Must disasters be rapidly occurring? The case for an expanded temporal typology of disasters

Abstract

Within the field of disasters research, there is a tendency to define disasters as rapidly occurring events. Some accounts argue for maintaining such a temporal definition of disasters because it is intended to prevent disasters from being theorized in an overly broad fashion. In this article, I critically appraise such a way of conceptualizing disasters. While there is merit in imposing limits on the meaning of disasters, I find that there are ways of theorizing disasters as involving a protracted component that do not completely threaten the wholesale integrity of the concept. This involves developing a theoretical account of disasters, which encapsulates—but also differentiates between—social disruptions that are temporally focused and those that are temporally diffuse or recurrent. Adopting this typology of disasters is fruitful because it opens up fresh lines of inquiry to be undertaken. It positions largely unexplored phenomena within the purview of disasters research and it pushes the study of certain phenomena, such as climate change and heat waves, more into the field’s mainstream. Slow-moving and chronic social breakdowns are particularly important to theorize as disasters since they may be more impactful than disasters that are rapidly onset. It is precisely because they are less visible—in that they are normalized as everyday problems—that slow moving and recurrent disasters have the potential to cause greater damage to environments and human life.