How real are social constructions? Interpretive scholarship in disaster studies

Margarethe Kusenbach and Gabriela Christmann

Chapter 8 in Handbook of Interpretive Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 2025, pp 124-137 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The main goals of this chapter are to document insights that interpretive researchers, thus far, have brought to disaster studies, and to suggest how interpretive ideas might further advance disaster research in the future. We begin with a brief historic overview of the interdisciplinary and applied field of disaster studies. In the main section, we start by taking a general look at the location and significance of interpretive theory in disaster studies. Next, we discuss the advantages of conceptualizing disasters from a social constructionist perspective in public and political discourse. The following subsection continues our review by turning to interpretive thinking (or lack thereof) regarding disaster perception at the micro level. Lastly, we discuss the importance of culture, a stronghold of interpretive social research, when studying disasters. A brief summary and look toward the future conclude the chapter.

Keywords: Disasters; Climate change; Climate culture; Social constructionism; Meaning; Identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803926384
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781803926391.00015 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21718_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().