An Interdisciplinary Approach to Disaster Management, Incorporating Economics and Social Psychology

Following the development of general interdisciplinary approaches to identified phenomenain a range of areas, this paper contributes to the debate over the means of generating knowledge inrelation to disaster management. At the core of the disaster management literature is an advocacy forpolicy and practice which has been grounded in technological, mechanistic and structured systemswhere military and government-derived institutional models predominate. Recently, this approach hasbeen challenged in the social sciences domain, particularly by sociologists and psychologists, whoare developing more critical, interpretive and integrative approaches (e.g. involving social capitaland community competence). Thus, surrounding the core literature there is a growing body of contextualwork which interacts with the core and is best derived from the utilisation and integration of arange of established social science disciplines. We therefore argue that disaster management is bestserved by interdisciplinary approaches which not only enhance the development of disaster managementknowledge, but also permit a transfer of knowledge from the context into the core so that policy andpractice is developed for the purposes of prevention, preparedness, management and recovery phasesof disasters.