The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective

This was a purchased for a class I was taking. The sociological perspectives of disasters included in the book are very interesting. They do a great job explaining the complexities of disasters and that they do not have to even occur.

My master's degree program in emergency management is using this text for our theory class. The only real drawback of the book? It is a rough manuscript in desperate need of an editor who speaks English and not academe. Want a couple of examples? This is Susanna Hoffman in the overview:"It is from the interplay of these three planes that disasters emanate, and in their unfolding, THEY REIMPLICATE EVERY VECTOR OF THEIR CAUSAL INTERFACE."English please!Want another?"The two discourses have greatly enlightened knowledge of the ..."Is it possible to enlighten knowledge? Um, no. One can be enlightened with knowledge.One more:"The relevatory documents may not particularly concern disaster..."Sorry, no such word exists in the English language. Something can be relevant, but not relevatory. Now, there are things in life that are revelatory, meaning they reveal something formerly unknown.I'm only to page 5 in the book in the above examples. It doesn't get any worse, but I'm not sure it gets much better. The chapter by Sheets, "The effects of explosive volcanism on ancient egalitarian, ranked, and stratified societies in middle America" is so painful to read that I wanted to scratch my eyes out. The data contained in the chapter is worth knowing, but holy cow, Payson ... writing a chapter for a book that will be read by those outside your tight knit group of secret decoder ring cronies is a lot more involved than writing for your decoder ring... You get the point.Don't tell me that we can't expect everyone to be a novelist. Editing for publication is a learned skill; some excel and some never will. This book could be ten times better if it was edited for clarity by someone who knows how to do so. Clear communications is one of the foundation stones of emergency and disaster management and practice. Routledge, please ... hire some editors that can get the job done.

Good Book - I still have it on my shelf years later after purchase!

redefined disaster

Yes, there are labored passages in this book. One of the editors, who likes to string together 25 cent words in cumbersome ways, is difficult to read. She has a few essays in the book and they were my least favorite parts of the book.Fortunately, it is a collection of essays from different authors and most of them are well written. Additionally, the research and theories presented were eye-opening for me. I am a new student to emergency and disaster management and now have a new appreciation for the social aspects of disaster. As many in the field argue, a disaster cannot occur without a social component; understanding how factors of race, religion, gender, culture, and class contribute to disasters is critical.

I just bought this book for an upcoming disaster management class. I have been trying to read some of the essays in it and just cannot make sense of it. It's more like the authors' attempts to one up each other with arcane language than to discuss a real subject. Just brutal!