This book critically surveys a decade of disasters in Ōtautahi Christchurch. It brings together a diverse range of authors, disciplinary approaches and topics, to reckon with the events that commenced with the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence. Each contribution tackles its subject matter through the frame of Critical Disaster Studies (CDS). The events and the subsequent recovery provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from a series of concatenating urban disasters in order to prepare us for our future on an urban planet facing unprecedented environmental pressures. The book focuses on the production of vulnerability, the human dimensions of disaster, the Indigenous response to disasters and the practical lessons that can be drawn from them.
This book announces the new, interdisciplinary field of critical disaster studies. Unlike most existing approaches to disaster, critical disaster studies begins with the idea that disasters are not objective facts, but rather are interpretive fictions—and they shape the way people see the world. By questioning the concept of disaster itself, critical disaster studies reveals the stakes of defining people or places as vulnerable, resilient, or at risk. As social constructs, disaster, vulnerability, resilience, and risk shape and are shaped by contests over power. Managers and technocrats often herald the goals of disaster response and recovery as objective, quantifiable, or self-evident. In reality, the goals are subjective, and usually contested. Critical disaster studies attends to the ways powerful people often use claims of technocratic expertise to maintain power. Moreover, rather than existing as isolated events, disasters take place over time. People commonly imagine disasters to be unexpected and sudden, making structural conditions appear contingent, widespread conditions appear local, and chronic conditions appear acute. By placing disasters in broader contexts, critical disaster studies peels away that veneer. With chapters by scholars of five continents and seven disciplines, Critical Disaster Studies asks how disasters come to be known as disasters, how disasters are used as tools of governance and politics, and how people imagine and anticipate disasters. The volume will be of interest to scholars of disaster in any discipline and especially to those teaching the growing number of courses on disaster studies.
New Zealand has to rebuild the majority of its second-largest city after a devastating series of earthquakes – a unique challenge for a developed country in the twenty-first century. The 2010-2011 earthquakes fundamentally disrupted the conventions by which the people of Christchurch lived. The exhausting and exhilarating mix of distress, uncertainty, creativity, opportunities, divergent opinions and competing priorities generates an inevitable question: how do we know if the right decisions are being made? Once in Lifetime: City-building after Disaster in Christchurch offers the first substantial critique of the Government’s recovery plan, presents alternative approaches to city-building andarchives a vital and extraordinary time. It features photo and written essays from journalists, economists, designers, academics, politicians, artists, publicans and more. Once in a Lifetime presents a range of national and international perspectives on city-building and post-disaster urban recovery.
Using a variety of natural and technological events this volume explores the potentials of disaster for the ecological, political-economic and cultural approaches to anthropology, along with the perspectives of archaeology and history.
Engaging voices crossing textual limits, race, and ethnic lines In this collection of essays, scholars from Oceania open a new dialog regarding the vast, complex, and slippery nature of the Bible and the fluid meanings of borders and belongings. From belonging in a place, a group, or movement to belongings as material and cultural possessions, from borders of a text, discipline, or thought to borders of nations, communities, or bodies, the authors follow the currents of Oceania to the shores of Asia and beyond. Scholars contributing essays include Jeffrey W. Aernie, Merilyn Clark, Jione Havea, Gregory C. Jenks, Jeanette Mathews, Judith E. McKinlay, Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon, David J. Neville, John Painter, Kathleen P. Rushton, Ruth Sheridan, Nasili Vaka‘uta, and Elaine M. Wainwright. Michele A. Connolly, David M. Gunn, and Mark G. Brett provide responses to the essays. Features: Discussion of the impacts of natural disasters and political and ecological upheavals on biblical interpretation and theological reflection Fourteen essays on texts in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament Three responses to the essays provide a range of views on the topics
The devastating earthquake that hit Christchurch in 2011 did more than rupture the surface of the city, argues historian Katie Pickles. It created a definitive endpoint to a history shaped by omission, by mythmaking, and by ideological storytelling. In this multi-layered BWB Text, Pickles uncovers what was lost that February day, drawing out the different threads of Christchurch’s colonial history and demonstrating why we should not attempt to knit them back together. This is an incisive analysis of the way a city’s character is interlinked with its geo-spatial appearance: when the latter changes, so too must the former.
No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses. Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more than a billion dollars in damages each. One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience-the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative addresses the broad issue of increasing the nation's resilience to disasters. This book defines "national resilience", describes the state of knowledge about resilience to hazards and disasters, and frames the main issues related to increasing resilience in the United States. It also provide goals, baseline conditions, or performance metrics for national resilience and outlines additional information, data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's resilience to disasters. Additionally, the book's authoring committee makes recommendations about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the United States. Enhanced resilience allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses-rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward. Disaster Resilience confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year 2030. Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that disasters can cause.
In this significantly revised second edition of Bronwyn Hayward’s acclaimed book Children Citizenship and Environment, she examines how students, with teachers, parents, and other activists, can learn to take effective action to confront the complex drivers of the current climate crisis including: economic and social injustice, colonialism and racism. The global school strikes demand adults, governments, and businesses take far-reaching action in response to our climate crisis. The school strikes also remind us why this important youthful activism urgently needs the support of all generations. The #SchoolStrike edition of Children Citizenship and Environment includes all new contributions by youth, indigenous and disability activists, researchers and educators: Raven Cretney, Mehedi Hasan, Sylvia Nissen, Jocelyn Papprill, Kate Prendergast, Kera Sherwood O’ Regan, Mia Sutherland, Amanda Thomas, Sara Tolbert, Sarah Thomson, Josiah Tualamali'i, and Amelia Woods. As controversial, yet ultimately hopeful, as it was when first published, Bronwyn Hayward develops her ‘SEEDS’ model of ‘strong ecological citizenship’ for a school strike generation. The SEEDS of citizenship education encourage students to develop skills for; Social agency, Environmental education, Embedded justice, Decentred deliberation and Self-transcendence. This approach to citizenship supports young citizens’ democratic imagination and develops their ‘handprint’ for social justice. This ground-breaking book will be of interest to a wide audience, in particular teachers and professionals who work in Environmental Citizenship Education, as well as students and community activists with an interest in environmental change, democracy and intergenerational justice.
This collection examines a broad spectrum of natural and human-made disasters that have occurred in Japan and New Zealand, including WWII and the atomic bombing of Japan and two recent major earthquake events, the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Christchurch Earthquake, which occurred in 2011. Through these studies, the book provides important insights into the events themselves and their tragic effects, but most significantly a multidisciplinary take on the different cultural responses to disaster, changing memories of disasters over time, the impacts of disaster on different societies, and the challenges post-disaster in reviving communities and traditional cultural practices. Bringing in humanities and social science perspectives to disaster studies, this collection offers a significant contribution to disaster studies.
This edited book examines the contemporary regional security concerns in the Asia-Pacific recognizing the ‘Butterfly effect’, the concept that small causes can have large effects: ‘the flap of a butterfly’s wings can cause a typhoon halfway around the world’. For many Asia-Pacific states, domestic security challenges are at least as important as external security considerations. Recent events (both natural disasters and man-made disasters) have pointed to the inherent physical, economic, social and political vulnerabilities that exist in the region. Both black swan events and persistent threats to security characterize the challenges within the Asia-Pacific region. Transnational security challenges such as global climate change, environmental degradation, pandemics, energy security, supply chain security, resource scarcity, terrorism and organized crime are shaping the security landscape regionally and globally. The significance of emerging transnational security challenges in the Asia-Pacific Region impact globally and conversely, security developments in those other regions affect the Asia-Pacific region.
