In effect, local vulnerabilities are not always the result of local
causes; there are now far more systemic features to specific
vulnerabilities. (Oliver-Smith in Quarantelli 1998: 232)
As
local communities come to grips with increased vulnerabilities, they
enter into new relationships with both the environment and larger social
contexts, inevitably affecting the pace of social and cultural change.
Furthermore, in coping with disaster impacts, communities are forced to
adjust past structures and practices to altered circumstances, if only
in novel forms of resistance to disaster induced changes (Oliver-Smith
1992). Indeed, the impact of a disaster may usher in a conservative
resistance to new social alternatives set in motion by the disaster and
its aftermath. Therefore, any discussion of a disaster and its effects
on a community must consider the issues of shorter-term social
organizational changes and longer-term structural adaptations, involving
the future well-being of the of the community as well as the trauma of
impact. (Oliver-Smith in Quarantelli 1998: 232)
Furthermore,
as the state acquires more functions and power in local contexts,
tensions emerge between the expert systems and expert knowledge employed
by the state and local experience and narrative as idioms of resistance
and reform (Kroll-Smith and Floyd, forthcoming). In such contexts,
disasters become defined and interpreted by various interest groups at
multiple levels of the total society, many with competing agendas, and
become part of a scnario in which different, often unrelated, issues are
played out. (Oliver-Smith in Quarantelli 1998: 232)
The
arrangement and importance given in a common group of definitional
features account of significant differences, reflecting more the kinds
of questions different researchers seek to explore rather than a malaise
of intellectual disarray. (Oliver-Smith in Quarantelli 1998: 233)
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