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A wide spectrum of events are covered ranging from floods, the tsunami of 2004, earthquakes and landslides to such long-term processes as the decline of pastures or coastlines. The diversity of the case studies opens up questions on method and the conceptualization of terms. Many authors, among them anthropologists, sociologists, geographers and cultural psychologists engage in definition of crisis, disaster and catastrophe in order to differentiate emic and etic perceptions. They discuss topics like the politics of disaster, developments of boom economies, memory, rituals of mourning and culture change to name but a few. Concepts like risk, vulnerability and resilience are given ample theoretical consideration and are linked to local meanings and interpretation. This book reflects earlier research results and compares them with new theoretical and empirical findings.
List of contents
Contents: Ute Luig: Negotiating Disasters: An Overview - Michael Bollig: Social-Ecological Change and the Changing Structure of Risk, Risk Management and Resilience in a Pastoral Community in Northwestern Namibia - Ingo Haltermann: The Perception of Natural Hazards in the Context of Human (In-)security - Elísio Macamo/Dieter Neubert: «Flood Disasters». A Sociological Analysis of Local Perception and Management of Extreme Events Based on Examples from Mozambique, Germany, and the USA - Arne Harms: Squatters on a Shrinking Coast: Environmental Hazards, Memory and Social Resilience in the Ganges Delta - Manfred Zaumseil/Johana Prawitasari-Hadiyono: Researching Coping Mechanisms in Response to Natural Disasters: The Earthquake in Java, Indonesia (2006) -
Martin Sökefeld: The Attabad Landslide and the Politics of Disaster in Gojal, Gilgit-Baltistan - Pascale Schild: Representations and Practices of «Home» in the Context of the 2005 Earthquake and Reconstruction Process in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir - Edward Simpson: The Anthropology of a «Disaster Boom» Economy in Western India - Axel Schäfer: Lightning, Thunderstorms, Hail: Conception, Religious Interpretations and Social Practice among the Quechua People of the South Peruvian Andes - Dorothea E. Schulz: In the Shadow of an Unreconciled Nature: Muslim Practices of Mourning and/as Social Reproduction in Uganda - Brigitte Vettori: Negotiating Culture: Indigenous Communities on the Nicobar and Andaman Islands as Focal Points in the Post-tsunami Media Coverage 2004/05.
About the author
Ute Luig was until 2010 Professor of Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin. She did long-term fieldwork in different African countries and Cambodia. Her main interests besides the conceptualization of nature and cultural approaches to disaster research are memory and spirit possession cults. She studied disasters from different perspectives, e.g. in form of the HIV/AIDS crisis, war and memory in Cambodia and cultural interpretations of so-called «natural disasters».
