2.1. Framing Disasters
Crisis is often defined as a threat to fundamental structures or values in society, whereas disaster is seen as a manifestation and materialization of these threats that results in devastating and detrimental consequences [
12,
13]. Crises may lead to disasters and resources are often mobilized to prevent a crisis from developing into a disaster. What is important to note, however, is that the reverse development can also occur: the handling of a disaster may (unintentionally) lead to increased vulnerability and even new disasters [
14]. How actors address the risks they face in the wake of a disaster is therefore central to understanding the social dynamics and trajectory of a disaster [
15].
Not least when facing an unfamiliar situation, people and organizations have to develop a sense of what they are up against and what they need to do. By noticing, bracketing and labelling the details of a situation, people and organizations develop a plausible and coherent image that facilitates certain options and actions while constraining others [
16,
17,
18]. The understanding of extreme events often takes the form of a narrative: a somewhat coherent storyline pulling together different events, actors and circumstances and establishing relationships between them [
19,
20,
21]. A narrative tells not only
what has happened but also
why it has happened. This means that narratives not only contain large amounts of condensed information and normative assumptions but also assign meaning to them, thereby directing attention and motivating action in certain directions [
22]. Narratives are collective products, developed in social interactions, creating shared understandings and often resulting in unity between some actors and divergence from others who encompass other ways to narrate a disaster.
For example, how decision-makers, professionals and stakeholders narrate a disaster determines not only the post-disaster management but also what to learn from a disaster—what kinds of preventive measures and mitigation initiatives are needed to avoid similar disasters in the future. In this sense, narratives and social interpretations work performatively; all beliefs and interpretations—regardless of whether others see them as dubious—have consequences [
23]. Thus, narratives, perceptions and interpretations cannot simply be reduced to cognitive or cultural phenomena. They influence actions and therefore have effects on the material, political and social worlds. Whether a particular environmental disaster is seen as exceptional or as something that may become a more regular occurrence has great implications for learning and the need to change practices and restructure institutions [
24]. For example, beliefs about how to avoid future wildfires influence forestry practices and can transform forests and landscapes for decades to come [
25,
26]. Hence, how a disaster is narrated—what causes and consequences that are attached to it—is central for what kind of action that will be taken.
The main cause of a disaster may be located within nature (e.g., geophysical events such as earthquakes, droughts and flooding) or society (e.g., failures in technical systems such as power outages and industrial-chemical disasters). However, because a disaster always concerns the consequences of an event, the cause cannot exclusively lie within nature. Any particular society contains factors that enable a geophysical event to develop into a disaster. A disaster is thus never external to society, because it concerns the functioning of a system (or subsystem)—its vulnerabilities, robustness, resilience and adaptive capacity. Nevertheless, when people and organizations face a severe disaster, a central feature of their reaction is whether they ascribe the main cause to nature or society, with the latter meaning that a human decision was involved in making the disaster happen.
The
consequences of a disaster can be of different kinds: economic, environmental, social, political and cultural. These consequences can also differ in both magnitude and range. Some extreme events are restricted to particular geographical areas, whereas others are associated with activities and phenomena that are geographically spread. The consequences of a disaster—whether stemming from nature or society—can be limited or widespread. Even types of disasters that cannot happen everywhere (such as floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions), may have consequences that are felt globally. For example, the 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland resulted in 26 European countries issuing restrictions on flights. Furthermore, while any particular wildfire is spatially bound to a specific locality, it can at the same time be seen as a result of global warming, that is, be interpreted as an instance of a more general phenomenon of growing magnitude and frequency [
27]. Lastly, consequences may be valued differently; as with many risk issues, disasters create both winners and losers [
28]. Some persons or organizations may be financially ruined by a disaster, while others profit from it (not least due to market opportunities that emerge in its wake). To understand the varying responses to an extreme event, it is of central importance to investigate how it is understood and narrated, including what causes and consequences that are attached to it. The reason for this is that this understanding determines whether or not action is taken and what kind of action is deemed necessary [
29,
30]. Disasters therefore not only have practical and material consequences but also may change our interpretive paradigms [
31,
32]. They can change not only the way we think about them but also how we seek to manage them.
2.2. Therapeutic and Corrosive Communities
Since the 1980s, communities have been in focus in disaster research and disaster management approaches, largely as an alternative or a complement to top-down approaches [
33]. The reason for this is that the local responses to disasters are heavily influenced by the local context [
34,
35]. An example of this is the case of Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005. Studies have shown that its severe consequences were amplified or weakened by social structures in the community. Many of the victims of Katrina were already dependent on societal support and many of the damaged houses were already dilapidated before being struck by the hurricane and flooded [
36].
In this context, “community” often refers to residents within a spatially delimited area who recognize themselves as part of a social entity. Research has, however, been very critical when using the concept in an idealized and unproblematized way [
33,
37]. Community is often assumed to be characterized by cohesion, shared values and lack of conflicts (often with reference to Tönnies’ concept of
Gemeinschaft, despite the fact that his binary concepts
Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft—often translated as community-society—are analytical forms of social order [
38]). Instead communities, like society at large, are characterized by homogeneity and heterogeneity, unity and diversity and cohesion and conflicts [
33,
39]. Despite its being a vague and multifarious concept, involving different meanings, it is increasingly referred to, both in disaster research and disaster management [
33,
40,
41]. Community implies the existence of norms that at least partly guide the social life of a spatially delimited group whose members identify themselves as belonging to the socio-spatial group (though not necessarily in an exclusive sense; most people, probably all, have multiple belongings). This means that, despite all the differences and diversity, there is a sense of “we” in a community [
39,
40].
