Book Description

The Consequences of Disasters: Demographic, Planning and Policy Implications presents innovative multi-disciplinary perspectives on how people and societies respond to, and recover from sudden, unexpected crisis events like natural disasters which impact tragically on the established patterns and structures of their lives. Through detailed empirical analysis which employs both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, the twenty-two chapters in this fine volume explore these critical issues. Chapters have a wide global range across both democratic and transforming governance systems which spotlight the many different ways in which different political jurisdictions respond to the demographic, planning and policy implications of the natural disasters affecting their citizens. The authors collectively provide insights into varying socio-cultural and political disaster frameworks from China, Japan, the USA, New Zealand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Taiwan, Iran, The Philippines and Pakistan. Taking the conceptual and analytical lens of social capital, family formation and migration patterns, the authors employ comparative demographic, anthropological and sociological approaches to present the human security contexts of natural disasters when they unexpectedly wreak havoc on human societies, and the coping and response behaviors they adopt, develop and use as survivors as they set about re-building their lives over periods that can extend over several years. This book provides many innovative insights which will be of value to disaster policy experts, practitioners in the humanitarian field, civil society and government sectors and researchers engaged in disaster recovery and reconstruction practice and research.