|
Short Abstract
|
:
|
This panel considers the roles of anthropology in providing analyses of not only the sociocultural effects of disasters, but also the conditions creating them. Papers may interrogate key concepts used in disaster studies (e.g. vulnerability, resilience, sustainability) and such factors as the power relations underlying the social distribution of the effects of disasters and of the responses to them in the context of such general contextual factors as climate change, deforestation, pollution, development, and urbanization.
|
|
Long Abstract
|
:
|
A well-accepted dictum in Disaster Studies states that while hazards can be natural, disasters always are also social and cultural in origin: there is always an anthropogenic component in the advent and destruction wreaked by disaster (e.g. Kelman 2020; Hoffmann & Oliver-Smith 2002). For instance, seismic leveling and soil liquefaction only become disasters when human settlements have been erected on earthquake-prone zones. Given the anthropogenic element in disasters, anthropology is able to play a major role in providing analyses of not only the social effects of disasters, but also the conditions that create them. Many system-oriented theoretical and research approaches in disaster studies, relying on such core concepts such as ‘vulnerability’, ‘resilience’ (Hewitt 1983: Bankoff & Hilhorst 2022) and more recently ‘sustainability,’ have sometimes downplayed the phenomenological experience of risk perception and uncertainty in affected populations, as well as the social distribution of effects, including the often disproportionate impact upon marginal groups, along with the social and cultural factors underpinning peoples’ resistance to outside emergency response and reconstruction plans that neglect their needs. All have consistently revealed the need to consider the operation of power relations and, reciprocally, potentials for local agency (Bolling 2014). As anthropological approaches are particularly well suited to addressing these issues, and disasters are becoming more frequent and severe, this panel invites papers on how anthropology has contributed and can continue to contribute to analysing disaster impacts and facilitating interventions throughout the trajectories of various events, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, meltdowns, industrial malfunctions, and other disasters catalysed by the effects of climate change, deforestation, pollution, development, urbanization, and other drivers. The panel invites conventional single- and joint presentations, as well as short films, short participatory discussions, and any innovative formats in keeping with the parameters set by the organizing committee.
|
