1932

Abstract

The modernist usage of the word crisis conveys the idea of an event that acts as a historical judgment, marks an epochal transition, and sometimes leads to a utopian era. Furthermore, current uses of crisis in the political sphere often figure catastrophic events as the result of errors and malfunctions, drawing attention away from the quotidian and normatively accepted practices and policies that produce them. Anthropological definitions of disaster, in contrast, understand catastrophes as the end result of historical processes by which human practices enhance the materially destructive and socially disruptive capacities of geophysical phenomena, technological malfunctions, and communicable diseases and inequitably distribute disaster risk according to lines of gender, race, class, and ethnicity. Despite this fundamental difference between customary and scholarly definitions of crises and disasters, the former term is commonly used to refer to the latter by political elites and academics alike. This article reviews the merits and limitations of the crisis concept in the analysis of disasters on the basis of anthropological research on catastrophes during the last 40 years and provides an overview of the analytical diversification of disaster anthropology since the 1970s.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041635
2017-10-23
2024-03-29
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/anthro/46/1/annurev-anthro-102116-041635.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041635&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

Literature Cited

  1. Adams V. 2013. Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  2. Agamben G. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life transl. D Heller-Roazen Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  3. Alexander D. 1997. The study of natural disasters, 1977–1997: some reflection on a changing field of knowledge. Disasters 21:284–304 [Google Scholar]
  4. Audefroy JF, Cabrera Sanchez BN. 2014. Populations déplacées par les désastres et par le changement climatique au Mexique. Terres (Dés)humanisées: Ressources et Climat C Bréda, M Chaplier, J Hermesse, E Piccoli 239–59 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belg.: Acad.-L'Harmattan Press [Google Scholar]
  5. Bankoff G, Hilhorst D. 2004. Introduction: mapping vulnerability. Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development, and People G Bankoff, G Frerks, D Hilhorst 1–9 London: Earthscan [Google Scholar]
  6. Barrios RE. 2010. You found us doing this, this is our way: criminalizing Second Lines, Super Sunday, and habitus in post-Katrina New Orleans. Identities: Glob. Stud. Cult. Power 17:586–612 [Google Scholar]
  7. Barrios RE. 2011. “If you did not grow up here, you cannot appreciate living here”: neoliberalism, space-time, and affect in post-Katrina recovery planning. Hum. Organ. 70:118–27 [Google Scholar]
  8. Barrios RE. 2014. “Here, I'm not at ease”: anthropological perspectives on community resilience. Disasters 38:329–50 [Google Scholar]
  9. Barrios RE. 2016. Resilience: a commentary from the vantage point of anthropology. Ann. Anthropol. Pract. 40:28–38 [Google Scholar]
  10. Barrios RE. 2017. Governing Affect: Neoliberalism and Disaster Recovery Lincoln: Univ. Neb. Press
  11. Benadusi M. 2016. The earth will tremble? Expert knowledge confronted after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. Archivo Antropol. Medit. 18:17–32 [Google Scholar]
  12. Beriss D. 2012. Red beans and rebuilding: an iconic dish, memory and culture in New Orleans. Rice and Beans: A Unique Dish in a Hundred Places R Wilk, L Barbosa 241–63 London: Berg [Google Scholar]
  13. Biersack A. 1999. Introduction: from the ‘new ecology’ to new ecologies. Am. Anthropol. 101:5–18 [Google Scholar]
  14. Boke C. 2015. Will there be food when the trucks stop running?: An exploration of affective landscapes of preparation in Vermont Presented at Annu. Meet. Soc. Appl. Anthropol , 75th. Pittsburgh:
