating
Anthropology and Public health in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies. NAPA
Bulletin 21. Washington, DC.