COMPETING CONSTRUCTIONS OF CALAMITY - THE APRIL-1991 BANGLADESH CYCLONE

On April 30, 1991, a cyclone of unusual intensity hit the coastline of Bangladesh, causing over one hundred thousand deaths and widespread p roperty damage. An international debate ensued over whether the disast er was due to natural phenomena and should be addressed by relief meas ures, or whether it was due to social, economic, and political factors and should be addressed by structural change in society. This study e xplores the dimensions of this debate by means of a content analysis o f accounts of the cyclone by the Bangladesh media and government, and by the international media and scholarly community. Bangladeshi accoun ts of the cyclone emphasize its purported inevitability and natural or igins. However, scholars maintain that while cyclones are inevitable, disasters such as occurred in April 1998 are not: they are a function of the historically increasing socioeconomic vulnerability of the Bang ladesh population. According to this view, the ''natural disaster'' of April 1991 could more accurately be called a ''social or political di saster.'' The factor chiefly responsible for transforming natural disa sters into sociopolitical disasters is occupation of hazardous areas. The Bangladesh media and government suggest that the cyclone's impact was worsened by the irrational behavior of individuals and the limited resources of the nation. Non-Bangladeshi accounts focus instead on th e poverty of individuals and the structural inequities of society, whi ch compel people to live in hazardous areas. Bangladeshi accounts atte mpted to link the cyclone to global warming and the greenhouse gas emi ssions of the industrialized nations, thus shifting the focus from int ernal problems of structure and equity to international problems of st ructure and equity. Debates such as this promise to become more common , as the global environment becomes increasingly ''post-natural'' and the framing of relations between population and environment is increas ingly contested.