Capitalizing on Catastrophe

Capitalizing on Catastrophe
Author: Nandini Gunewardena
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780759111035

Capitalizing on Catastrophe critically explores the phenomenon of "disaster capitalism," in which relief efforts for natural disasters and other large-scale disruptions are contracted out to private companies.

Capitalizing on Catastrophe

Capitalizing on Catastrophe
Author: Nandini Gunewardena
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780759111028

Capitalizing on Catastrophe critically explores the phenomenon of 'disaster capitalism, ' in which relief efforts for natural disasters and other large-scale disruptions are contracted out to private companies

Politics of Catastrophe

Politics of Catastrophe
Author: Claudia Aradau
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2011-05-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136717587

This book argues that catastrophe is a particular way of governing future events – such as terrorism, climate change or pandemics – which we cannot predict but which may strike suddenly, without warning, and cause irreversible damage. At a time where catastrophe increasingly functions as a signifier of our future, imaginaries of pending doom have fostered new modes of anticipatory knowledge and redeployed existing ones. Although it shares many similarities with crises, disasters, risks and other disruptive incidents, this book claims that catastrophes also bring out the very limits of knowledge and management. The politics of catastrophe is turned towards an unknown future, which must be imagined and inhabited in order to be made palpable, knowable and actionable. Politics of Catastrophe critically assesses the effects of these new practices of knowing and governing catastrophes to come and challenges the reader to think about the possibility of an alternative politics of catastrophe. This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies, risk theory, political theory and International Relations in general.

The Politics of Protection

The Politics of Protection
Author: Elizabeth G. Ferris
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2011-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815721382

For the past decade, humanitarian actors have increasingly sought not only to assist people affected by conflicts and natural disasters, but also to protect them. At the same time, protection of civilians has become central to UN peacekeeping operations, and the UN General Assembly has endorsed the principle that the international community has the "responsibility to protect" people when their governments cannot or will not do so. Elizabeth Ferris explores the evolution of the international community's understandings of protection, with a particular emphasis on the humanitarian community. "Protection" is a noble word, with positive connotations, but what does it actually mean in practice? Does providing assistance to vulnerable people protect them, for example? Does monitoring the number of rapes protect women? Does increased engagement in protection activities by humanitarian agencies jeopardize the cornerstone humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality? In The Politics of Protection, Ferris examines inconsistent ways in which protection is defined and applied. For example, why do certain groups receive international protection while other equally needy groups do not? Her case studies, ranging from Iraq to Katrina, illustrate the challenges—and limitations—of protecting vulnerable populations from the ravages of war and natural disasters. Ferris argues that the protection paradigms currently in use are inadequate to meet the challenges of the future, such as climate change, protracted displacement, and the changing nature of warfare.

Contextualizing Disaster

Contextualizing Disaster
Author: Gregory V. Button
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2016-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785332813

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.

Cities, Nature and Development

Cities, Nature and Development
Author: Sarah Dooling
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2016-05-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317165977

Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this book illustrates how and why cities are comprised by a mosaic of vulnerable human and ecological communities. Case studies ranging across various international settings reveal how 'urban vulnerabilities' is an effective metaphor and analytic lens for advancing political ecological theories on the relationships between cities, nature and development. Contributions expand upon conceptions of vulnerability as a static condition and instead present vulnerability as a phenomenon that is produced through complex and contentious planning histories, and which may, in turn, be politicized, exploited and-in some instances-contested. Expanding upon snapshot vulnerability assessments, this volume articulates vulnerability as a process that is marked by the accumulation of risk over time and the transference of risk across space and populations. Moving beyond notions of vulnerability as a singular, case studies demonstrate that social and ecological vulnerabilities are deeply integrated and, as such, are irreducible to one or the other. This volume also highlights how the production of vulnerabilities is frequently achieved through integrated and mutually reinforcing economic development and environmentally driven agendas. This collection thus suggests that vulnerability-and also forms of resilience-are implicated in efforts to plan for and manage sustainable cities. This book provides timely and provocative perspectives on a wide range of urban issues including: park management, gentrification, suburban expansion, sustainability planning, local organic food systems, hazards management, climate change activism and north-south flows of urban environmental externalities. Collectively, these works reveal the complexities of urban vulnerabilities-related to scalar interactions, accumulation and transfer of risk, politicization and governance, and capacity for resistance-and in doing so, provide readers with coherent, robust and well-theorized analysis of the politics and production of urban vulnerabilities.

The Shock Doctrine

The Shock Doctrine
Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 721
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1429919485

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.

Representations of Natural Catastrophes in Newspaper Discourse

Representations of Natural Catastrophes in Newspaper Discourse
Author: Dita Trčková
Publisher: Masarykova univerzita
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2016-01-01
Genre: Crafts & Hobbies
ISBN: 8021082364

Monografie je výzkumnou studií zabývající se znázorněním přírodních katastrof v novinách vydaných v západních anglicky mluvících zemích. Výzkum se snaží zodpovědět, komu je v novinovém diskurzu dávána vina za škody a zkázu (ptá se, jestli je katastrofa popsána jako výsledek jak přírodního jevu, tak sociálních faktorů), zjišťuje, jak se diskurz vypořádává s rozporem mezi přírodními katastrofami a osvícenskou ideologií nadřazenosti člověka nad přírodou a zkoumá, jaké jsou nejběžnější diskurzivní strategie, které vedou k dramatizaci událostí. Zvolenou metodologií je kritická analýza diskurzu, která se zaměřuje na zkoumání hlavních témat článků, na lexikální a syntaktický rozbor a na analýzu narativní struktury příběhů obětí.

Disaster Archipelago

Disaster Archipelago
Author: Maria Carinnes P. Alejandria
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2019-11-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1498569943

Images of the devastation wreaked by typhoons, flooding, earthquakes and drought in the Philippines circulate globally as an important part of disaster discourses. This collection seeks to move beyond these simplistic representations of calamity by bringing together a group of Filipino and international scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to grapple with the complex nature of disaster in the Philippines. Firmly grounded in the relationship between disaster and place, the volume’s contributors confront the challenges of the Philippine nation’s internal heterogeneity of language, ethnicity and class. In doing so, this book seeks to engage the specificities of place amid diversity, and explores two broad but interrelating avenues of investigation through case studies drawn from across the archipelago: How can environmental extremity in the Philippines help us understand disasters? How can disasters help us understand the Philippines?