Government of Emergency - Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security

"In the middle decades of the twentieth century, in the wake of economic depression, war, and in the midst of the Cold War, an array of technical experts and government officials developed a substantial body of expertise to contain and manage the disruptions to American society caused by unprecedented threats. Today the tools invented by these mid-twentieth century administrative reformers are largely taken for granted, assimilated into the everyday workings of government. As Stephen Collier and Andrew Lakoff argue in this book, the American government's current practices of disaster management can be traced back to this era. Collier and Lakoff argue that an understanding of the history of this initial formation of the "emergency state" is essential to an appreciation of the distinctive ways that the U.S. government deals with crises and emergencies-or fails to deal with them-today. This book focuses on historical episodes in emergency or disaster planning and management. Some of these episodes are well-known and have often been studied, while others are little-remembered today. The significance of these planners and managers is not that they were responsible for momentous technical innovations or that all their schemes were realized successfully. Their true significance lies in the fact that they formulated a way of understanding and governing emergencies that has come to be taken for granted"--

About the author

Stephen J. Collier is professor of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics (Princeton). Andrew Lakoff is professor of sociology at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Unprepared: Global Health in a Time of Emergency.

Additional text

"The Government of Emergency is a thrilling intellectual history . . . [and] an important contribution to a growing line of scholarship that critically approaches the concept of ‘disaster’ itself."---Ryan Hagen, The British Journal of Sociology

Product details

• Authors: Stephen J. Collier, Stephen J. Lakoff Collier, Collier Stephen J., Andrew Lakoff, Lakoff Andrew
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2021
• EAN: 9780691199276
• ISBN: 978-0-691-19927-6
• No. of pages: 480
• Series: Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Education > Social education, social work; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Security (National & International), Sociology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, SCIENCE / History, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Disasters & Disaster Relief, Anthropology, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Social Policy, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General, History of Science, Social impact of disasters, Central / national / federal government policies, Central government policies, Social impact of disasters / accidents (natural or man-made)