  15. Boke C. 2016. “Care.” Theorizing the contemporary. Cult. Anthropol. July 12. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/913-care
  16. Breunlin R, Regis HA. 2006. Putting the Ninth Ward on the map: race, place, and transformation in Desire, New Orleans. Am. Anthropol. 108:744–64 [Google Scholar]
  17. Briggs C. 2004. Theorizing modernity conspiratorially: science, scale, and the political economy of public discourse in examinations of a cholera epidemic. Am. Ethnol. 3:164–87 [Google Scholar]
  18. Briones Gamboa F. 2010. Inundados, reubicados, y olvidados: traslado del riesgo de desastres en Motozintla, Chiapas. Rev. Ing. 30:132–44 [Google Scholar]
  19. Brooks E. 2015. The community as petri dish: scaling water insecurity and climate change in a California town Presented at Annu. Meet. Soc. Appl. Anthropol. , 75th. Pittsburgh:
  20. Browne KE. 2015. Standing in the Need: Culture, Comfort, and Coming Home after Katrina Austin: Univ. Tex. Press
  21. Button GV. 2010. Disaster Culture: Knowledge and Uncertainty in the Wake of Human and Environmental Catastrophe Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press
  22. Button GV, Eldridge EN. 2016. A poison runs through it: the Elk River chemical spill in West Virginia. See Button & Schuller 2016a 19–43
  23. Button GV, Oliver-Smith A. 2008. Disaster, displacement, and employment: distortion of labor markets during post-Katrina reconstruction. Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies of Disaster Reconstruction N Gunewardena, M Schuller 123–46 Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press [Google Scholar]
  24. Button GV, Schuller M. 2016a. Contextualizing Disaster New York: Berghahn
  25. Button GV, Schuller M. 2016b. Introduction. See Button & Schuller 2016a 1–18
  26. Casagrande DG, McIlvane-Newsad H, Jones EC. 2015. Social networks of help-seeking in different types of disaster responses to the 2008 Mississippi River floods. Hum. Organ. 74:351–61 [Google Scholar]
  27. Cernea MM. 1997. The risks and reconstruction model for resettling displaced populations. World Dev 25:1569–87 [Google Scholar]
  28. Charnley S, Poe MR, Ager AA, Spies TA, Platt EK, Olsen KA. 2015. A burning problem: social dynamics of disaster risk reduction through wildfire mitigation. Hum. Organ. 74:329–40 [Google Scholar]
  29. Collier SJ, Lakoff A. 2015. Vital systems security: reflexive biopolitics and the government of emergency. Theory Cult. Soc. 32:19–51 [Google Scholar]
  30. Companion M, Chaiken MS. 2017. Responses to Disasters and Climate Change: Understanding Vulnerability and Fostering Resilience Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press [Google Scholar]
  31. Córdoba E. 2012. Desastre y reubicación en Nuevo Juan de Grijalva: primera ciudad autosustentalbe del mundo BA Thesis Benemérita Univ. Autónoma Puebla
  32. Crate SA, Nuttall M. 2016. Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions New York: Routledge [Google Scholar]
  33. di Leonardo M. 2008. Introduction: new global and American landscapes of inequality. New Landscapes of Inequality: Neoliberalism and the Erosion of Democracy in America JL Collins, M di Leonardo, B Williams 3–20 Santa Fe, NM: Sch. Adv. Res. Press [Google Scholar]
  34. DiFruscia KT. 2010. Shapes of freedom: an interview with Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Altérités188–98
  35. Enarson E. 2000. Gender and Natural Disasters Work. Pap. 1 Geneva: InFocus Progr. Crisis Response and Reconstr http://natlex.ilo.ch/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ed_emp/@emp_ent/@ifp_crisis/documents/publication/wcms_116391.pdf
  36. Ensor M. 2009. Gender matters in post-disaster reconstruction. The Legacy of Hurricane Mitch: Lessons from Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Honduras MO Ensor 129–55 Tucson: Univ. Ariz. Press [Google Scholar]
  37. Faas AJ. 2016. All the years combine: the expansion and contraction of time and memory in disaster response. See Companion & Chaiken 2016 249–58
  38. Faas AJ, Barrios RE. 2015. Applied anthropology of risks, hazards, and disasters. Hum. Organ. 74:287–95 [Google Scholar]
