Disaster politics
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Material Information

Title:
Disaster politics tipping points for change in the adaptation of sociopolitical regimes
Creator:
Mark Pelling
Kathleen Dill
Disaster Risk Reduction Program, Florida International University (DRR/FIU) ( summary contributor )
Place of Publication:
London
Publisher:
Arnold
Publication Date:
Copyright Date:
2010
Language:
English

Subjects

Subjects / Keywords:
Politics and government ( lcshac )
Disasters ( lcshac )
Genre:
non-fiction ( marcgt )

Notes

Summary:
This document is a discussion of the affect of disasters on political systems, particularly the contestation of the social contract between state and citizen. The authors develop a framework for the analysis of post-disaster political spaces, focusing their analysis on the empirical case of the Marmara earthquake in Turkey. Disasters are not merely natural phenomena. They are deeply connected to the political and social contexts within which they occur. How societies are organized institutionally to prepare for and respond to extreme events is the result of politics. While disasters emanate from existing social relations, the authors place particular emphasis on disasters’ power to alter them. Two claims are made. In the first, disasters are viewed as ‘accelerating the status quo’ as powerful elites use disasters as pretexts to drive old agendas forward. In the second claim, disasters are seen as potential “critical junctures” altering the direction of society towards new political realities. In the former, change is the outcome of the successful concentration of established power, while in the latter it is the result of contesting the status quo and its political, economic, and social arrangements. Disasters are evidence of a failure on the part of the state to uphold its end of the social contract, provision of stability and security. This failure presents an opening for a reclaiming of rights and renegotiation of the social contract. The authors identify four moments in the process from disaster to political change. In the first moment, focus is placed on the unequal distribution of losses and associated development failures. In the second, emphasis is placed on the mobilization of non-state and state actors to either champion, direct, counter, or capture the evolving critical discourse. In the third moment, this discourse is integrated into the policy and legislative process. In the final moment, there is a renegotiation of the social contract, with the critical discourse used to reshape the development process. The authors argue that research on the politics of disaster should focus on three new priorities. The first is comparative analysis of disasters as critical junctures in the renegotiation of social contracts to determine salient variables. A second is on the relationship between privatization and globalization and the failure of developing countries to build local political and economic capacity for reconstruction. The third is a focus on how participatory DRR can foster local social and political institutions during reconstruction, shifting discourse away from a neutral notion of humanitarianism to one that focuses on politically engaged development. ( English )
Subject:
Disaster and Politics ( English )
Citation/Reference:
Pelling, M., Dill, K. (2010). Disaster politics: tipping points for change in the adaptation of sociopolitical regimes. Progress in Human Geography 34 pp. 21-37.

Record Information

Source Institution:
Florida International University
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Disaster Risk Reduction