A stream of disaster research grounded in sociology or social-psychology stresses the importance of investigating and understanding how disasters influence the function and identity of affected communities. Obviously, many disasters have national implications and it is important to investigate how a particular disaster is evaluated nationally and how it influences national and international regulations. It is also important, however, to gain knowledge of its local impacts, not least because disasters always have distinct local consequences that may be overlooked if one only focuses on national aspects [
34,
35,
42].
When a disaster hits a community, it often narrows the range of what people know about their situation (environmental as well as social) at the same time as they need to act in this environment in order to rescue themselves and protect their belongings [
43]. Often they have to act in the new situation with incomplete and imperfect knowledge, or perhaps none at all, about what is happening and the best way to handle it. Issues of trust—who to listen to and whose advice to follow—are therefore brought to the fore. Research has found, however, that communities do not react and respond in a uniform way. Simply put, studies of the local implications of disasters find that communities follow one of two main lines of development: therapeutic or corrosive.
The term
therapeutic community was originally coined by Fritz [
44] to refer to a community hit by a disaster that not only maintained its social cohesion but was mobilizing its remaining resources to assist survivors. Also, rescue workers, neighbours, voluntary organizations and distant people were mobilizing to support the survivors and help to bring local residents together. In this way, positive emotions washed over the community soon after the disaster. Later studies show that people, including those considered vulnerable, respond in innovative and resilient ways that exhibit human creativity and responsibility [
45,
46]. A disaster provides opportunities for altruism, generosity and meaningful work. People may therefore come together rather than fall apart in the wake of disaster. Solnit [
45] (p. 2) claims that “in the wake of an earthquake, a bombing, or a major storm, most people are altruistic, urgently engaged in caring for themselves and those around them, strangers and neighbours as well as friends and loved ones.” A disaster can thereby serve as a doorway back into a community of positive social relations.
However, this is not the only story told about what happens in the wake of a disaster. A number of researchers have found that—rather than leading to the emergence of community solidarity—disasters can create social rupture. Blame, accusations, distrust and conflicts are often consequences of disasters, not least of technical disasters involving toxic exposure [
6,
47,
48]. The concept of
contaminated communities was invented to capture how people living in a toxic environment cope with their exposure and how their fear colours the life of the community [
9]. Closely related to this concept is that of
chronic technical disasters, which is used for long-term exposure, which has distinct community effects that differ from the effects of natural disasters [
49,
50,
51]. More recently, the concept of
volatile places has been used to designate a situation where environments and human communities collide and public controversies emerge around this collision [
52].
However, most relevant for this study is the concept of a
corrosive community. This concerns an affected community’s relation to its surroundings; that a community finds that governmental authorities, companies, media and other extra-local actors do not share its understanding of the situation—and may even question its understanding and experience—thereby failing to help the community to manage it. Empirically, the idea of contaminated community specifically concerns toxic exposure, where there is a need to draw a boundary around a polluted area. In contrast to this, corrosive community does not assume any particular character of the disaster. A corrosive community is also characterized by the deterioration of social relationships, not only external to the community but within it [
47,
53]. In a situation of confusion, stress, fear and anger, with competing definitions of what is at stake and who is responsible and with a multitude of (or no) proposals for the best way out of the situation, the community itself is put under great pressure. Not only can the soil and water be contaminated but also the social life of the community. Contamination can seep into the social fabric creating distrust of governments and corporations and may even foster social tensions within the community. Many disasters run silently through the structure of a community, creating winners and losers, splitting it into divisive fragments [
6,
48]. Also, responses from other social actors tend to amplify the social impacts. The affected community may see public agencies as foes rather than friends, because they are seen as unresponsive and as protecting bureaucratic prerogatives instead of assisting the local victims. In contrast to a therapeutic community, a corrosive community has not developed a shared narrative and identity but a divided one—one where the disaster has changed community members’ sense of self, way of relating to others and view of society [
6].
An often mentioned cause of why a therapeutic or a corrosive process begins is the character of the disaster; if the disaster has a human origin and includes toxic exposure, a community runs a higher risk of social corrosion. A disaster may have been horrifying but if survivors quickly see that it does not mean the end of the world and that the consequences may be severe but are known and manageable, then it is much easier for them to start to repair, rebuild and recover [
47]. If the disaster involves toxic contamination, however, the survivors (and often also experts and public agencies) cannot grasp the character and severity of the threat and it is much harder to reconstruct the community both materially and socially. In those cases where the disaster is human caused, issues of responsibility, blame and trust also come to the fore. Much research has found that although natural disasters may have dramatic material consequences, it is technological disasters that have been the most disruptive in terms of psychological, economic, social and cultural impacts [
47]. A major reason for this is that human causation implies expectations that the disaster should not have happened. Sociotechnical systems are legitimate because they are believed to be safe; otherwise they should not have been permitted. Natural disasters on the other hand are seen as “acts of God,” not “acts of man.” The issue of accountability—that an organization or individual shoulders responsibility for the disaster—is therefore central for creating therapeutic processes.
Table 1 below sketches the main differences between therapeutic and corrosive communities.
Thus, research on the social consequences of disasters, not least on the community level, stresses that it is not only the character of the disaster that matters but how it is acted upon by responsible organizations and how it is socially interpreted by the community. The sense-making around the disaster is crucial and in the wake of a disaster a discursive struggle often takes place concerning why it could happen and who or what to blame. When studying a disaster, it is therefore crucial to explore how it is socially interpreted, to ascertain what meanings—such as causes, consequences and responsibilities—are ascribed to the disaster.