Bringing Social Theory to Hazards Research

This article relates some examples of current research on the mitigation of environmental hazards to recent sociological work in the theory of action. My intentions are to isolate common themes in an otherwise heterogeneous literature, to encourage debate on mitigation issues, and to enhance the legitimacy of this research program by bringing it to the center of contemporary theoretical concerns in the discipline. Much of the current debate in the field of mitigation still harbors implicit ties to sociological functionalism. These ties are made explicit and critiqued. It is argued that functional conceptions of mitigation present an unbalanced picture of mitigation as a reaction to potential extremes in the environment to the neglect of mitigation's active role in altering hazard potentials.