  39. Faas AJ, Velez A-L, FitzGerald C, Nowell BL, Steelman TA. 2016. Patterns of preference and practice: bridging actors in wildfire response networks in the American Northwest. Disasters 41:527–48 [Google Scholar]
  40. Fabian J. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object New York: Columbia Univ. Press
  41. Fortun K. 2001. Advocacy after Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
  42. Foucault M. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences New York: Random House
  43. Foucault M. 1978. History of Sexuality 1 New York: Random House
  44. Foucault M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 C Gordon New York: Pantheon Books
  45. Foucault M. 2004. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978 M Senellart New York: Picador
  46. Franklin A. 2008. A choreography of fire: a post-humanist account of Australians and Eucalipts. See Pickering & Guzik 2008 17–45
  47. Freudenburg WR, Gramling R, Laska S, Erikson K. 2009. Catastrophe in the Making: The Engineering of Katrina and the Disasters of Tomorrow Washington, DC: Island Press
  48. Gamburd MR. 2013. The Golden Wave: Culture and Politics after Sri Lanka's Tsunami Disaster Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press
  49. Guggenheim S, Cernea MM. 1993. Anthropological approaches to involuntary resettlement: policy, practice, and theory. Anthropological Approaches to Resettlement: Policy, Practice, and Theory M Cernea, S Guggenheim 1–12 Boulder, CO: Westview Press [Google Scholar]
  50. Gunewardena N, Schuller M. 2008. Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press [Google Scholar]
  51. Harvey D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press
  52. Hastrup F. 2011. Weathering the World: Recovery in the Wake of the Tsunami in a Tamil Fishing Village Oxford, UK: Berghahn Books
  53. Hewitt K. 1983. Interpretations of Calamity: From the Viewpoint of Human Ecology Boston, MA: Allen and Unwin [Google Scholar]
  54. Hoffman S. 1999. The regenesis of traditional gender patterns in the wake of disaster. See Oliver-Smith & Hoffman 1999 173–91
  55. Howe C. 2015. Latin America in the Anthropocene: energy transitions and climate change mitigations. J. Lat. Am. Caribb. Anthropol. 20:231–41 [Google Scholar]
  56. Howe C, Pandian A. 2016. Lexicon for an Anthropocene yet unseen. Theorizing the contemporary. Cult. Anthropol. Jan. 22. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/803-lexicon-for-an-anthropocene-yet-unseen
  57. Howitt AM, Leonard HB. 2009. Managing Crises: Responses to Large Scale Emergencies Washington, DC: CQ Press
  58. Hsu M, Howitt R, Miller F. 2015. Procedural vulnerability and institutional capacity deficits in post-disaster recovery and reconstruction: insights from Wutai Rukai experiences of Typhoon Morakot. Hum. Organ. 74:308–18 [Google Scholar]
  59. Ingold T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill New York: Routledge
  60. Integr. Res. Disaster Risk. 2011. Forensic Investigations of Disasters: The FORIN Project IRDR FORIN Publ. No. 1 Beijing: Integr. Res. Disaster Risk http://www.irdrinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/FORIN-REPORT_web.pdf
  61. Jackson AT. 2011a. Diversifying the dialogue post-Katrina—race, place, and displacement in New Orleans, U.S.A. Transform. Anthropol. 19:3–16 [Google Scholar]
  62. Jackson DD. 2011b. Scents of place: the dysplacement of a First Nations community in Canada. Am. Anthropol. 113:606–18 [Google Scholar]
  63. Johnson C. 2011. The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans Minneapolis: Univ. Minn. Press [Google Scholar]
  64. Jones EC, Murphy AD. 2009. The Political Economy of Hazards and Disasters Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press
  65. Jones EC, Murphy AD. 2015. Social organization of suffering and justice-seeking in a tragic day care fire disaster. World Suffering and Quality of Life 56 RE Anderson 281–91 Dordrecht, Neth.: Springer [Google Scholar]
