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Between Disciplines, Transcending Borders: Natural Disasters

Panel

01.10.2010 15:00  – 18:00 

Location: History Panel at the Historian's Symposium in Berlin


Convener:
Christof Mauch (RCC)

Discussants:

Andrea Janku (School of African and Oriental Studies, London)

Monica Juneja (University of Heidelberg)

Heike Egner (University of Mainz)

Uwe Lübken (RCC)

Mischa Meier (University of Tübingen)

Gerrit Schenk (TU Darmstadt)

Franz Mauelshagen (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Essen)

Cornel Zwierlein (Ruhr University, Bochum)

Conference Report - English

Abstract

Whereas natural disasters were once virtually ignored by historians, the past ten years have seen a rapid increase in historical interest and research in the field. This impetus is the result of several factors, among them the International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), which was established by the United Nations starting in 1990. The IDNDR encouraged transdisciplinary climate research in the social sciences. Furthermore, the decade has inspired a debate surrounding climate change, in which natural disasters play a crucial role in determining the consequences of global warming for humans and society. Finally, the IDNDR has initiated new directions in the study of history itself, particularly in the fields of climate and urban history, via its new focus on the relationship between nature and disasters. Environmental history is not the sole forum for these new impulses, but probably the most significant. 

Using case studies from a range of regions around the world and diverse kinds of disasters, the panel will explore how societies have, in the course of history, reacted to natural disasters and whether or not they have learned from and retained memories of recurring natural disasters, particularly in high-risk areas. In relation to this question, the panel will examine if regions regularly exposed to natural hazards (e.g. hurricanes in the North American southeast coast, volcanic eruptions in Indonesia and in the Philippines, etc.) have developed “cultures of disasters.”

In keeping with the title of this symposium, the proposed round table will seek to transcend various borders. For one, the spatial and geographical turn in environmental history will play an important role. Environmental history has always been a transnational discipline with regard to geography and the natural sciences. This transnational and transdisciplinary approach also applies particularly to the study of national disasters, for which the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and findings among historians, geographers, and social scientists is relatively well established.

This panel is the result of cooperation between the research project "Klimakultur" at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen and the interdisciplinary Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich.