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In Evacuation, Peter Adey examines the politics, aesthetics, and practice of moving people and animals from harm during emergencies. He outlines how the governance and design of evacuation are recursive, operating on myriad political, symbolic, and affective levels in ways that reflect and reinforce social hierarchies. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, from the retrieval of wounded soldiers from the battlefield during World War I and escaping the World Trade Center on 9/11 to the human and animal evacuations in response to the 2009 Australian bushfires and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Adey demonstrates that evacuation is not an equal process. Some people may choose not to move while others are forced; some may even be brought into harm through evacuation. Often the poorest, racialized, and most marginalized communities hold the least power in such moments. At the same time, these communities can generate compassionate, creative, and democratic forms of care that offer alternative responses to crises. Ultimately, Adey contends, understanding the practice of evacuation illuminates its importance to power relations and everyday governance.
List of contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. Footsteps: Diagramming High-Rise Evacuation 31
2. Mobile Medical-Military Machines 60
3. Evacuation and Euphemism: Memory, Lexicality, and Aphasia—From the Holocaust to Japanese American “Internment” 85
4. “The City is to Be Evacuated”: Roads, Race, and Automobility during the Early Cold War 115
5. Companion Evacuations at the Boundaries of Life 142
6. A Disengagement: Evacuation, Trauma, Colonial Vertigo, and National Reproduction 164
7. Seeing Evacuation Logistically 183
8. Burn 206
Conclusion. The End 232
Notes 255
References 265
Index
About the author
Peter Adey is Professor of Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of
Mobility;
Air: Nature and Culture; and
Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects and coauthor of
Moving towards Transition: Commoning Mobility for a Low-Carbon Future.
Summary
Peter Adey examines the politics, aesthetics, and practice of evacuating people and animals from harm during emergencies, showing how it reveals, reinforces, and relies on structures of power.
