Download or read book Disaster Writing written by Mark D. Anderson and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of disaster, literary and other cultural representations of the event can play a role in the renegotiation of political power. In Disaster Writing, Mark D. Anderson analyzes four natural disasters in Latin America that acquired national significance and symbolism through literary mediation: the 1930 cyclone in the Dominican Republic, volcanic eruptions in Central America, the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, and recurring drought in northeastern Brazil. Taking a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the disaster narratives, Anderson explores concepts such as the social construction of risk, landscape as political and cultural geography, vulnerability as the convergence of natural hazard and social marginalization, and the cultural mediation of trauma and loss. He shows how the political and historical contexts suggest a systematic link between natural disaster and cultural politics.

Download or read book Disaster Culture written by Gregory Button and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-03 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on decades of research on the most infamous human and environmental calamities, Button shows how states, corporations, and other actors attempt to create meaning and control social relations in post-disaster struggles for the redistribution of power.

Download or read book The Culture of Disaster written by Marie-Hélène Huet and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From antiquity through the Enlightenment, disasters were attributed to the obscure power of the stars or the vengeance of angry gods. As philosophers sought to reassess the origins of natural disasters, they also made it clear that humans shared responsibility for the damages caused by a violent universe. This far-ranging book explores the way writers, thinkers, and artists have responded to the increasingly political concept of disaster from the Enlightenment until today. Marie-Hélène Huet argues that post-Enlightenment culture has been haunted by the sense of emergency that made natural catastrophes and human deeds both a collective crisis and a personal tragedy. From the plague of 1720 to the cholera of 1832, from shipwrecks to film dystopias, disasters raise questions about identity and memory, technology, control, and liability. In her analysis, Huet considers anew the mythical figures of Medusa and Apollo, theories of epidemics, earthquakes, political crises, and films such as Blow-Up and Blade Runner. With its scope and precision, The Culture of Disaster will appeal to a wide public interested in modern culture, philosophy, and intellectual history.

Download or read book Disastro Disasters in Italy Since 1860 written by J. Dickie and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-03-28 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is no European society whose modern history has been more deeply marked by disasters, both natural and social, than has Italy's. Disasters test the social fabric and the political system to their limits. Survival and rebuilding draw on the deepest cultural reserves. This volume brings new research on all aspects of the Italian experience of disaster from unification to the present day. The book is a significant contribution both to the understanding of Italian history, and to the study of the impact of disasters on society.

Download or read book Cultures and Disasters written by Fred Krüger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the people of the Zambesi Delta affected by severe flooding return early to their homes or even choose to not evacuate? How is the forced resettlement of small-scale farmers living along the foothills of an active volcano on the Philippines impacting on their day-to-day livelihood routines? Making sense of such questions and observations is only possible by understanding how the decision-making of societies at risk is embedded in culture, and how intervention measures acknowledge, or neglect, cultural settings. The social construction of risk is being given increasing priority in understand how people experience and prioritize hazards in their own lives and how vulnerability can be reduced, and resilience increased, at a local level. Culture and Disasters adopts an interdisciplinary approach to explore this cultural dimension of disaster, with contributions from leading international experts within the field. Section I provides discussion of theoretical considerations and practical research to better understand the important of culture in hazards and disasters. Culture can be interpreted widely with many different perspectives; this enables us to critically consider the cultural boundedness of research itself, as well as the complexities of incorporating various interpretations into DRR. If culture is omitted, related issues of adaptation, coping, intervention, knowledge and power relations cannot be fully grasped. Section II explores what aspects of culture shape resilience? How have people operationalized culture in every day life to establish DRR practice? What constitutes a resilient culture and what role does culture play in a society’s decision making? It is natural for people to seek refuge in tried and trust methods of disaster mitigation, however, culture and belief systems are constantly evolving. How these coping strategies can be introduced into DRR therefore poses a challenging question. Finally, Section III examines the effectiveness of key scientific frameworks for understanding the role of culture in disaster risk reduction and management. DRR includes a range of norms and breaking these through an understanding of cultural will challenge established theoretical and empirical frameworks.

Download or read book Eco Culture written by Robert Bell and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The edited collection, Eco Culture: Disaster, Narrative, Discourse, opens a conversation about the mediated relationship between culture and ecology. The dynamic between these two great forces comes into stark relief when a disaster—in its myriad forms and narratives—reveals the fragility of our ecological and cultural landscapes. Disasters are the clashing of culture and ecology in violent and tragic ways, and the results of each clash create profound effects to both. So much so, in fact, that the terms ecology and culture are past separation. We are far removed from their prior historical binaric connection, and they coincide through a supplementary role to each other. Ecology and culture are unified.

