Vol. 1 (2025)
Practice Theory: Past, Present, Future

Essays

What’s ‘Natural’ About Disasters? Practice Theory as an Emancipatory Lens for Reconceptualising the Social Construction of Disasters

Published 26-05-2025

  • Paula Jarzabkowski
    • ,
  • Katie Meissner
    • ,
  • Tyler Riordan
    • ,
  • Rosie Gallagher

Paula Jarzabkowski
The University of Queensland

Katie Meissner
The University of Queensland

Tyler Riordan
The University of Queensland

Rosie Gallagher
The University of Queensland

An abstract image of arrows representing next steps and new trajectories

Abstract

Practice theory constitutes an emancipatory lens for reconceptualising the social construction of disaster. Framing extreme weather disasters, such as floods, fires and tropical storms as natural, places them beyond human action. By contrast, a practice lens places their consequences firmly within the realm of human action. Drawing on practice theory, we explain why framing disasters as natural exacerbates their prevalence. We note that the practices of everyday life and striving to resume those practices after disaster often take precedence over alleviating the sources of disaster. Furthermore, these practices are distributed across time and space in patterns of social order that perpetuate the tendency for disaster to disproportionately affect the most vulnerable. We conclude by issuing a call to arms to embrace the emancipatory potential of practice scholarship by exposing the disastrous consequences of mundane practice, critiquing the dominant ways of knowing that contribute to existing constructions of disaster and using social science to advocate for fundamental change.

Keywords

equity, natural disaster, social construction, vulnerability

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