1st Edition
Rethinking Post-Disaster Recovery Socio-Anthropological Perspectives on Repairing Environments
This book presents an original interdisciplinary approach to the study of the so-called ‘recovery phase’ in disaster management, centred on the notion of repairing.
The volume advances thinking on disaster recovery that goes beyond institutional and managerial challenges, descriptions and analyses. It encourages socially, politically and ethically engaged questioning of what it means to recover after disaster. At the centre of this analysis, contributions examine the diversity of processes of repairing through which recovery can take place, and the varied meanings actors attribute to repair at different times and scales of such processes. It also analyses the multiple arenas (juridical, expert, political) in which actors struggle to make sense of the "what-ness" of a disaster and the paths for recovery. These struggles are interlinked with interest-based and power-based struggles which maintain structural inequality and exploitation, existing social hierarchies and established forms of marginality. The work uses case studies from all over the world, cutting-edge theoretical discussions and original empirical research to put critical and interpretative approaches in social sciences into dialogue, opening the venue for innovative approaches in the study of environmental disasters.
This book will be of much interest to students of disaster management, sociology, anthropology, law and philosophy.
Introduction: Recovery, Resilience and Repairing - For a Non-Reductionist Approach to the Complexity of Post-Disaster Situations Laura Centemeri, Sezin Topçu and J. Peter Burgess
Part I: Repairing Slow Disasters
1. The Economy of Compensation and the Struggle for Reparation: The case of Formosa Plastics in Taiwan Paul Jobin
2. Repairing the Ir-repairable: ‘Geo-biological’ Recovery of Environments after a Nuclear Disaster Sezin Topçu
3. After the (Green) Revolution Comes (Ecological) Restoration: Scientists and Peasants in Pontal do Paranapanema, Brazil Daniel Delatin Rodrigues
Part II: Everyday Life, Justice and Memories in Recovery after Disasters
4. Repairing as Struggle for Narrative Justice. The Dam Failure of Vega de Tera, Spain (1959-2019) Santiago Gorostiza and Marco Armiero
5. Preparing for Future Pandemics and Repairing Vulnerable Environments: Consequences of the 1997 Bird Flu Outbreak in Hong Kong Frédéric Keck
6. Broken Techno-Ecological Systems and Art as Reparative Gestures Line Marie Thorsen
7. Plurality of Temporalities, Complexity and Contingency in Repairing after Dam Failures in Minas Gerais Francis Chateauraynaud and Josquin Debaz
Part III: The Role of Law in Repairing Environments
8. A Green Criminological Approach to Environmental Victimisation and Reparation. A Case for Environmental Restorative Justice Lorenzo Natali and Matthew Hall
9. Reenact, Commemorate and Make Amends after Storm Xynthia Through a Judicial Dispositif Sandrine Revêt
10. Victims and the Ecologies of Reparation Dispositifs in the Contaminated Growth Hormone Case: Comparative Perspectives on Recovery after a Health Disaster Janine Barbot and Nicolas Dodier
11. Conclusion: Disaster recovery and the repairing perspective: between theory and practice Laura Centemeri, J. Peter Burgess and Sezin Topçu
Biography
Laura Centemeri is Senior Researcher in Environmental Sociology at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and a member of the Centre for the Study of Social Movements (CEMS-EHESS), France.
Sezin Topçu is Senior Researcher in Science and Technology Studies at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and a member of the Centre for the Study of Social Movements (CEMS-EHESS), France.
J. Peter Burgess is Professor and Director of the Chair in Geopolitics of Risk at École Normale Supérieure, France.
