Disaster, Organizing, and Role Enactment: A Structural Approach

Abstract

Descriptions of organizing and role enactment during the emergency periods of disasters are developed from archival materials on 257 key participants in 106 organized responses. Organizing is measured as a continuum of formal organizing to collective behavior. Three unique dimensions of role enactment are isolated empirically: status-role nexus, role links, and role performance. The three dimensions are modeled in terms if the structural form and type of organizing within which role enactment occurs as well as a series of other structural and individual correlates. Findings from the modeling codify the disaster research legacy as it contributes to sociological theory.