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Handbook of Disaster Research pp 23–38Cite as

The Crisis Approach

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Part of the book series: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research ((HSSR))

Abstract

Disaster researchers do not make much use of the term “crisis” and when they do, it is often used as a synonym for “disaster”. We argue that the use of these terms implies differences in analytical perspective. In this chapter, we outline the crisis approach and explain how it is different from a disaster approach. The crisis approach is fundamentally interdisciplinary in nature, drawing together insights from public administration, sociology, psychology and political science. We explicate the underlying assumptions of this approach and show that this approach helps to recognize the most important challenges for political and administrative leaders during crises and disasters. We argue that the crisis and disaster perspectives are largely complementary and mutually informative.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The topic of organizational reputation has made headway into the field of political science and public administration as well (Carpenter, 2010).

  2. 2.

    The laws of complex systems are still largely unknown. And the more we learn about the behavior of complex systems, the less we seem to understand. Complexity theorists are busy uncovering the hidden patterns that they say underlie this process, but practical insights (for our purposes at least) have yet to emerge. For an introduction see Buchanan (2000).

  3. 3.

    Recent scenarios feature radical weather changes, biological terrorism, and asteroid collisions (Bryson, 2003; OECD, 2003, 2011; Schwartz & Randall, 2003).

  4. 4.

    How and when policymakers recognize (or not) threats is object of research in the policy studies community (Birkland, 1997; Kingdon, 1984).

  5. 5.

    Although much more pronounced today, the tendency to search for culprits following the occurrence of disaster and crisis is age old, see Drabek and Quarantelli (1967) as well as Douglas (1992).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Arjen Boin & Sanneke Kuipers

  2. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Paul ‘t Hart

Authors
  1. Arjen Boin
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  2. Paul ‘t Hart
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  3. Sanneke Kuipers
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Correspondence to Arjen Boin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York, USA

    Havidán Rodríguez

  2. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, Texas, USA

    William Donner

  3. Core Faculty, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA

    Joseph E. Trainor

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Boin, A., Hart, P.‘., Kuipers, S. (2018). The Crisis Approach. In: Rodríguez, H., Donner, W., Trainor, J. (eds) Handbook of Disaster Research. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_2

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