Bridging Crisis and Disaster Sociology in the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa

While sociological approaches to climate-related crisis and disaster have advanced in the U.S and sub-Saharan Africa over the past several decades, they have often developed along different pathways. For example, several major U.S. disasters have encouraged ethical and empathetic methods in marginalized communities, have challenged popular cultural disaster myths, and have emphasized the political economic roots of uneven development, land use exploitation, and complex migration. In LDCs and MDCs in Africa and elsewhere, others have similarly explored potential political economic hazards arising from complex climate governance and green planning in marginalized communities. Despite these similarities, due to contextual differences ranging from administrative structures to resource access to cultural precepts, efforts to understand complex disaster planning, response, and other governance strategies have often developed in isolation. Maximizing environmental sociology’s capacity to support applied research into equitable climate and disaster governance across contexts requires better synthesis of these disparate traditions. Yet exactly how to do so remains elusive due to justified concerns over recreation of colonial or neocolonial hierarchies, as well as contextual differences. Based in our experience in U.S. disaster sociology and sub-Saharan African climate governance, we employ a critical, anti-colonial analysis of complex crisis governance under the logics suggested by international principles like SDGs and DRR frameworks that are commonly used in sub-Saharan African contexts, as well as similar assessments of U.S. disaster and climate sociology principles. This comparative prism supports the development of best practices for translation of disaster sociology tools across structural and cultural contexts, reducing risks of material, social, and ecological harm. Beyond supporting mutually beneficial cross-pollination across sociology’s subdisciplines, this emphasizes the importance of nuanced, ethical, and empathetic research foregrounding the complexities, capacities, and diversity of sub-Saharan African communities, challenging colonial (and neocolonial) assumptions of simplicity and homogeneity sometimes encountered in socio-environmental research and aid initiatives.