TEMPORAL BELONGINGS
  • Home
  • About
  • Resources
    • The Library
    • Presentations
    • Interview Series
    • Working Paper Series
    • Related Projects >
      • Scoping Study
      • Pilot Projects
      • Time and Alternative Economies
  • Events
    • Timely methods for novel times
    • The Material Life of Time
    • The Material Life of Time Pilot
    • The Social Life of Time >
      • Registration
      • Keynotes
      • Programme
      • Venue
      • Accommodation
    • Temporal Design >
      • Presentations
    • Immortality and Infinitude >
      • Presentations
    • Power, Time and Agency >
      • Presentations
    • Methods Festival >
      • Presentations
    • Time in the Archives
    • Hope and Community Futures
    • Temporal Conflicts >
      • Presentations
    • Community Connectivities >
      • What we got up to...
      • Presentations
      • Collaborative Sessions
  • Contact

News, CFP, Events & more

CfP RGS-IBG 2019 Calamitous 'events'? Exploring perceptions of disaster timeframes

27/1/2019

 
CfP RGS-IBG 2019 Calamitous 'events'? Exploring perceptions of disaster timeframes

Notions of temporality lie at the heart of the idea of disaster, with lived 'events' underpinned by the existential experience of trauma or abnormality across a defined human population (Perry, 2007; Quarantelli, 1985). Yet what constitutes such a (disaster) event remains deeply problematic, with allegations the event has even been 'dissolved' in analysis (Fassin and Vasquez, 2005). The impact of hazards like storms, tsunamis or even chemical leaks can most clearly be located in a particular time and space, yet none of these automatically results in a disaster or in a shared traumatic memory. Safeguards are frequently put in place to prevent hazards turning into disasters, while distinct cultural developments have sometimes equipped people with the means to familiarise hazards (or even traumas) to the point of avoiding them embedding in memory (Kruger et al., 2015).

Disasters are always interpreted through social experience in specific social time (Oliver-Smith and Hoffman, 2002). Nonetheless, notions of disasters as unexpected, negative, traumatic events are being eroded from multiple sides. Disasters have been discussed variously as ('beautiful') focusing events (Lowry, 2006), as forcing breakthroughs in 'disaster diplomacy' (Kelman, 2012), as potentially changing the social contract (Pelling and Dill, 2010), or as punctuating an equilibrium (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993). Approaches focussed on adaptive management and social-ecological resilience (Renn, 2008) tend to see disaster events as part of cyclical or functional processes involving the disruption and restoration of normative stability, and as such undercut subjective 'meaning' and 'memory' among individuals and communities, just as they demote questions of social and political power.

Conversely (or in parallel), vulnerability analyses go a long way toward explaining the unequal experience of hazard impacts, and thus the kinds of social and spatial conditions that actually produce a disaster. Chronic and ongoing vulnerability can be a disaster in the making, long before the earth shakes - in this sense all disasters are 'slow-onset' (Kelman, 2018). From this perspective the focus on discreet shocks or events, rooted in mysterious 'outside' forces, can side-track us from the development issues that count. From Oliver-Smith's (2012) Peruvian '500-year earthquake' to Wisner et al.'s (2004) build-up of 'pressure', and onwards to the creation of increasingly hazardous and uneven planetary space under capitalist urbanization (Braun, 2014; Brenner, 2013), the idea of what constitutes the event itself is dissipating under the weight of socio-spatial production. 'Eventfulness' can be an abstraction based around late liberal governance or governmentality; the internalised strategy of blaming nature an integral part of what sustains everyday marginality as a 'non-event' (Povinelli, 2011). From geophysical hazards to industrial pollution, questioning the diffusion of knowledge of hazardous environments speaks to the manipulation of social subjectivities and the limitations of perceptions of existential experience (Auyero and Swistun, 2009).

In this panel we seek papers exploring spatial and temporal contexts and limits surrounding disaster events, or as the case may be, disaster non-events. Whether they are primarily theory-based or also engage with a disaster case study, contributions will ideally place theories in productive dialogue.

Convenors:
Robert Coates and Jeroen Warner
Disaster Studies, Sociology of Development and Change, Wageningen University
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to [email protected] by 7th February 2019. Discussion over possible contributions is also welcome.

Comments are closed.

    Announcements

    New article published reflecting on our online conference, and how we designed for conviviality.

    What's this? 

    Our curated listing of events and news related to time, temporality and social life.

    If you would like your event considered for inclusion contact us.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    February 2022
    November 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016

    Categories

    All
    Anticipation
    Arts
    CFP
    Cities
    Economics
    Embodied Time
    Environment
    Future
    Geography
    Globalisation
    Jobs
    Material Time
    Media
    Special Issue
    Technology And Time
    Time And Agency
    Urbanism

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About
  • Resources
    • The Library
    • Presentations
    • Interview Series
    • Working Paper Series
    • Related Projects >
      • Scoping Study
      • Pilot Projects
      • Time and Alternative Economies
  • Events
    • Timely methods for novel times
    • The Material Life of Time
    • The Material Life of Time Pilot
    • The Social Life of Time >
      • Registration
      • Keynotes
      • Programme
      • Venue
      • Accommodation
    • Temporal Design >
      • Presentations
    • Immortality and Infinitude >
      • Presentations
    • Power, Time and Agency >
      • Presentations
    • Methods Festival >
      • Presentations
    • Time in the Archives
    • Hope and Community Futures
    • Temporal Conflicts >
      • Presentations
    • Community Connectivities >
      • What we got up to...
      • Presentations
      • Collaborative Sessions
  • Contact