The International World of Natural Disasters

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 90’s, the thematic of natural risks and disasters made its apparition on the international scene. A world of “natural” disasters was built up at the international level and is in process of institutionalization. How actors do legitimate its necessity? What are the tensions that cross this world? A diachronic approach of the internationalization and institutionalization process of this world authorizes the restitution of the historic and global context in which it occurred, underlining the weight that played the recent transformations of the notion of security. The sociological analysis of the main intergovernmental organizations that play a central role in this dynamic, leads to the understanding of the main tensions that cross this world and to the disclosure of its complexity. Actually, in spite of numerous attempts to present this world as a community of sense and practices, important disparities characterize the different actors’ views.