Public sociology in disaster situations: critical engagement and prefiguration against defuturing processes

This chapter discusses different ways in which the sociology of disaster can be analysed as a public sociology that is engaged in the elaboration of: 1) useful expertise for public action; 2) critical approaches that reveal the social determinants of disasters; 3) socioanthropological approaches focused on sense-making processes. The authors argue that the worsening of systemic crises now requires a critical and ‘reconstructive’ sociology of disasters that is actively engaged both in denouncing structural inequalities and in collaborating in prefigurative experiments with social movements, affected citizens and reflective practitioners. An analysis of the public sociology initiative supported by the research group Emidio di Treviri following the 2016 earthquake in the central Italian Apennines shows how the engagement of social scientists in disaster situations is crucial to initiate and sustain collaborations among a heterogenous group of affected actors in order to design alternative, place-based pathways to recovery.