ABSTRACT
Ineffect,thenewperspectiveassertsthatdisastersdonotsimplyhappen; theyarecaused.Thehighcorrelationbetweendisasterproneness,chronic malnutrition,lowincome,andfaminepotentialhasledmanyresearchersto theconclusionthattherootcauseofdisasterscanbeattributedtothestructuralimbalancesbetweenrichandpoorcountries.Indeed,Hewittexplicitly positsthatmanynaturalphenomenawouldnotevenbedisastersor,ifthey were,wouldcausefarfewerdamages,wereitnotforthecharacteristic"normal"conditionsofunderdevelopmentinwhichpeoplehavebeenforcedto liveintheirattemptstoadapttosocialandeconomicconditionsandcontexts
far beyond their control. Moreover, the new perspective maintains that such conditions and the forces that created them have also undermined or subverted traditionally effective adaptive strategies developed through long experience with a region's hazards. Seen in this context, the Guatemalans' reference to the 1975 earthquake as a "classquake" or the Peruvians' reference to a "five-hundred-year earthquake" after the 1970 disaster are bitterly accurate assessments of "natural" disaster. The American first lady's remark on viewing the devastation after the 1970 Peruvian earthquake that the United States was going to help the victims until everything was "just rosy again" exemplifies the belief that the disaster was an "extreme event" and returning to normalcy would solve all the problems. There was little recognition that the destruction and misery in Peru in 1970 and after were as much a product of that nation's historic underdevelopment as they were of the earthquake. In effect, then, the perspective of disaster research and analysis shifts from an exclusive focus on "extreme events" to include and give equal weight to the societal and humanenvironment relations that "prefigure" disaster (Hewitt 1983: 27).
