April 16, 2004

What's Gone Right in the Study of What's Gone Wrong

By RICHARD M. VALELLY

Ever have discipline envy? As a political scientist, I've lately felt that the grass is greener in, of all things, the sociology of disasters.

That subfield is distinguished by studies of, for instance, the Mann Gulch firefighting debacle of August 1949, or of how informal social networks left hundreds of Chicago's weakest citizens vulnerable to a blistering 1995 heat wave. Such inquiry overlaps with more technical work by disaster-prevention and management engineers at the

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