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“This Was No Act of God:” Disaster, Causality, and Politics
Author(s) -
Dodds Graham G.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
risk, hazards and crisis in public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.634
H-Index - 8
ISSN - 1944-4079
DOI - 10.1002/rhc3.12074
Subject(s) - humanity , politics , agency (philosophy) , causality (physics) , natural disaster , environmental ethics , jurisprudence , natural (archaeology) , political science , sociology , epistemology , law , social science , philosophy , history , geography , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , meteorology
This article explores the evolution of human understandings of putatively natural disasters in three respects. First, it contends that human conceptions of natural disasters have dramatically changed over time, from placing causality and responsibility with God and religion, to nature and science, to humanity and politics. Second, it tracks part of that broad development by examining how the legal category “Act of God” has become increasingly archaic and irrelevant in modern jurisprudence. Third, it outlines the implications of this development for more robust conceptions of human agency and politics, and it considers the causes of the changing conceptions of disaster.