ABSTRACT
In the late 1990s disaster researchers were revisiting the question of the definition of disasters. There was concern that without a succinct and mutually agreed upon definition of the research topic, the intellectual health of the field would be weakened. Debates about the relationship between nature and culture/society have been frequent and intense in anthropology. In particular, the 1970s to 1980s was a period of time in which there was considerable discussion, some arguing that culture was essentially epiphenomenal to environmental conditions, while others maintained that culture could not be reduced to linear adaptations to environmental conditions. In order to survive, ensure maintenance, demographic replacement, and social reproduction, including culturally meaningful lives, human beings interact with nature, both shaping and being shaped by it, through a set of material practices that are socially constituted and culturally meaningful. Socially constructed meanings create frameworks through which alternative material and social practices are analyzed, evaluated, and prioritized.
