Dispatch From Nepal: The Disaster Didn’t End When the Earth Stopped Shaking
NOVANEWS
By Dinesh Paudel and Gregory Reck
The author interacting with disaster-affected communities in Saipu, Nepal. (Photo: Dinesh Paudel)
Writing in a blog post shortly after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in Louisiana, writer and activist Jim Wallis pointed out that often it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster. One can even go further and point out that, when it comes to disasters, the categories of "natural" and "social" are indistinguishable. Natural disasters not only reveal social disasters; they unleash forces that deepen them. All "natural" disasters occur within historical and socioeconomic contexts so that the dividing line between natural and social causes and consequences are inevitably blurred.
While international attention is focused on the recent ...