Science in the eye of the storm: A provincializing history of US-American "social science disaster research," 1949-1989

1949年，由美国陆军将军发起，在芝加哥的国家民意研究中心（NORC）成立了第一个所谓的“社会科学灾难研究小组”。1952年和1963年，在冷战的两个激烈阶段，类似的小组聚集在国家研究理事会、几所大学和俄亥俄州州立大学（DRC）的灾害研究中心。虽然最初是多学科性质的，但在20世纪60年代，一个特定的社会学视角开始主导这一研究。其成员--其中包括恩里科·夸兰泰利（Enrico Quarantelli）、拉塞尔·戴恩斯（Russle Dynes）和威廉·安德森（William Anderson）--在地震、工厂爆炸以及“种族骚乱”之后进行了数百次实地研究，并在实验室模拟了“组织压力”。直到今天，在许多科学领域，他们的发现仍然是学术和实践上处理灾害的非常重要的参考点。与此同时，这段历史几乎完全没有被研究过。根据这一研究需求，拟议的项目将回答以下研究问题：什么是不同的行为者在资助和从事灾害研究时设定的目标？研究人员如何推动灾害研究作为一个科学领域的制度化？他们产生的知识实际上是如何使用的？该研究的原始资料包括来自美国-美国灾害研究小组的出版物和档案文件，以及来自非西方，特别是印度和墨西哥科学家的出版物。它的方法论是一种将话语分析和行为学相结合的历史认识论。通过分析其全球性的纠缠，该项目旨在使美国-美国灾害研究地方化。调查期间是由第一个研究小组的基础，在1949年，和冷战星座的衰落，在1989年。该项目将显示社会科学灾害研究是如何形成的，并有助于一个特定的冷战理性的管理人口。具体来说，它将展示这种理性是如何以全球南方的知识不对称流通和流失为特征的。这种不对称性，它会争辩说，导致了理解，今天仍然普遍存在，灾害作为破坏性事件。通过使社会科学灾难研究历史化，该项目更广泛地促进了灾难科学和冷战社会科学的史学，并进一步促进了对当今灾难和社会科学研究实践的更大（自我）反思。

Initiated by Generals of the US-Army in 1949, the first so-called "social science disaster research group" was founded at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) in Chicago. In 1952 and 1963, during two hot phases of the Cold War, similar groups were assembled at the National Research Council, at several universities, and at the Disaster Research Center of Ohio State University (DRC). Though initially multidisciplinary in nature, during the 1960s a specifically sociological perspective came to dominate this research. Its members - among them Enrico Quarantelli, Russle Dynes, and William Anderson - conducted several hundred field studies after earthquakes, factory explosions, as well as "racial riots" and simulated "organizational stress" in their laboratory. Up until today and across numerous scientific fields, their findings remain a highly important reference point for dealing with disaster, both academically and practically. At the same time, this history has gone almost completely unstudied. Following this research desideratum, the proposed project is set to answer the following research questions: What were the goals that different actors set when funding and engaging in disaster research? How did researchers advance the institutionalization of disaster research as a scientific field? How was the knowledge they generated actually used?The study's source material includes publications and archival documents from the US-American disaster research groups as well as publications from non-western, especially Indian and Mexican scientists. Its methodological approach consists of an historical epistemology that combines discourse analysis and praxeology. By analyzing its global entanglements, this project aims to provincialize US-American disaster research. The investigated period is framed by the foundation of the first research group, in 1949, and the Decline of the Cold War constellation, in 1989.The project will show how social science disaster research was shaped by and contributed to a specific Cold-War rationality of governing populations. Specifically, it will demonstrate how this rationality was characterized by an asymmetric circulation and loss of knowledge from the Global South. Such asymmetry, it will argue, has resulted in understandings, which still pervade today, of disaster as disruptive events. By historicizing social science disaster research, the project contributes, more broadly, to the historiography of both disaster sciences and Cold War social sciences and further promotes greater (self)-reflection of present-day dealings with disaster and social science research practices.