Sociology of Hazardous Wastes, Disasters, and Risk

Abstract

Social scientists did not pay adequate attention to the toxic and hazardous wastes generated in the course of industrial production in the United States during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There was a general failure to closely examine the interaction among the social, technological, and natural processes that often produce hazards and major disasters. Although systematic studies of disasters in the United States can be traced back to the 1940s-1950s (e.g., Lemons, 1957; Fritz and Williams, 1957), it was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s that the issue of toxic waste began to command the attention of many sociologists and other social scientists. In 1984, James F. Short particularly challenged sociologists to get involved in the study of risks, risk analysis, and disasters.¹ A series of catastrophic events during the period, involving extensive contamination and disruption of communities, loss of lives, and destruction of properties directed scholarly interest into the study of disasters and risks. Much of the emergent sociological research on disasters focused on short-term social responses to disasters of natural or human etiologies (Kreps, 1985; Kreps and Drabeck, 1996; Quarantelli and Dynes, 1977).