Download or read book Natural Disasters and Cultural Change written by John Grattan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-08-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human cultures have been interacting with natural hazards since the dawn of time. This book explores these interactions in detail and revisits some famous catastrophes including the eruptions of Thera and Vesuvius. These studies demonstrate that diverse human cultures had well-developed strategies which facilitated their response to extreme natural events.

Download or read book The Politics of Disaster written by Marvin N. Olasky and published by Thomas Nelson Inc. This book was released on 2006 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines why the government failed those left stranded in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and discusses the importance of churches and the private sector in responding to major disasters.

Download or read book Political Leadership in Disaster and Crisis Communication and Management written by Hamish McLean and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-17 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the role of elected leaders in disaster management. Filling a significant gap in disaster literature, the authors take a pragmatic approach to the relationships between the public under threat, the operational response, and the interests and actions of elected officials. Key tactics are explored, from the ways operational managers strategically deal with unreasonable political demands to what disaster officials argue is the responsibility of elected officials at all levels of government – that is, to ensure vital life-saving information reaches the people who need it most. The book draws on case studies such as the mismanagement of public perceptions by President George W. Bush during Hurricane Katrina in the United States and the widely acclaimed, heartfelt messages delivered by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh during the 2010–11 South-East Queensland floods in Australia. Drawing on a series of interviews with senior disaster managers in ten countries, this book is highly relevant for students, scholars and practitioners interested in disaster communication.

Download or read book Disaster Narratives in Early Modern Naples written by Domenico Cecere and published by Viella Libreria Editrice. This book was released on 2021-07-07T18:09:00+02:00 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume deals with natural disasters in late medieval and early modern central and southern Italy. Contributions look at a range of catastrophic events such as eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, floods, earthquakes, and outbreaks of plague and epidemics. A major aim of this volume is to investigate the relationship between catastrophic events and different communication strategies that embraced politics, religion, propaganda, dissent, scholarship as well as collective responses from the lower segments of society. The contributors to this volume share a multidisciplinary approach to the study of natural disasters which draws on disciplines such as cultural and social history, anthropology, literary theory, and linguistics. Together with analyzing the prolific production of propagandistic material and literary sources issued in periods of acute crisis, the documentation on disasters studied in this volume also includes laws and emergency regulations, petitions and pleas to the authorities, scientific and medical treatises, manuscript and printed newsletters as well as diplomatic dispatches and correspondence.

Download or read book The Political Economy of Hazards and Disasters written by Eric C. Jones and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2009-05-16 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, societies have had to decide whom to 'sacrifice' and whom to help in times of disaster. This volume examines how elite groups attempt to maintain power through the use of particular economic, political, and ideological instruments and how both ruling elites and common people endeavor to create meaningful traditions while enduring hardship.The Political Economy of Hazards and Disasters demonstrates how vulnerability is economically constructed, primary producers adapt their production regimes, how traders and merchants adapt their practices, and how political economic objectives play out in recovery efforts.

Download or read book Natural Disasters Cultural Responses written by Christof Mauch and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009-03-16 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catastrophes, it seems, are becoming more frequent in the twenty-first century. According to UN statistics, every year approximately two hundred million people are directly affected by natural disasters_seven times the number of people who are affected by war. Discussions about global warming and fatal disasters such as Katrina and the Tsunami of 2004 have heightened our awareness of natural disasters and of their impact on both local and global communities. Hollywood has also produced numerous disaster movies in recent years, some of which have become blockbusters. This volume demonstrates that natural catastrophes_earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc._have exercised a vast impact on humans throughout history and in almost every part of the world. It argues that human attitudes toward catastrophes have changed over time. Surprisingly, this has not necessarily led to a reduction of exposure or risk. The organization of the book resembles a journey around the globe_from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and from the Pacific through South America and Mexico to the United States. While natural disasters appear everywhere on the globe, different cultures, societies, and nations have adopted specific styles for coping with disaster. Indeed, how humans deal with catastrophes depends largely on social and cultural patterns, values, religious belief systems, political institutions, and economic structures. The roles that catastrophes play in society and the meanings they are given vary from one region to the next; they differ_and this is one of the principal arguments of this book_from one cultural, political, and geographic space to the next. The essays collected here help us to understand not only how people in different times throughout history have learned to cope with disaster but also how humans in different parts of the world have developed specific cultural, social, and technological strategies for doing so.

