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1 – 10 of 332This paper proposes a way of reflexing on how we think within critical disaster studies. It focuses on the biases and unthought dimensions of two concepts – resilience and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper proposes a way of reflexing on how we think within critical disaster studies. It focuses on the biases and unthought dimensions of two concepts – resilience and development – and reflects on the relationship between theory and practice in critical disaster studies.
Design/methodology/approach
Premised on the idea of epistemic reflexivity developed by Pierre Bourdieu, and drawing on previous research, this theoretical article analyses two conceptual biases and shortcomings of disaster studies: how resilience builds on certain agency; and how development assumes certain political imagination.
Findings
The article argues that critical disaster scholars must reflect on their own intellectual practice, including the origin of concepts and what they do. This is exemplified by a description of how the idea of resistance is intimately connected to that of resilience, and by showing that we must go beyond the capitalist realism that typically underlies development and risk creation. The theoretical advancement of our field can provide ways of thinking about the premises of many of our concepts.
Originality/value
The paper offers an invitation for disaster researchers to engage with critical thought and meta-theoretical reflexions. To think profoundly about our concepts is a necessary first step to developing critical scholarship. Epistemic reflexivity in critical disaster studies therefore provides an interesting avenue by which to liberate the field from overly technocratic approaches and develop its own criticality.
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Mona Harb, Sophie Bloemeke, Sami Atallah and Sami Zoughaib
Using critical disaster studies and state theory, we assess the disaster aid platform named Lebanon Reconstruction, Reform and Recovery Framework (3RF) that was put in place by…
Abstract
Purpose
Using critical disaster studies and state theory, we assess the disaster aid platform named Lebanon Reconstruction, Reform and Recovery Framework (3RF) that was put in place by international donors in the aftermath of the Beirut Port Blast in August 2020, in order to examine the effectiveness of its inclusive decision-making architecture, as well as its institutional building and legislative reform efforts.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses the case study approaach and relies on two original data sets compiled by authors, using desk reviews of academic literature and secondary data, in addition to 24 semi-structured expert interviews and participant observation for two years.
Findings
The aid platform appears innovative, participatory and effectively functioning toward recovery and reform. However, in practice, the government dismisses CSOs, undermines reforms and dodges state building, whereas the 3RF is structured in incoherent ways and operates according to conflicting logics, generating inertia and pitfalls that hinder effective participatory governance, prevent institutional building, and delay the making of projects.
Research limitations/implications
The research contributes to critical scholarship as it addresses an important research gap concerning disaster aid platforms’ institutional design and governance that are under-studied in critical disaster studies and political studies. It also highlights the need for critical disaster studies to engage with state theory and vice-versa.
Practical implications
The research contributes to evaluations of disaster recovery processes and outcomes. It highlights the limits of disaster aid platforms’ claims for participatory decision-making, institutional-building and reforms.
Originality/value
The paper amplifies critical disaster studies, through the reflexive analysis of a case-study of an aid platform.
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The question of “why we are in disaster studies” can be essential to reflect on discourses and practices – as students, researchers and professors – in constituting an oppressive…
Abstract
Purpose
The question of “why we are in disaster studies” can be essential to reflect on discourses and practices – as students, researchers and professors – in constituting an oppressive disaster science and finding ways to liberate from it.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on autobiographical research and institutional ethnography to observe and analyze the discourses and practices about career trajectories as students, researchers and professors in disaster studies.
Findings
The paper provides some categories, concepts, theoretical approaches and lived experiences helpful for discussing ways of liberating disaster studies, such as public sociology of disaster.
Originality/value
Few papers have focused on professional trajectories in disaster studies, bringing insights from public sociology and questioning oppressive disaster science.
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Nicolás Caso, Dorothea Hilhorst, Rodrigo Mena and Elissaios Papyrakis
Disasters and armed conflict often co-occur, but does that imply that disasters trigger or fuel conflict? In the small but growing body of literature attempting to answer this…
Abstract
Purpose
Disasters and armed conflict often co-occur, but does that imply that disasters trigger or fuel conflict? In the small but growing body of literature attempting to answer this question, divergent findings indicate the complex and contextual nature of a potential answer to this question. The purpose of this study is to contribute a robust cross-country analysis of the co-occurrence of disaster and conflict, with a particular focus on the potential role played by disaster.
Design/methodology/approach
Grounded in a theoretical model of disaster–conflict co-occurrence, this study merges data from 163 countries between 1990 and 2017 on armed conflict, disasters and relevant control variables (low human development, weak democratic institutions, natural resource dependence and large population size/density).
Findings
The main results of this study show that, despite a sharp increase in the co-occurrence of disasters and armed conflict over time, disasters do not appear to have a direct statistically significant relation with the occurrence of armed conflict. This result contributes to the understanding of disasters and conflicts as indirectly related via co-creation mechanisms and other factors.
Originality/value
This study is a novel contribution, as it provides a fresh analysis with updated data and includes different control variables that allow for a significant contribution to the field.
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Minh Tran and Dayoon Kim
The authors revisit the notion of co-production, highlight more critical and re-politicized forms of co-production and introduce three principles for its operationalization. The…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors revisit the notion of co-production, highlight more critical and re-politicized forms of co-production and introduce three principles for its operationalization. The paper’s viewpoint aims to find entry points for enabling more equitable disaster research and actions via co-production.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw insights from the authors’ reflections as climate and disaster researchers and literature on knowledge politics in the context of disaster and climate change, especially within critical disaster studies and feminist political ecology.
