Murphy explores whether technological development inadvertently constructed new vulnerabilities, thereby manufacturing a natural disaster. As the extreme weather in the ice storm may foreshadow what will occur with global warming, Leadership in Disaster also explores the politics, economics, ethics, and cultural predispositions involved in climate change, investigating how modern societies create both the risks they assume are acceptable and the burden of managing them. An innovative comparison with Amish communities, where the same extreme weather had trivial consequences, is instructive for avoiding future socio-economic catastrophes.

Raymond Murphy is emeritus professor of sociology, University of Ottawa, president of the Environment and Society Research Committee of the International Sociological Association, and the author of numerous books, including Social Closure and Rationality and Nature.

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"A welcome addition to the field of disaster research which draws together classical and modern theories to argue for an epistemological expansion of the social sciences." Canadian Journal of Sociology

"Leadership in Disaster is beautifully written and deserving of a wide readership." Peter Dickens, University of Cambridge