Names may seem unimportant, but they do affect how we perceive and organise
our scientific activities. And the naming of names is a perfectly valid
subject of discussion; I don't think we need to pretend that we are so busy
saving lives every minute of the day that we cannot lend a moment to such a
topic.
Many disciplines are in fact multi-disciplinary; disaster studies is not
unusual in this respect. Go to an institute of seismology and you will find
people whose expertise is geology, geophysics, physics, mathematics,
electronics, computing, geography and even history, yet all of them are
working as seismologists.
Does it matter that we say "seismology" and not "earthquake studies"? Would
a geologist rather think of himself as a geologist or an earth scientist? I
think there is a difference in how these names affect perception of the
disciplines, and I'd rather be a seismologist than an earthquake scientist
even though the majority of the public probably can't even spell seismology.
Roger Musson
-----Original Message-----
From: philip buckle [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 11 July 2000 21:11
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Natural Hazards Scientist?
As a social scientist I cannot fully understand the point of this debate.
Natural hazards and their impacts and the consequences of those impacts are
complex events. So why would we expect one discipline or school of expertise
to embrace the whole field.
But concentrating upon "natural hazards" itself is limiting. Apart us
ignoring anthropogenic hazards, the central focus of hazards/risk study is
the interaction of the hazard with society, study of the consequences and
repercussions and ways of dealing with those. This moves the subject area
away from the hazard and so also moves this debate.
Finally, if we really do need a name for ourselves let's not decide upon the
name and then work out what we do. Let's agree on what we do, or on what we
should be doing and what we need to do, and move on from there.
cheers
Philip Buckle
Manager
State Emergency Recovery Unit
Dept. of Human Services
Melbourne
Victoria
Australia
Scholl of Social Science and Planning
RMIT University
Melbourne
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