ABSTRACT
Disasters sometimes strike with the sudden impact of an earthquake or nuclear meltdown. At other times they accumulate over long periods of time with the slowness of a drought or toxic exposure. In whatever manner they arrive, abrupt or subtle, disasters are all-encompassing occurrences. In their wake they sweep across every aspect of human life: environmental, biological, and sociocultural. The anthropological study of disaster has to date been conducted by a small group of researchers. Despite various approaches to the study of disaster, all are more or less united in their outlook on the problem. Disaster is seen as a process leading to an event that involves a combination of a potentially destructive agent from the natural or technological sphere and a population in a socially produced condition of vulnerability. The political ecology point of view defines disasters as less the result of geophysical extremes, such as earthquakes, hurricanes the function of ongoing social orders as they overlie physical environments.
