Editors: Matthew Mars and Hope Schau, The University of Arizona

There is growing popular press interest in and emerging scholarly attention to alternative markets. While alternative markets are not clearly defined, the content under the broad “alternative” label centers on markets outside the mainstream. The outsider status of alternative markets range from benign substitution to radical ideological opposition. Often the alternative market is formed from entrepreneurial innovation. If successful these entrepreneurial innovations may become radical market disruptions, e.g., Uber as a substitute for both taxi services and personal transportation and Airbnb as an alternative to hotel accommodations. 

“Disasters of the 21st Century, Knowns and Unknowns:
Casualties, Costs and Resiliency”
Guest Editor: Francis O. Adeola, Ph.D.

Social Sciences is an international, open access journal with rapid peer-review, publishing scholarly articles from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, criminology, economics, education, geography, history, law, linguistics, political science, psychology, social policy, social work, sociology and so on. Social Sciences is published monthly online by MDPI. See https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci. 

Disasters and catastrophes are not new to societies. They have occurred in societies since ancient times with historic tales of their tolls on human life and the economy. However, in the first two decades of the 21^st century, mega disasters and catastrophes triggered by natural hazards, technological accidents, socio-political hazards, other human activities, biological hazards, and a blend of these hazards, have increased in higher frequency and magnitude causing unprecedent number of casualties in terms of deaths, injuries, and economic losses across the globe. In the latest Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, the United Nations emphasized that at no point in human history have we been confronted with such an array of both known and unknown risks, often interacting in a hyperconnected, rapidly changing globalized world. We are faced with new risks with intricate linkages such as the pandemic COVID-19. Prior projections or predictions about climate change have come to pass even much sooner than anticipated. Among the major disaster events of the 21^st century are high intensity hurricanes/tropical cyclones, massive flooding, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, fires, dam failures, industrial technological disasters, aviation disasters, and terrorism. 

They are calling for papers whose theoretical, methodological, and substantive approaches address specific aspects of catastrophe or disaster of the 21^st century within a country or in comparative cross-country setting. Potential contributions to this special issue might include, but not limited to: 

Recommended/Suggested Topics 

• Trends in the frequency, magnitude, scale, geographical spread of weather-related disaster events in the 21^st century; 
• Trends in the social and geophysical vulnerability to natural and anthropogenic disasters in the past two decades; 
• The impacts of Natural-Technological (NATECH) or Hybrid disasters in the 21^st century; 
• Climate change-induced disasters and their effects in terms of casualties, deaths, economic and other related impacts over the past two decades; 
• The role of social capital in disaster mitigation, coping, adaptation and recovery; 
• The cultural, economic, social, and psychological effects of a disaster; 
• Disaster risk communication and community’s inclination to mitigation and evacuation; 
• Novel theories of disaster behavior including coping, adaptation, and resiliency for different types of disasters.  
• Race, class, and gender differences in disaster encounter, losses, coping and recovery in the 21^st century; 
• Environmental injustice and social injustice as incubators of natural and unnatural disasters.  
• The public health effects of disasters; or disaster epidemiology; 
• Assessing the cultural, economic, demographic, and socio-psychological effects of COVID-19 pandemic; 
• Disaster management in the 21^st century.