Emergency
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Date
1989
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Disaster Research Center
Abstract
Description
In everyday speech, the word "emergency" usually signifies a sudden and unexpected condition calling for immediate action. In the last four decades, social scientists starting from popular usages of the term, have increasingly attempted to conceptualize emergency as part of the social situation generated by natural and technological disasters or catastrophes. In fact, to a considerable extent, the theoretical work and empirical research on the social aspects of disasters is the equivalent of the social scientific analysis and study of emergencies. Actually whether the term "disaster", "catastrophe" or emergency'' is primarily used, seems to depend on the particular language involved. For example, Italian social scientists have somewhat preferred to use the term "emergency" whereas Americans have been inclined to employ the word disaster" even though the substantive phenomena being discussed is about the same in both cases. However, since most of the social scientific literature that exists in the area uses "disaster" rather than "emergency" or "catastrophe", we will in this article mostly but not exclusively use the first term. Part of this tendency and also lack of complete consensus can be attributed to the fact that social science studies in the area are but about four decades old, and until recently, were primarily undertaken in the United States and Canada.
Keywords
emergency, catastrophe