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

1949年，由美军将领发起的第一个所谓的社会科学灾难研究小组在芝加哥的国家民意研究中心(NORC)成立。1952年和1963年，在冷战的两个激烈阶段，类似的团体聚集在国家研究委员会、几所大学和俄亥俄州立大学(DRC)的灾难研究中心。虽然最初是多学科性质的，但在20世纪60年代，一种特定的社会学视角开始主导这项研究。其成员--包括Enrico Quarantelli、Russle Dyes和William Anderson--在地震、工厂爆炸以及“种族骚乱”之后进行了数百项实地研究，并在他们的实验室模拟了“组织压力”。直到今天，在众多科学领域，他们的发现仍然是处理灾难的一个非常重要的参考点，无论是在学术上还是在实践中。与此同时，这段历史几乎完全没有人研究。根据这一研究愿望，拟议的项目将回答以下研究问题：不同行为者在资助和从事灾害研究时设定的目标是什么？研究人员是如何推进灾害研究作为科学领域的制度化的？他们创造的知识实际上是如何使用的？这项研究的原始材料包括来自美国-美国灾难研究组织的出版物和档案文件，以及非西方国家的出版物，特别是印度和墨西哥科学家的出版物。其方法论方法是一种将话语分析与行为学相结合的历史认识论。通过分析其全球纠葛，该项目旨在使美美灾难研究地方化。这一研究时期以1949年第一个研究小组的成立和1989年冷战星座的衰落为框架。该项目将展示社会科学灾难研究是如何由特定的冷战理性统治人口并对其做出贡献的。具体地说，它将展示这种理性是如何以来自全球南方的不对称流通和知识损失为特征的。它会争辩说，这种不对称性导致了人们将灾难理解为破坏性事件，这种理解至今仍很普遍。通过对社会科学灾害研究进行历史化，该项目在更广泛的范围内促进了灾害科学和冷战社会科学的史学研究，并进一步促进了对当今处理灾害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.