Sociology 222G Assessment of Disasters and Celebrations                 
Spring 2000

Monday & Wednesday 7th period (3:55-5:10), 331 Soc-Psych.

 

Prof. E.A. Tiryakian    339 Soc-Psych. office hours: Thursday, 2:00-4:00
durkhm@soc.duke.edu

 

Objectives:  While most of social life is routinely organized to maintain order and continuity, there are occasions and events which are (severely) disruptive, of individual and collective lives. Up to a point traditional society may seek to minimize the risk of such disruptions, for example, by rituals, and modern society by various forms of insurance. An interesting feature of advanced modern society is that technological and other advances may themselves be generative of increased risk of breakdowns, including environmental and financial hazards of immense magnitude.  The year 2000 a “Jubilee” year of unprecedented global celebrations is also an opportune time to assess a variety of both major collective anticipations of ruptures from the ordinary and happenings that have taken place in the United States and globally. It is thus a sociology of ruptures and their consequences that is the underlying focus of this seminar, and with it we will examine the management of disasters and celebrations. We will seek to relate this to various aspects of globalization as an emergent computerized environment, one which greatly enhances both advantages and risks of interdependence.

 

Structure: The course is constructed as a seminar, with each student expected to participate actively in all our meetings and discussions. In addition to course readings, students will be encouraged to surf the web for supplementary relevant materials pertaining to costs and outcomes of both Y2K remediation efforts and the year 2000 celebrations. At a more “micro” level, we will also formulate and carry out field research in a collective project entailing a weekend visit to a disaster-stricken area in Eastern North Carolina to see the aftermath of the disaster on community structure and the relief efforts of external public and private agencies.

 

There will be a take-home exam during the semester and a term paper (which may be done as an extension of the class field project), but no final exam.

 

Grading:  class participation: 1/3; take-home exam 1/3; term paper 1/3

 

Recommended for Purchase:

 

(1)                Michael Barkun, Disaster and the Millennium

(2)                Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society

(3)                Lee Clarke, Mission Improbable. Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster

(4)                Kai Erickson, Everything in its Path

(5)                E.L. Quarantelli, ed., What is a Disaster?

 

Week of:

 

January 10 Organizational meeting:
handout: “Prophecy,” special feature of Newsweek,  November 15, 1999.
Religious Expectations of Disasters: Millenary Visions ( East, West, North, South):
January 17

Barkun, Disaster and the Millennium, pp. 1-128

[optional: Paul Cohen, “Time, Culture, and Christian Eschatology: The Year 2000 in the West and the World,” review essay,  American Historical Review, December 1999: 1615-28]
January 24 

Barkun, Disaster and the Millennium, pp. 128-211

[optional: Leon Festinger, H.W. Riecken, and S. Schachter, When Prophecy Fails;

Eugen Weber, Apocalypses. Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages (1999)]
Macrosocial Aspects of Disasters:
January 31

What Disasters Happened at the Beginning of the Year/Millennium?

One session will be devoted to assessing preparations and actual outcomes of anticipated Y2K
breakdowns in the United States and elsewhere. A second session will be devoted to various
natural disasters that did take place outside the United States in the weeks and months preceding
the new millennium. Students will obtain information from print and electronic media.
February 7

Kai Erikson, Everything in its Path. Destruction of  Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood,
Parts One and Two,  pp. 9-132.
February 14 Erikson, Everything in its Path,  Part Three, pp.  135-259.
Rethinking Disaster and Modernity; Risk/Disaster as inherent to Advanced Industrial Society:
February 21 E.L. Quarantelli, ed., What is a Disaster?, Part I
February 28

Quarantelli, What is a Disaster?,  pp. 107-194,  234-73

[optional: Quarantelli, pp. 197-233]
March 6

Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society,    Chapters 1-5, 7

[optional:  Ulrich Beck, Risk Society]

Environmental disasters: community and governmental reactions:
March 20 In the first session, background materials will be presented regarding the region in eastern North Carolina that was flooded in the wake of Hurricane Floyd, September 1999. In addition to factual materials regarding the impacted region and its communities, materials will be gathered regarding relief efforts from federal , state, and voluntary organizations. In the second session, we will have as guest visitor a person who has participated in relief efforts, and we will plan for our weekend stay in the region, March 24-26.
March 27

In the first session, the class will discuss observations and interview data obtained in the field trip.

The second session will discuss nuclear and economic meltdowns: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl,
Barings Bank, Orange County S& L associations (California), with student presentations.
Organizational Coping with Risk and Disaster
April 3 Lee Clarke, Mission Improbable. Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster, chapters 1-4.
April 10 Clarke, Mission Improbable, chapters 5 and 6
Assessing Celebrations:
April  17 Globalizing the Millennium. The economics of celebration.

Video presentation of the Millennial celebration on a global basis and its continuation in the
year 2000. How much was spent preparing for Y2K celebrations and with what short-term
and long-term consequences?
April 24 Presentation of individual term projects.