ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to link the general problem of discursive hazard/mitigation transformations to three general theoretical concerns: the social definition of the situation, unintended consequences of rational action, and the structure of the global economy as the development of a capitalist world-system. The transformation of hazards into mitigations and mitigations into hazards is accomplished through at least four general discursive strategies: decision methods, most notably cost-benefit forms of analysis, the setting of thresholds of risk, limiting causal chains, and non-decisions. The discursive transformations of hazards and mitigations are rational actions that may generate unintended effects. The structure of the global economy in terms of the development of a capitalist world-system creates conditions for the increasing polarization of states into cores and peripheries having unequal capacities to deal with hazards, and the transfer of hazardous technologies to the periphery where recurring disasters produce disproportionately greater losses.
