Anthropology of Environmental Disasters

This course provides an overview of the types of environmental disasters that commonly affect both human and non-human primates. When considering humans alone, the course will examine the effect of environmental disasters cross-culturally by comparing victimology along with how different populations have prepared for, responded to and recovered from past disasters. The course will then expand on this through cross-species comparisons with the way other primates respond to and recover from the same (or similar) disasters. This course will also consider the role of disaster relief agencies in different cultural contexts and will use information learned from historical disasters to discuss what the expected impact of current environmental disasters may be.