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A World-System Approach to Post-Catastrophe International Relief
- Social Forces
- The University of North Carolina Press
- Volume 87, Number 2, December 2008
- pp. 1063-1087
- 10.1353/sof.0.0136
- Article
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As our understanding of disaster shifts from an event concentrated in time and space to a social occasion occurring across time and space, so too must our explanations of disaster shift from theories of the middle range to broader theoretical frameworks. We explore the world-system approach in an effort to understand the upper limits of theory for disaster and offer this approach as a better understanding of how long-term development shapes social change. Utilizing media reports of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami from the United States to India, Indonesia and Thailand over a one-year period, we find perceptions of aid vary by economic zones and nation-states in the contemporary world system.