Suchergebnisse

In the Shadow of Tungurahua relates the stories of the people of Penipe, Ecuador living in and between several villages around the volcano Tungurahua and two resettlement communities built for people displaced by government operations following volcanic eruptions in 1999 and 2006. The stories take shape in ways that influence prevailing ideas about how disasters are produced and reproduced, in this case by shifting assemblages of the state first formed during Spanish colonialism attempting to settle (make "legible") and govern Indigenous and campesino populations and places. The disasters unfolding around Tungurahua at the turn of the 21st century also provide lessons in the humanitarian politics of disaster—questions of deservingness, reproducing inequality, and the reproduction of bare life. But this is also a story of how people responded to confront hardships and craft new futures, about forms of cooperation to cope with and adapt to disaster, and the potential for locally derived disaster recovery projects and politics

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to identify LGBTQ+ perceptions of and experiences with hazards, vulnerabilities and disasters in the San Francisco Bay Area in the USA and to co-develop applied projects to "queer" disaster knowledge production and risk reduction activities in the region.Design/methodology/approachThis is a community science project in which we collaborate with community members to enhance both community and scientific knowledge with the goal of utilizing it to produce a positive change to pressing social issues and their underlying causes. We do this through a series of four focus group workshops to identify community priorities, hazards, vulnerabilities and local action. We follow this with further ethnographic research and projects to apply findings from phase one.FindingsThe authors have found that: LGBTQ+ people in the Bay Area have unique experiences with hazards, vulnerabilities and disasters; there are significant gaps in the representation of LGBTQ+ hazard exposure in local scientific models that we can address through alternative methodologies; and tabletop exercises, learning modules and podcasts help orient and train disaster response agencies and personnel on LGBTQ+ inclusive operations.Originality/valueThis initiative entails novel approaches to community science for disaster risk reduction and creative collaboration with community-based organizations to foster the development of LGBTQ+ inclusive disaster risk reduction and response.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine whether it is useful to tease apart the intimately related propositions of social production and social construction to guide thinking in the multidisciplinary study of disasters.Design/methodology/approachThe authors address our question by reviewing literature on disasters in the social sciences to disambiguate the concepts of social production and social construction.FindingsThe authors have found that entertaining the distinction between social production and social construct can inform both thinking and action on disasters by facilitating critical exercises in reframing that facilitate dialog across difference. The authors present a series of arguments on the social production and construction of disaster and advocate putting these constructs in dialog with vulnerability frameworks of the social production of disasters.Originality/valueThis commentary contributes to disambiguating important theoretical and practical concepts in disaster studies. The reframing approach can inform both research and more inclusive disaster management and risk reduction efforts.

PurposeThe authors engage a set of critical discussions on key concepts in disaster studies with attention to recent critiques of the concept "community," which decry the term's imprecision and problematic insinuation of consensus. The authors' objective is to explore for enduring and redeeming merit in the use of the term in disaster prevention, response and recovery and in collaborative social science research more broadly.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on case studies drawn from the authors' ongoing, longitudinal studies of community-based work with Spanish-speaking community leaders in San José, California and rural Indigenous communities in Alaska.FindingsThe authors synthesize unromantic critiques of the community concept that surface important matters of inequality that complicate efforts for decolonizing disaster work with a view of community as an often utopian project servicing redistributions and relocations of the loci of power. It is a term not only invoked in scholarship and the work of governmental and nongovernmental agencies but also one with deeply symbolic and contextualized meaning.Originality/valueThe authors' interpretation is that we must at once be critical and unromantic in studying and working with "community" while also recognizing its utopian fecundity. Abandoning the concept altogether would not only create a massive lacuna in everyday speech but also we fear too strong a language in opposition to the community concept metaphor telegraphs a hostility toward those who use it to mobilize scarce social, political and material resources to confront power and contest structural violence.

AbstractTheories of vulnerability have constituted the conceptual core of the anthropology of disaster for roughly 40 years. Yet, there is an undercurrent of disquiet among disaster scholars and community leaders who worry that vernacular uses of vulnerability can be insulting to individuals and communities with whom we work, and/or with whom we identify. There is a growing discomfort that categorizing the "vulnerable" acts to discursively nullify the everywhere‐visible "resilience," toughness, and genius that exist in communities that are habitually exposed to risk and hazards. We argue that constructing vulnerability as a characteristic of subaltern peoples and marginalized places is truncated at best and can perpetuate violence—epistemic, semiotic, and material—at worst. To identify the "vulnerable" is, we contend, necessarily a process of otherizing and essentializing. We see and are concerned to further encourage an emergent form of disaster anthropology that is particularly oriented toward understanding and theorizing the institutions, systems, and individuals that structure risk, and in the process to focus attention away from "the vulnerable." To our surprise, this has emerged in recent anthropological writings in very particular ways. We find the orientation away from vulnerable populations among our colleagues who write at the intersections of disaster institutions and local communities. Here, we recognize vulnerability conceived not merely as historical inequity that produces negative outcomes, but as nested and contested sites of struggle for different visions of utopian futures, for contrasting articulations of what constitutes risk, and for diverse cultural logics of the good.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to highlight the experiences and issues of an overlooked demographic: older LGBTQ + adults in the US, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This allows the authors to explore possible changes in policy and practice regarding the management of the pandemic with attention to elderly LGBTQ.Design/methodology/approachBuilding on the authors' experience in disaster research and a study of older LGBTQ + adults in the San Francisco Bay Area, the authors analyze key trends in COVID-19 pandemic management while drawing lessons from the AIDS epidemic.FindingsThe authors have found that LGBTQ + people, especially older and transgender individuals, have unique experiences with hazards and public safety and healthcare professionals and organizations (e.g. heteronormative care, traumatic insensitivity, deprioritizing essential treatments as elective). Second, older LGBTQ + adults' perceptions of state responses to pandemics were heavily influenced by experiences with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. And third, experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic have important implications for preventing, responding to and recovering from future epidemics/pandemics.Originality/valueThe authors point to two parallel implications of this work. The first entails novel approaches to queering disaster prevention, response and recovery. And the second is to connect the management of the COVID-19 pandemic to the principles of harm reduction developed by grassroots organizations to suggest new ways to think about contagion and organize physical distancing, while still socializing to take care of people's physical and mental health, especially the more marginalized like elderly LGBTQ + people.