Findings
Disaster studies can better contribute to disaster risk reduction via political co-production and situating local and Indigenous knowledge at the center through three principles, i.e. ensuring knowledge plurality, surfacing norms and assumptions in knowledge production and driving actions that tackle existing knowledge (and broader sociopolitical) structures.
Originality/value
The authors draw out three principles to enable the political function of co-production based on firsthand experiences of working with local and Indigenous peoples and insights from a diverse set of co-production, feminist political ecology and critical disaster studies literature. Future research can observe how it can utilize these principles in its respective contexts.
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The transcript takes you on a journey of the book mapping vulnerability and the developments thereafter.
Abstract
Purpose
The transcript takes you on a journey of the book mapping vulnerability and the developments thereafter.
Design/methodology/approach
The transcript and video was developed in the context of a United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) project on the History of DRR.
Findings
This interview highlights how DRR is central to conflict settings as well.
Originality/value
The interview provides reflections on DRR in conflict settings.
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The transcript is of one from a number of interviews with disaster risk reduction (DRR) “pioneers” carried out in 2022 as a part of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk…
Abstract
Purpose
The transcript is of one from a number of interviews with disaster risk reduction (DRR) “pioneers” carried out in 2022 as a part of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) project to record the history of the field. It aims to enable one of the “pioneers” to explain his role in the emergence of disaster studies and provide critical commentary on what he considers is wrong with current DRR approaches.
Design/methodology/approach
Terry Cannon was interviewed to explain the beginnings of his involvement in disasters research and to comment on his views on progress in the field of disaster risk reduction since his early work in the 1980s. The transcript and video were developed in the context of the UNDRR project on the history of DRR.
Findings
The interview provides an account of the origins of the book “At Risk” and why it was considered necessary. This is put into the context of how the field of DRR has emerged since the 1980s. It elicits opinions on what he considers the gaps in both his early work (especially in the book “At Risk” of which he was a co-author) and in the field of DRR recently.
Originality/value
It provides historical context on how early disaster research developed the alternative framework of “social construction” of disasters, in opposition to the idea that they are “natural”. It challenges some of the approaches that have emerged as DRR and has been institutionalised, including its increasing difficulty in supporting the ideas of social construction.
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This paper is a critique of Western modernity and the problems and promises of postmodernism in (re)liberating disaster studies. It criticizes metanarratives and grand theories of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper is a critique of Western modernity and the problems and promises of postmodernism in (re)liberating disaster studies. It criticizes metanarratives and grand theories of Western discourses to advance postmodern discourses in disaster studies.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper outlines a conceptual domain through which approaches of postmodernism can be employed to (re)liberate disaster studies.
Findings
Metanarratives and grand theories frame the scope and focus of disaster studies. But the increasing number and the aggravated impacts of disasters and environmental challenges in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are proofs that our current “frames” do not capture the complexities of disasters. Postmodernism, in its diversity and various meanings, offers critical and complementary perspectives and approaches to capture the previously neglected dimensions of disasters.
Research limitations/implications
Postmodernism offers ways forward to (re)liberate disaster studies through ontological pluralism, epistemological diversity and hybridity of knowledge.
Originality/value
The agenda of postmodernism in disaster studies is proposed in terms of the focus of inquiry, ontological and epistemological positionalities, research paradigm, methodologies and societal goals.
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This paper argues that extractivist logic creates the environmental conditions that produce “natural” hazards and also the human conditions that produce vulnerability, which…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper argues that extractivist logic creates the environmental conditions that produce “natural” hazards and also the human conditions that produce vulnerability, which combined create disasters. Disaster Risk Creation is then built into the current global socio-economic system, as an integral component not accidental by-product.
Design/methodology/approach
As part of the movement to liberate disasters as discipline, practice and field of enquiry, this paper does not talk disasters per se, but rather its focus is on “extractivism” as a fundamental explanator for the anthropogenic disaster landscape that now confronts us.
Findings
Applying a gender lens to extractivism as it relates to disaster, further highlights that Disaster Risk Management rather than alleviating, creates the problems it seeks to solve, suggesting the need to liberate gender from Disaster Risk Management, and the need to liberate us all from the notion of managing disasters. Since to ‘manage’ disaster risk is to accept uncritically the structures and systems that create that risk, then if we truly want to address disasters, our focus needs to be on the extractive practices, not the disastrous outcomes.
Originality/value
The fundamental argument is that through privileging the notion of “disaster” we create it, bring it into existence, as something that exists in and of itself, apart from wider socio-economic structures and systems of extraction and exploitation, rather than recognising it for what it is, an outcome/end product of those wider structures and systems. Our focus on disaster is then misplaced, and perhaps what disaster studies needs to be liberated from, is itself.
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Andrew Maskrey and Allan Lavell
The interview traces the early discussions in the context of disasters as developmental failures.
Abstract
Purpose
The interview traces the early discussions in the context of disasters as developmental failures.
Design/methodology/approach
The transcript and video was developed in the context of a United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) project on the history of DRR.
Findings
The interview traces the development of disaster risk reduction discussions in different contexts such as “LA RED” network in Latin America.
Originality/value
The interview clearly highlights the need to not forget the early thoughts on vulnerability and disaster risk.
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