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Harvesting Haiti
This collection ponders the personal and political
implications for Haitians at home and abroad resulting from the
devastating 2010 earthquake. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake
that struck Haiti in January 2010 was a debilitating event that
followed decades of political, social, and financial issues.
Leaving over 250,000 people dead, 300,000 injured, and 1.5 million
people homeless, the earthquake has had lasting repercussions on a
struggling nation. As the post-earthquake political situation
unfolded, Myriam Chancy worked to illuminate on-the-ground
concerns, from the vulnerable position of Haitian women to the
failures of international aid. Originally presented at invited
campus talks, published as columns for a newspaper in Trinidad and
Tobago, and circulated in other ways, her essays and creative
responses preserve the reactions and urgencies of the years
following the disaster.
In Harvesting Haiti , Chancy examines the structures
that have resulted in Haiti's post-earthquake conditions and
reflects at key points after the earthquake on its effects on
vulnerable communities. Her essays make clear the importance of
sustaining and supporting the dignity of Haitian lives and of
creating a better, contextualized understanding of the issues that
mark Haitians' historical and present realities, from gender parity
to the vexed relationship between Haiti and the Dominican
Republic.
eBook
Five days at Memorial : life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital
Here the author, a physician and reporter, provides a landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, and a suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice. She reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos. After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed and the heat climbed. Exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. She unspools the mystery of what happened in those days while the hospital fought for its life and launches into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing. In this book, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters.
Book
The Continuing Storm
More than fifteen years later, Hurricane Katrina maintains a
strong grip on the American imagination. The reason is not simply
that Katrina was an event of enormous scale, although it certainly
was by any measure one of the most damaging storms in American
history. But, quite apart from its lethality and destructiveness,
Katrina retains a place in living memory because it is one of the
most telling disasters in our recent national experience, revealing
important truths about our society and ourselves.
The final volume in the award-winning Katrina Bookshelf series
Higher Ground reflects upon what we have learned about
Katrina and about America. Kai Erikson and Lori Peek expand our
view of the disaster by assessing its ongoing impact on individual
lives and across the wide-ranging geographies where displaced New
Orleanians landed after the storm. Such an expanded view, the
authors argue, is critical for understanding the human costs of
catastrophe across time and space. Concluding with a broader
examination of disasters in the years since Katrina-including
COVID-19- The Continuing Storm is a sobering meditation on
the duration of a catastrophe that continues to exact steep costs
in human suffering.
eBook
The promises and pitfalls of disaster aid platforms: a case study of Lebanon’s 3RF
PurposeUsing critical disaster studies and state theory, we assess the disaster aid platform named Lebanon Reconstruction, Reform and Recovery Framework (3RF) that was put in place by international donors in the aftermath of the Beirut Port Blast in August 2020, in order to examine the effectiveness of its inclusive decision-making architecture, as well as its institutional building and legislative reform efforts.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses the case study approaach and relies on two original data sets compiled by authors, using desk reviews of academic literature and secondary data, in addition to 24 semi-structured expert interviews and participant observation for two years.FindingsThe aid platform appears innovative, participatory and effectively functioning toward recovery and reform. However, in practice, the government dismisses CSOs, undermines reforms and dodges state building, whereas the 3RF is structured in incoherent ways and operates according to conflicting logics, generating inertia and pitfalls that hinder effective participatory governance, prevent institutional building, and delay the making of projects.Research limitations/implicationsThe research contributes to critical scholarship as it addresses an important research gap concerning disaster aid platforms’ institutional design and governance that are under-studied in critical disaster studies and political studies. It also highlights the need for critical disaster studies to engage with state theory and vice-versa.Practical implicationsThe research contributes to evaluations of disaster recovery processes and outcomes. It highlights the limits of disaster aid platforms’ claims for participatory decision-making, institutional-building and reforms.Originality/valueThe paper amplifies critical disaster studies, through the reflexive analysis of a case-study of an aid platform.
Journal Article
Locked into a permanent position of vulnerability? Farmers’ trust and social capital with the government from Critical Disaster Studies perspectives
In disaster scholarship, there is limited understanding about how vulnerability is socially constructed by a convergence of varying social structural and historical processes that predispose certain vulnerable groups to disasters even before a hazard event occurs. This article aims to fill this void by using Critical Disaster Studies perspectives to explore the root causes of why crop farmers in the coastal region of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta have been locked in a permanent position of vulnerability. In order to develop more sustainable food supply chains, this exploration aims to shed light on the socio-cultural interpretations, experiences, and needs of disaster-affected farmers—the most important but vulnerable actors in the crop production hierarchy in Vietnam. Following a historic disaster between late 2015 and early 2016, local governments deliberately organised farmers into an agricultural cooperative in an attempt to support farmers in enhancing economic resilience and disaster preparedness. However, this intervention has failed since farmers refused to participate in the organisation’s activities. While this reaction may seem irrational, it reflects farmers’ distrust in the government, which was largely a result of their collective trauma from the state’s agricultural collectivisation policy implemented between 1976 and 1985. Farmers chose to cling to their individual working routines out of concern about government supervision, forcing them to take bigger risks and pay for the food supply chains’ catastrophic damage. Our findings show that a strained relationship between farmers and the government can jeopardise disaster recovery and resilience building. Our paper adds to the Critical Disaster Studies literature by revisiting the concepts of vulnerability and resilience, emphasising the importance of addressing socio-cultural vulnerability before improving disaster resilience.
Journal Article
Lessons of Disaster
Even before the wreckage of a disaster is cleared, one question is foremost in the minds of the public: \"What can be done to prevent this from happening again?\" Today, news media and policymakers often invoke the \"lessons of September 11\" and the \"lessons of Hurricane Katrina.\" Certainly, these unexpected events heightened awareness about problems that might have contributed to or worsened the disasters, particularly about gaps in preparation. Inquiries and investigations are made that claim that \"lessons\" were \"learned\" from a disaster, leading us to assume that we will be more ready the next time a similar threat looms, and that our government will put in place measures to protect us. In Lessons of Disaster, Thomas Birkland takes a critical look at this assumption. We know that disasters play a role in setting policy agendas—in getting policymakers to think about problems—but does our government always take the next step and enact new legislation or regulations? To determine when and how a catastrophic event serves as a catalyst for true policy change, the author examines four categories of disasters: aviation security, homeland security, earthquakes, and hurricanes. He explores lessons learned from each, focusing on three types of policy change: change in the larger social construction of the issues surrounding the disaster; instrumental change, in which laws and regulations are made; and political change, in which alliances are created and shifted. Birkland argues that the type of disaster affects the types of lessons learned from it, and that certain conditions are necessary to translate awareness into new policy, including media attention, salience for a large portion of the public, the existence of advocacy groups for the issue, and the preexistence of policy ideas that can be drawn upon. This timely study concludes with a discussion of the interplay of multiple disasters, focusing on the initial government response to Hurricane Katrina and the negative effect the September 11 catastrophe seems to have had on reaction to that tragedy.
eBook