| Summary: | Two very widespread views of natural disasters see them as vengeful acts of a God responding to humans' evil deeds or as caused by random natural forces lying entirely beyond human influence. In turn, these views have led to shortsighted patterns of development as they negate that disaster is socially-produced and as a result have left a chasm between studies of development, ecological crisis, poverty, and disaster. How are we to understand development and its role in and
relationship to disaster? Three major questions have been inefficiently explored: First, what are the structural origins of disaster? Second, what efforts are made to mitigate the effects of natural phenomena and restore order after a disaster? Specifically, how do these undertakings justify and preserve a particular set of institutional arrangements thereby reconstructing conditions for crisis? Third, what are the attitudes of the victims of disaster and their local counterparts
concerning the structural conditions for crisis? This dissertation addresses these questions and explores the internal contradictions inherent in current disaster mitigation efforts by examining disaster from three major perspectives: neoliberal-based models of development, ecological disenfranchisement and vulnerability, and studies of extreme weather events ending in disaster. By intersecting these three perspectives, I argue that current approaches to disaster mitigation are
short-sighted and therefore recidivist in that they provide a false sense of security while ignoring the broader social dynamics that produce the long-term conditions for chronic disaster. In order to achieve a comprehensive analysis, this dissertation combines primary, field-based survey and interview research methodologies with secondary archival data research. This examination of the intersection of development, vulnerability, ecological crisis, and disaster is embedded in a case
study of the impact of Hurricane Mitch in Posoltega, Nicaragua, which serves to demonstrate the intersection between theory and reality.
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