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Disaster Law by Kristian Cedervall Lauta New York: Routledge, 2CU5, r57 pp. £ 90.00: Hardcover
Disasters have attracted growing interest in recent legal scholarship. Events such as the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the US, and the 2orr Fukushima triple disaster in Japan, led to greater public pressure and scholarly concern in finding out whether and how to hold key actors into account.
In this volume, Lauta engages with this topic, but before addressing these questions he first draws a comprehensive account of early public perceptions, philosophical and legal theoretical considerations of disasters, from god's wrath to the untamable force of nature. He anchors his approach to the subject on the work of critical legal positivist Tuori, analyzing law beyond the mere collection of rules and regulations, but rather investigating deeper layers of law in society, which produce each society's own legal culture.' This task by itself is already commendable, for it represents an effort to bringing fresh light into the subject, while opening up a dialogue across disciplines. The book shall therefore appeal to both lawyers interested in disasters, but also disaster scholars and practitioners willing to learn more about how law matters for disaster-related issues.
A key point made by the book is that early assertions linking disasters to divine forces or exclusively to nature can be securely put aside, for disasters have much more to do with the social, namely how a given society does (or does not) prepare itself to live with disasters. Referring to this as the 'social turn' in the understanding of disasters (from hazards alone to vulnerability exposed by natural hazards) the book considers how this change in the conceptualization of disasters affects law.2 In other words, disasters are not exclusively due to natural hazards (such as earthquakes): but they are rather linked to the social vulnerability of a given society, which is merely exposed through natural hazards. This social vulnerability was already existent, and natural hazards only 'pull the blanket', and hence reveal difficulties dating long before a hazard strikes. Examples of social vulnerability range from the lack of adoption and/or defective implementation of building standards, a failing disaster response system, miscommunications in disasters, and many more.
The 'social turn' insight gives rise to the claim that the...