  66. Klein N. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism New York: Picador Press
  67. Koselleck R. 1988. Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  68. Koselleck R. 2006. Crisis, transl. MW Richter. J. Hist. Ideas 67:357–400 [Google Scholar]
  69. Kroll-Smith S, Brown-Jeffy S. 2013. A tale of two American cities: disaster, class and citizenship in San Francisco 1906 and New Orleans 2005. J. Hist. Sociol. 26:527–51 [Google Scholar]
  70. Latour B. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern transl. C Porter Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press
  71. Latour B. 1999. Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press
  72. Lévi-Strauss C. 1966. The Savage Mind Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press
  73. Lipsitz G. 2006. Learning from New Orleans: the social warrant of hostile privatism and competitive consumer citizenship. Cult. Anthropol. 21:451–68 [Google Scholar]
  74. Macías JM. 2009. Investigación Evaluativa de Reubicaciones Humanas por Desastres en México Tlalpan, Mex.: CIESAS
  75. Makley C. 2014. Spectacular compassion: “natural” disasters and national mourning in China's Tibet. Crit. Asian Stud. 46:371–404 [Google Scholar]
  76. Maldonado JK, Shearer C, Bronen R, Peterson K, Lazrus H. 2013. The impact of climate change on tribal communities in the US: displacement, relocation, and human rights. Clim. Change 120:601–14 [Google Scholar]
  77. Marchezini V. 2015. The biopolitics of disaster: power, discourses, and practices. Hum. Organ. 74:362–71 [Google Scholar]
  78. Marino E. 2015. Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground: An Ethnography of Climate Change in Shishmaref, Alaska Fairbanks: Univ. Alsk. Press
  79. Marino E, Lazrus H. 2015. Migration or forced displacement? The complex choices of climate change and disaster migrants in Shishmaref, Alaska and Nanumea, Tuvalu. Hum. Organ. 74:341–50 [Google Scholar]
  80. Masco J. 2006. Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
  81. Masco J. 2009. Bad weather: on planetary crisis. Soc. Stud. Sci. 40:7–40 [Google Scholar]
  82. Maskrey A. 1993. Los Desastres No Son Naturales Bogotá, Colomb.: La RED, Intermed. Technol. Dev. Group
  83. McCaffrey S. 2004. Thinking of wildfire as natural hazard. Soc. Nat. Resour. 17:509–16 [Google Scholar]
  84. Mitchell T. 2002. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  85. Nielsen-Pincus M, Charnely S, Mosely C. 2013. The influence of market proximity on national forest hazardous fuels reduction treatments. For. Sci. 59:566–77 [Google Scholar]
  86. Norris FH, Stevens SP, Pfefferbaum B, Wyche KF, Pfefferbaum RL. 2008. Community resilience as a metaphor, theory, set of capacities, and strategy for disaster readiness. Am. J. Community Psychol. 41:127–50 [Google Scholar]
  87. O'Keefe P, Westgate K, Wisner B. 1976. Taking the naturalness out of natural disasters. Nature 260:566–67 [Google Scholar]
  88. Oliver-Smith A. 1986. The Martyred City: Death and Rebirth in the Andes Albuquerque: Univ. N. M. Press
  89. Oliver-Smith A. 1996. Anthropological research on hazards and disasters. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 25:303–28 [Google Scholar]
  90. Oliver-Smith A. 1999. “What is a disaster?”: Anthropological perspectives on a persistent question. See Oliver-Smith & Hoffman 1999 18–34
  91. Oliver-Smith A. 2002. Theorizing disasters: nature, power and culture. Catastrophe & Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster S Hoffman, A Oliver-Smith 23–48 Santa Fe, NM: Sch. Adv. Res. Press [Google Scholar]
  92. Oliver-Smith A. 2009. Development & Dispossession: The Crisis of Forced Displacement and Resettlement Santa Fe, NM: Sch. Adv. Res. Press [Google Scholar]
  93. Oliver-Smith A, Hoffman S. 1999. The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective New York: Routledge
  94. Ong A. 2005. Ecologies of expertise: assembling flows, managing citizenship. See Ong & Collier 2005 337–53
  95. Ong A. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  96. Ong A, Collier SJ. 2005. Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell
