Description
Book Synopsis A consistent problem that confronts disaster reduction is the disjunction between academic and expert knowledge and policies and practices of agencies mandated to deal with the concern. Although a great deal of knowledge has been acquired regarding many aspects of disasters, such as driving factors, risk construction, complexity of resettlement, and importance of peoples’ culture, very little has become protocol and procedure. Disaster Upon Disaster illuminates the numerous disjunctions between the suppositions, realities, agendas, and executions in the field, goes on to detail contingencies, predicaments, old and new plights, and finally advances solutions toward greatly improved outcomes.
Trade Review “Disaster upon Disaster is written in an accessible language and admirably avoids most of the features of academic discourse … and humanitarian … that produce and maintain gaps between academic anthropologists and their applied colleagues. Readers are presented with a fairly wide range of theoretical approaches, and the authors make a number of concrete suggestions for improvements.” • Anthropology Book Forum
“This book took me on a journey that I must admit was not always comfortable. It challenged me to think more locally… I might not agree with it in every way, but It did what every good academic volume should it made me think more deeply. Thanks to those who were involved in making it.” • Recovery Diva Blog
“The contributors, individually and collectively, do not merely point to or describe the gaps between knowledge, policy, and practice—they build sturdy bridges across them… I highly recommend this book”. • A.J. Faas, San Jose State University
“An important contribution to the applied anthropological research on disasters, for it brings together experiences and reflections of various key players in the field—anthropologists, practitioners (e.g. local and international NGO leaders, officials of various functions, and freelance consultants), and other constituents.” • Qiaoyun Zhang, Shanghai University
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Defining Disaster Upon Disaster: Why Risk Prevention and Disaster Response So Often Fail
Susanna M. Hoffman
PART I: ILLUMINATING THE FISSURES: SUPPOSITIONS, REALITIES, AGENDAS, AND EXECUTION
Chapter 1. Unwieldy Disasters: Engaging the Multiple Gaps and Connections That Make Catastrophes
Roberto E. Barrios
Chapter 2. Advocacy and Accomplishment: Contrasting Challenges to Successful Disaster Risk Management
Terry Jeggle
Chapter 3. Natural Hazard Events into Disasters: The Gap between Knowledge, Policy, and Practice as it Affects the Built Environment
Stephen Bender
Chapter 4. Humanitarian Response: Ideals Meet Reality
Adam Koons
Chapter 5. Disaster Theory Versus Practice? It’s a Long Rocky Road - A Practitioner’s View from the Ground
Jane Murphy Thomas
PART II: SITUATIONS AND EXPOSITIONS: PLIGHTS, PROBLEMS AND QUANDRIES
Chapter 6. Slow On-Set Disaster: Climate Change and the Gaps Between Knowledge, Policy, and Practice
Shirley J. Fiske and Elizabeth Marino
Chapter 7. Disrupting Gendered Outcomes: Addressing Disaster Vulnerability Through Stakeholder Participation
Brenda D. Phillips
Chapter 8. Resettlement for Disaster Risk Reduction: Global Knowledge, Local Application
Anthony Oliver-Smith
Chapter 9. From Nuclear Things to Things Nuclear: Minding the Gap at the Knowledge-Policy-Practice Nexus in Post-Fallout Fukushima
Ryo Morimoto
Chapter 10. “Haitians Need to be Patient” - Notes on Policy Advocacy in Washington Following Haiti’s Earthquake
Mark Schuller
PART III: REVAMPING APPARATUS AND OUTCOME
Chapter 11. The Scope and Importance of Anthropology and its Core Concept of Culture in Closing the Risk and Disaster Knowledge to Policy and Practice Gap
Susanna M. Hoffman
Chapter 12. Engaged: Applying the Anthropology of Disaster to Practitioner Settings and Policy Creation
Katherine E. Browne, Elizabeth Marino, Heather Lazrus, and Keely Maxwell
Chapter 13. Future Matter Matters: Disasters as a (Potential) Vehicle for Social Change. It’s About Time
Ann Bergman
Index
