Farhang va fāji'ah: Persian 1399

The book "Culture and Disaster" written by Nematullah Fazeli is actually a collection of anthropological essays by this author about mass disasters in Iran. He himself says in the introduction of this book: These essays are about earthquakes, floods, and the crisis of the Corona pandemic or the Covid-19 virus, which is currently spreading in Iran and the world. These essays have several features in common. First, all of them are focused on the natural disasters that have affected Iranian society in recent years. For Iranian readers, these disasters are quite familiar and they have been involved in them. Second, these essays are an attempt to understand and express the social and cultural dimensions of these disasters. In crisis situations, most of the relief forces, technical and executive activities are more important than anything else, and human and social science specialists and their efforts and capabilities are ignored. But in these essays, I show that disasters are not created by nature, but all of them are the product of our actions, governance systems, history and culture. At the same time, disasters have great constructive and destructive social and cultural consequences.