  97. Petryna A. 2002. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
  98. Pickering A. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
  99. Pickering A, Guzik K. 2008. The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  100. Povinelli EA. 2006. Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  101. R. Soc., US Natl. Acad. Sci. 2014. Climate Change: Evidence and Causes Washington, DC: US Natl. Acad. Sci http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/events/a-discussion-on-climate-change-evidence-and-causes/
  102. Rabinow P. 2005. Midst anthropology's problems. See Ong & Collier 2005 40–54
  103. Rappaport RA. 1984. Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press
  104. Reddy E. 2015. When can we repair that field station? Mexican technoscientific earthquake risk mitigation meets narco violence Presented at Annu. Meet. Soc. Appl. Anthropol. , 75th. Pittsburgh:
  105. Reddy E. 2016. Stability. Theorizing the Contemporary. Cult. Anthropol. July 12. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/920-stability
  106. Roitman J. 2011. Crisis. Polit. Concepts Crit. Lex Winter: http://www.politicalconcepts.org/issue1/crisis/#fn-17–1 [Google Scholar]
  107. Rozario K. 2007. The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
  108. Sahlins M. 1972. Stone Age Economics Chicago: Aldine and Atherton
  109. Sahlins M. 1983. Other times, other customs: the anthropology of history. Am. Anthropol. 85:517–44 [Google Scholar]
  110. Samuels A. 2015. Narratives of uncertainty: the affective force of child-trafficking rumors in postdisaster Aceh, Indonesia. Am. Anthropol. 117:229–41 [Google Scholar]
  111. Schuller M. 2012. Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press
  112. Scudder T, Colson E. 1982. From welfare to development: a conceptual framework for the analysis of dislocated people. Involuntary Migration and Resettlement: The Problems and Responses of Dislocated People A Hansen, A Oliver-Smith 267–87 Boulder, CO: Westview Press [Google Scholar]
  113. Sherrieb K, Norris FH, Galea S. 2010. Measuring capacities for community resilience. Soc. Indic. Res. 99:227–47 [Google Scholar]
  114. Simpson E. 2013. The Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat, India London: Hurst [Google Scholar]
  115. Smith N. 1984. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space London: Basil Blackwell
  116. Solway JS. 1994. Drought as revelatory crisis: an exploration of shifting entitlements and hierarchies in the Kalahari, Botswana. Dev. Change 25:471–98 [Google Scholar]
  117. Sternsdorff-Cisterna N. 2015. Food after Fukushima: risk and scientific citizenship in Japan. Am. Anthropol. 117:455–67 [Google Scholar]
  118. Strathern M. 1987. Out of context: the persuasive fictions of anthropology. Curr. Anthropol. 28:251–81 [Google Scholar]
  119. Taylor S. 2015. The construction of vulnerability along the Zarumilla River Valley in prehistory. Hum. Organ. 74:296–307 [Google Scholar]
  120. Tobin GA, Whiteford LM. 2002. Community resilience and volcano hazard: the eruption of Tungurahua and evacuation of the faldas in Ecuador. Disasters 26:28–48 [Google Scholar]
  121. Torres B. 2016. La construcción social el riesgo ante proyectos de desarrollo hidro-energético en la víspera del fin del mundo: estudio de tres casos en la Cuenca del Papaloapan y el Istmo de Tehuantepec (1940–2013) PhD Thesis Col. Michoacán Zamora de Hidalgo:
  122. Torry W. 1979. Anthropological studies in hazardous environments: past trends and new horizons. Curr. Anthropol. 20:517–40 [Google Scholar]
  123. Ullberg S. 2013. Watermarks: Urban Flooding and Memoryscape in Argentina Stockholm: Stockholm Univ. Press
  124. Zhang Q, Barrios RE. 2017. Imagining culture: the politics of culturally sensitive reconstruction and resilience building in post-Wenchuan Earthquake China. See Companion & Chaiken 2017 93–102
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041635
Loading
  • Article Type: Review Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error