Download or read book Disaster Diplomacy written by Ilan Kelman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-08-26 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When an earthquake hits a war zone or cyclone aid is flown in by an enemy, many ask: Can catastrophe bring peace? Disaster prevention and mitigation provide similar questions. Could setting up a flood warning system bring enemy countries together? Could a regional earthquake building code set the groundwork for wider regional cooperation? This book examines how and why disaster-related activities do and do not create peace and reduce conflict. Disaster-related activities refer to actions before a disaster such as prevention and mitigation along with actions after a disaster such as emergency response, humanitarian relief, and reconstruction. This volume investigates disaster diplomacy case studies from around the world, in a variety of political and disaster circumstances, from earthquakes in Greece and Turkey affecting these neighbours’ bilateral relations to volcanoes and typhoons influencing intra-state conflict in the Philippines. Dictatorships are amongst the case studies, such as Cuba and Burma, along with democracies such as the USA and India. No evidence is found to suggest that disaster diplomacy is a prominent factor in conflict resolution. Instead, disaster-related activities often influence peace processes in the short-term—over weeks and months—provided that a non-disaster-related basis already existed for the reconciliation. That could be secret negotiations between the warring parties or strong trade or cultural links. Over the long-term, disaster-related influences disappear, succumbing to factors such as a leadership change, the usual patterns of political enmity, or belief that an historical grievance should take precedence over disaster-related bonds. This is the first book on disaster diplomacy. Disaster-politics interactions have been studied for decades, but usually from a specific political framing, covering a specific geographical area, or from a specific disaster framing. As well, plenty of quantitative work has been completed, yet the data limitations are rarely admitted openly or thoroughly analysed. Few publications bring together the topics of disasters and politics in terms of a disaster diplomacy framework, yielding a grounded, qualitative, scientific point of view on the topic.

Download or read book Catastrophe Culture written by Susanna Hoffman and published by James Currey. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a variety of natural and technological events this volume explores the potentials of disaster for the ecological, political-economic and cultural approaches to anthropology, along with the perspectives of archaeology and history.

Download or read book Indonesia and the Politics of Disaster written by Phillip Drake and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named after Lapindo Brantas, a gas exploration company that was drilling at the eruption site, the Lapindo mudflow initially burst in 2006 and continues to flow today, becoming the most expensive disaster in Indonesia’s history. Using this environmental incident in Indonesia as a case study, this book explores representations of disaster in scientific reports, public discourse, literature, and other cultural forms, observing the impact of these portrayals on the ways people both understand and respond to complicated environmental disasters. The author argues that power is expressed and contested in every representation of a disaster and its stakeholders. This book develops terminologies and perspectives that not only probe the social and ecological conditions that make disaster possible but also foster more effective and equitable strategies for adapting to a world fraught with hazards. Interdisciplinary in nature, this book makes a significant contribution to the fields of green cultural studies, disaster studies, science and technology studies and studies of political ecology in Southeast Asia.

Download or read book The Culture of Calamity written by Kevin Rozario and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-08-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Turn on the news and it looks as if we live in a time and place unusually consumed by the specter of disaster. The events of 9/11 and the promise of future attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, and the inevitable consequences of environmental devastation all contribute to an atmosphere of imminent doom. But reading an account of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, with its vivid evocation of buildings “crumbling as one might crush a biscuit,” we see that calamities—whether natural or man-made—have long had an impact on the American consciousness. Uncovering the history of Americans’ responses to disaster from their colonial past up to the present, Kevin Rozario reveals the vital role that calamity—and our abiding fascination with it—has played in the development of this nation. Beginning with the Puritan view of disaster as God’s instrument of correction, Rozario explores how catastrophic events frequently inspired positive reactions. He argues that they have shaped American life by providing an opportunity to take stock of our values and social institutions. Destruction leads naturally to rebuilding, and here we learn that disasters have been a boon to capitalism, and, paradoxically, indispensable to the construction of dominant American ideas of progress. As Rozario turns to the present, he finds that the impulse to respond creatively to disasters is mitigated by a mania for security. Terror alerts and duct tape represent the cynical politician’s attitude about 9/11, but Rozario focuses on how the attacks registered in the popular imagination—how responses to genuine calamity were mediated by the hyperreal thrills of movies; how apocalyptic literature, like the best-selling Left Behind series, recycles Puritan religious outlooks while adopting Hollywood’s style; and how the convergence of these two ways of imagining disaster points to a new postmodern culture of calamity. The Culture of Calamity will stand as the definitive diagnosis of the peculiarly American addiction to the spectacle of destruction.

Download or read book The Shock Doctrine written by Naomi Klein and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global "free market" has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.