ABSTRACT

Social sciences including geography, psychology, and sociology, have been dealing with risks, disasters, and catastrophes for many decades, each one from its disciplinary perspective and originally with little interest in communicating with one another, let alone with the natural sciences. More recently the trend has been toward closer (although not easy) collaboration between different types of knowledge and expertise, due to the growing recognition that a multiplicity of perspectives needs to be taken into account for the understanding and management of risk issues. Most often the latter are the result of complex interactions between natural and human systems, which can be only partially anticipated. This dilemma exists for many environmental problem -sets; climate change is possibly the paradigmatic one.1 My reflection is whether and how the insights derived from over 50 years of “sociology of disaster” research with which I am most familiar can contribute to the current debate on how best to address the climate change challenge.