Storytelling as Science: Personal Perspectives on Identity, Risk, and Resilience During Tornado Events
Abstract
Personal stories can add to local knowledge while encouraging community members to continue passing it along to future generations, eventually engraining these stories into the social memory and regional identity of a place such as Oklahoma. These local knowledges are often considered to be common or ingrained within cultures, and they are increasingly cited as important to the role of understanding extreme weather events, such as tornadoes, and how communities will adapt, understand, and manage future occurrences. In this presentation, I show how sharing personal stories can function as science communication by informing our beliefs on tornado science and providing specific examples of how tornadoes are perceived by those experiencing them. Each story was collected through interviewing tornado survivors, and they highlight tornado science while showing how non-scientists perceive, adapt to, and manage tornadic events. The risk of tornadoes and the conscious societal decisions to keep on in the face of these risks are meaningful to many individuals and communities. Listening to, engaging with, and sharing tornado stories can help people to establish important societal connections to memories of past tornadoes while using learned information to make decisions regarding future tornadic activity.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMPA11A..01A
- Keywords:
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- 0850 Geoscience education research;
- EDUCATION;
- 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields;
- GENERAL OR MISCELLANEOUS;
- 6620 Science policy;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES;
- 6699 General or miscellaneous;
- PUBLIC ISSUES