Full Description
Contextualizing Disaster offers a comparative analysis of six recent "highly visible" disasters and several slow-burning, "hidden," crises that include typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, chemical spills, and the unfolding consequences of rising seas and climate change. The book argues that, while disasters are increasingly represented by the media as unique, exceptional, newsworthy events, it is a mistake to think of disasters as isolated or discrete occurrences. Rather, building on insights developed by political ecologists, this book makes a compelling argument for understanding disasters as transnational and global phenomena.
Contents
Introduction
Gregory V. Button and Mark Schuller
Chapter 1. A Poison Runs Through It: The Elk River Chemical Spill in West Virginia
Gregory V. Button and Erin R. Eldridge
Chapter 2. Whethering the Storm: The Twin Natures of Typhoons Haiyan and Yolanda
Greg Bankoff and George Emmanuel Borrinaga
Chapter 3. "The Tremors Felt Round the World": Haiti's Earthquake as Global Imagined Community
Mark Schuller
Chapter 4. Contested Narratives: Challenging the State's Neoliberal Authority in the Aftermath of the Chilean Earthquake
Nia Parson
Chapter 5. Decentralizing Disasters: Civic Engagement and Stalled Reconstruction after Japan's 3/11
Bridget Love
Chapter 6. Expert Knowledge and the Ethnography of Disaster Reconstruction
Roberto E. Barrios
Chapter 7. "We Are Always Getting Ready": How Diverse Notions of Time and Flexibility Build Adaptive Capacity in Alaska and Tuvalu
Elizabeth Marino and Heather Lazrus
Chapter 8. Tempests, Green Teas, and the Right to Relocate: The Political Ecology of Superstorm Sandy
Melissa Checker
Bibliography
Index
