PSCI 24733 - Global Disaster Politics

Course Credit: 1
GLOBAL DISASTER POLITICS: Pandemics, atomic accidents, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, conflicts, and refugee crises. This course explores the politics of disasters using theories of Comparative Public Policy. This class is about much more than just ‘what happened’ in disasters around the world: It examines discourses and policies associated with disasters, and how these phenomena highlight, dramatize, and change social structures and processes. The scope of our coverage includes history, theoretical models, concepts like risk, public goods, and collective action, and analysis of prevention, mitigation, and disaster responses. It also features a special focus on problem-solving, examining many case studies from Asia, Africa, North and South America, and Europe. Assignments include research on stakeholders in homeland security, studying implementation in disaster management policies, analyzing disaster films, and a ‘choose your own disaster’ research project. Throughout the course, we will explore questions including: How do different governments and communities respond to disasters? How do factors of social inequality, including race, ethnicity, class, and gender, enhance vulnerabilities to disaster impacts? How can these challenges best be addressed in progressive mitigation and response programs? And finally, do disasters “bring out the best in humans” or turn people against one another, and why? [HSS]