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Drawing on global case studies, this is the first book to outline and elaborate on the ways that human geography has extended our understanding of disasters. This volume explores the unique, creative, and critical ways human geography makes sense of disasters. Every chapter analyses disasters through the lens of a different theoretical framework common to geography, including assemblage theory, post-colonialism, urban political ecology, governmentality, affect theory and scale. The case studies in the collection range from hurricane risk in the Caribbean and volcano eruptions in Chile to floods in India and many more. Each chapter conceives of disasters as processes rather than individual events. Disasters are thus conceptualized as always-already entangled in the continual making and remaking of collective life. Overall, the chapters present a " pluriversal " perspective that mirrors geography''s methodological sensitivity to how disasters are shaped by the in-situ conditions in which they unfold. Following such a perspective, the volume both clarifies, and stays attuned to, the multiple, often cross-cutting, spatial and temporal registers upon which disasters are experienced. Each chapter also expands upon geography''s appreciation for the materiality of disasters. Here, disasters are thought to arise from, but also actively contribute to, the material configuration and reconfiguration of space over time. This concern with materiality allows chapters to address the ways that politics is engrained into disasters. Providing inspiration for future scholars in geography and further afield, the collection is essential reading for those interested in developing more advanced understandings of disasters.
List of contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on contributors
Introduction: Disaster Geography's Pasts and its Possible Futures
Nathaniel O'Grady (University of Manchester, UK) and Gemma Sou (Monash University, Australia)1. Dissenting in Disasters: Lessons for the Disaster-Democracy Interface from Nepal's Dual Disasters
Nimesh Dhunghana (University of Manchester, UK)2. Reframing 'Disasters' through Urban Political Ecology: Reflections from Two Latin American Cities
Ricardo Fuentealba (Universidad de O'Higgins, Chile) and Belén Desmaison (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Peru)3. The Plural Lives of Rubble: A Research Agenda for Disaster Geographies
Giovanna Gioli (Independent Scholar) and Amitangshu Acharya (IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, The Netherlands)4. Reassembling Disaster Geographies: Placing the Material and Discursives
Peter McGowran (King's College London, UK)5. How the Production of Economic and Scientific 'Facts' Constrains State Sovereignty: A Postcolonial Critique of Sovereign Debt Disaster Clauses
John Hogan Morris (University of Nottingham, UK) and Sam Simkin (University of Warwick, UK)6. Plants for Recovery: Indigenous Women's Perspectives in a Post-Disaster Resettlement: An Approach for Feminist Post-Disaster Geographies
Ana Julia Cabrera Pacheco (University of Edinburgh, Scotland), Diego Antonio Reanda Sapalú (University of the Valley of Guatemala, Guatemala), Lisa Mackenzie (University of Edinburgh, Scotland), and Teresa Amijos Burneo (University of Edinburgh, Scotland)7. The Affective Politics of Magma in Andean Worlds: Navigating more-than-human Kinship with Volcanoes in Disaster Research
Francisca Vergara-Pinto (Andes Cordillera, Chile)8. Geographies of Governance: Disaster response, territorial politics, and the American Samoan Tsunami
Elissa Waters (Monash University, Australia)9. Urban Disaster Risk and Risk Reduction as Multi-Scalar Configurations
Theresa Zimmermann (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)Conclusion: Human Geographies of Disaster and Our Current Conjuncture: Taking Stock, Moving Forward
Nathaniel O'Grady (University of Manchester, UK) and Gemma Sou (Monash University, Australia)Index
