Suchergebnisse

Theoretical framework -- The future present : a global worldview of disaster resilience -- The future past : disaster resilience in the Pacific -- The present future : disaster resilience in the Caribbean -- Being resilient -- A personalist ethics of resilience.

"This book critically examines the global diffusion and local reception of resilience through the implementation of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programmes in Pacific and Caribbean island states. Global efforts to strengthen local disaster resilience capacities have become a staple of international development activity in recent decades, yet the successful implementation of DRR projects designed to strengthen local resilience remains elusive. While there are pockets of success, a gap remains between global expectations and local realities. Through a critical realist study of global and local worldviews of resilience in the Pacific and Caribbean islands, this book argues that the global advocacy of DRR remains inadequate because of a failure to prioritise a person-orientated ethics in its conceptualization of disaster resilience. This regional comparison provides a valuable lens to understand the underlying social structures that makes resilience possible and the extent to which local governments, communities and persons interpret and modify their behaviour on risk when faced with the global message on resilience. This book will be of much interest to students of resilience, risk management, development studies, and area studies"--

"The abrupt power of disasters pays no respect to political boundaries or the social fabric in today's complex and globalized world. The interruption of flights from volcanic ash clouds, damaged oil refineries from hurricanes and collapsed buildings from earthquakes can cause major damage nationally, produce ripple effects on the global economy and disrupt countless lives. The use of regional organizations to mitigate and respond to disasters in transboundary spaces has become a global trend. Yet, we know very little about how and whether these organizations can provide an additional layer of security for the state. Through a comparative study of ten regional organizations, Hollis explores both rational and cultural based explanations for explaining the role regional organizations play as managers of risk; a role fashioned by national-based interests as well as global norms. A valuable contribution to the under-explored yet growing issue of global protection, this book will appeal to scholars of international relations and humanitarian and development studies. "--

The abrupt power of disasters pays no respect to political boundaries or the social fabric in today's complex and globalized world. The interruption of flights from volcanic ash clouds, damaged oil refineries from hurricanes and collapsed buildings from earthquakes can cause major damage nationally, produce ripple effects on the global economy and disrupt countless lives. The use of regional organizations to mitigate and respond to disasters in transboundary spaces has become a global trend. Yet, we know very little about how and whether these organizations can provide an additional layer of security for the state. Through a comparative study of ten regional organizations, Hollis explores both rational and cultural based explanations for explaining the role regional organizations play as managers of risk; a role fashioned by national-based interests as well as global norms. A valuable contribution to the under-explored yet growing issue of global protection, this book will appeal to scholars of international relations and humanitarian and development studies.

AbstractThe idea of contingency emphasizes uncertainty, the consequences of choice as well as our dependence on persons and events outside our control and ability to comprehend. The concept is thus integral to how we define and understand disasters and crises. Yet the way in which contingency informs research agendas is often restricted to a dialectic reaction to uncertainty, the unknown, and the uncontrollable. There is a tendency to explain or prescribe solutions based on an underlying impetus that champions certainty over chaos, knowledge over ignorance, and control over disorder. This type of thinking has been influential in shaping normative and epistemological research trajectories in crises and disaster disciplines, but it has also restricted the contours of what counts as acceptable research on disasters and crises. In this article, I demonstrate how alternative modes of inquiry can transcend this dialectic by producing knowledge in reception to – rather than in contention from—contingency. In an effort to find a middle road between overemphasizing contingency or necessity, critical realism is used to illustrate how uncertainty, the unknown and the uncontrollable can be recast as an accepted part of a stratified reality leading towards alternative ways of knowing and researching disasters and crises.

The Caribbean experience of natural hazards and disasters has continued to increase over the last half-century. The intensity and number of weather-related disasters combined with existing social, political and economic vulnerabilities form a complex arrangement that threatens the livelihoods of individuals and communities. Global attention to at-risk regions, such as the Caribbean and the Pacific, has intensified in the last decade as an array of international and regional actors have advocated a set of prescriptive action points based on the Hyogo Framework Programme for Action (HFA). As the decade of HFA draws to a close, and as the international community prepare to negotiate the post-HFA in March 2015, it is timely to ask whether the HFA has reached the societal level as its targeted audience. Based on extensive interviews with members of the international community, local disaster managers and intellectuals in the Caribbean region, this paper emphasises the limited success of the HFA and the importance of culture as a long-term strategy for ensuring a safer future.