http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/754 Search the Channel search http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/simple-search http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/4242 Title: Conventional Beliefs and Counterintuitive Realities <br/> <br/>Authors: Quarantelli, E. L. <br/> <br/>Abstract: This paper discusses major myths and widely held incorrect beliefs about individual and group behaviors in disaster contexts. Why can we categorize such views as invalid? Because now there has been more than half a century of systematic social science studies (and an earlier half century of less well known scattered works) that have established the actual parameters of the behavior of individuals and groups in natural and technological disaster situations (for recent summaries of the extensive research literature, see Lindell, Perry, and Prater, 2006; National Research Council, 2006; and Rodriguez, Quarantelli, and Dynes, 2006). All is not known, and serious gaps remain in knowledge about important topics, but we are at this time far beyond just educated guesses on many dimensions of the relevant behaviors. Our focus is on six different behavioral aspects of disasters, primarily occurring around the impact time period of such crises. Stated in just a few words, we look at panic flight and at antisocial looting behavior, supposed passivity in emergencies, role conflict and abandonment, severe mental health consequences, and the locus of whatever problems surface. We present what is often assumed, believed, or stated on these matters—at least in popular discourse and to a varying extent in policy, planning, and operational circles—as over against what study and research has found. http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/4229 Title: Origin and History of the International Research Committee on Disasters (RC-39) <br/> <br/>Authors: Quarantelli, E. L. <br/> <br/>Abstract: This version of the origin and history of RC-39 was prepared by E. L. Quarantelli, President Emeritus of the RC-39 and Professor Emeritus, University of Delaware (USA). The RC-39 developed out of the fact that sociologists predominated in the pioneering stage of disaster studies. http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/2783 Title: The Structure of Disaster Research: Its Policy and Disciplinary Implications <br/> <br/>Authors: Dynes, Russell R.; Drabek, Thomas E. <br/> <br/>Abstract: The context of sociological research on disaster is discussed by the various settings in which the research tradition has developed. In addi­tion, both funders and users of that research are identified. It is suggested that the most important policy use of disaster research has been to change the conceptualization of disaster. While no specific study can be directly tied to particular policy changes, the overall research tradition has had a transforming effect. That transformation is, of course, more obvious in some societies than in others. In the future, it is suggested that increased attention will be given to disaster preparedness and planning because of more and worse disasters. This means that social science research will continue to thrive because of its potential utility in problem solving. However, future research will be increasingly cast in interdisciplinary terms. Given the reluctance to support basic research, the relationship between applied research and the core disciplines will become more problematic. http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/2782 Title: Converting Disaster Scholarship into Effective Disaster Planning and Managing: Possibilities and Limitations <br/> <br/>Authors: Quarantelli, E. L. <br/> <br/>Abstract: I have spent most of my professional life since the 1950s doing research on the social aspects of disasters. This social science research in which I have participated, is of course part of a much larger body of studies undertaken in the last 40 years, could be characterized in a whole variety of ways as to findings, motifs, implications, uses, etc. But there is one theme that runs through the bulk of the work that has been done up to now: according to research findings much of what is generally believed about disaster related individual and group behavior is not true or correct. As I and others have phrased it, we are embedded in a great number of misconceptions or myths about behavior in disasters. This disaster mythology clearly does not make for effective planning for or managing of such crisis occasions.