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This special issue focuses on the phenomena of disasters and crises, and how such extraordinary and disruptive events can be understood from the perspective of social anthropology. Critical events are not unique to Latin America, yet the impact of hydro-meteorological and geological disasters have dramatically increased in the region in the last century (IDB 2010, UNISDR and Corporation OSSO 2013) and many countries have historical and recent experience of profound social, political and economic crises. They are complex challenges for societies to manage, mitigate and reduce, which is why social science has a major contribution to make in understanding both the causes and the effects, and forward sustainable solutions. This special issue presents four articles based on empirical cases from Latin America, with an emphasis on Argentina and Brazil, which demonstrate the anthropological contribution to the understanding of critical events. The authors make no claim to provide a complete view of the anthropology of disasters and crises in Latin America, but rather to account for a growing research field in the region, which is already making important contributions to multidisciplinary studies of critical events, and to the policy development of disaster risk reduction and crisis management.Abstracto El tema del presente número especial el de los eventos críticos, extraordinarios y disruptivos; de los sucesos y situaciones que interrumpen un determinado orden social, ya sean de índole ambiental, tecnológico, financiero, político o social, y que tienen un impacto grande en la sociedad involucrada. Nos proponemos aquí introducir al lector cómo se puede abordar este objeto de estudio desde la antropología social. El problema de los desastres y de las crisis no es de ahora, ni es exclusivo de América Latina. No obstante, en la región han aumentado dramáticamente los impactos de los desastres de origen hidrometeorológico y geológico en el último siglo (BID 2010; UNISDR y Corporación OSSO 2013) y muchos países tienen experiencia histórica y reciente de profundas crisis sociales, políticas y económicas. Son eventos complejos y con un alto impacto social, político y económico que representan un desafío muy grande para las sociedades para gestionar, mitigar y reducir. Como tales, los estudios científicos sobre la problemática son indispensables para comprender tanto causas como efectos y así desarrollar soluciones sostenibles.En este número especial se presentan cuatro artículos que presentan casos empíricos de América Latina, con énfasis en Argentina y Brasil, que demuestran cual puede ser el aporte antropológico para analizar los eventos críticos, antes, durante y después. El número no aspira dar una visión exhaustiva de la antropología de desastres y crisis en América Latina, sino dar cuenta de un campo de investigación en crecimiento en la región que ya está haciendo importantes contribuciones, tanto a los estudios multidisciplinarios de los eventos críticos, como a las políticas de reducción de riesgo y de gestión de crisis y desastres.

After years of high growth, low unemployment and low inflation, the Czech economy has suffered a sudden setback. Speculative attacks on the currency have forced the Central Bank to abandon its fixed exchange rate. The government has now announced austerity measures to reduce the massive current account deficit. In the short run, these measures will lead to lower growth and higher unemployment. Moreover, the devaluation of the Czech Koruna will make it more difficult to further reduce inflation. The crisis is due in part to the previous boom in domestic absorption. The expansion of absorption has been fuelled by massive capital inflows which helped to maintain the fixed exchange rate. At the same time, productivity growth has been sluggish despite high investment-to-GDP ratios, and wages have increased substantially despite sluggish productivity growth. These developments have contributed to the overvaluation of the exchange rate. As a result, the competitiveness of the tradables sector has been weakened, and the current account deficit has widened dramatically. The policy measures now announced aim at reducing domestic demand by cutting fiscal expenditure, raising taxes, devaluing the currency, and containing wage growth in the public sector. However, the government has so far failed to address the microeconomic issues that are at the heart of these supply-side problems. These include inefficiencies in financial intermediation, ineffective bankruptcy procedures, and weaknesses in the corporate governance of enterprises resulting from mass privatization. Solutions to the problems in the banking and financial sector should comprise tax incentives for banks to provision for loan losses, decentralized debt restructuring, the streamlining of bankruptcy proceedings, upgrading of the court system's resources, and a greater political will to enforce the existing bankruptcy legislation. Opening up for foreign banks more decisively and in particular allowing foreign banks to participate in the privatization of the large commercial banks can help to improve the efficiency of the banking system and the corporate governance role of banks. In order to encourage funds to manage their portfolios for the benefit of investors, funds should be encouraged to register as open-end unit trusts rather than as joint stock companies. On the macroeconomic level, the government is moving in the right direction. As regards the medium term outlook, fundamentals of the Czech economy remain strong. However, decisive and timely action to improve the institutional framework is needed if the economy is to overcome the present crisis and to reach a new, sustainable growth path.

AbstractIn this inductive study we explore the relational microdynamics of organizational resilience in adventure racing. Drawing from an organizing lens, we frame resilience as an ongoing process by which organizational actors work together to absorb strain and maintain functioning within dynamically uncertain and adverse environments. Adventure racing exemplifies such a context: stress, technological breakdowns, and untoward environmental conditions are both frequent and unpredictable. By analyzing and triangulating interview data from 103 members of 53 adventure racing teams, we found that racers experienced ongoing adversity punctuated by discrete acute shocks. Moreover, resilience was accomplished and re‐accomplished through processes of interrelating, in which racers worked together to mutually adjust roles and engagement, coordinated through distributed sensemaking. These processes allowed racers to better align with reality from one moment to the next, not only responding to and absorbing adversity as it arose but also shaping their emergent context. The patterns of interrelating established in response to adversity fuelled cycles of resilience or vulnerability and the capability to manage strain over the longer term. Our findings suggest resilience in organizations is more impermanent, enacted and relational than conceptual models currently portray.

How can a place be built and managed so that it is safe for people to live? Ironically, many governments and citizens keep on asking the same question after every new disaster. Why, even with high levels of investment in increasing government?s capacity to manage disasters, do the impacts of disasters continue to increase? What can the governments do differently? What is the role of local communities? Where should aid agencies invest? This book looks into these critical questions and highlights how current capacity development efforts might be resulting in the opposite?capacity crisis or capability trap. The book provides a new approach for understanding and developing effective local capacity for reducing and managing future disaster impacts.

Crisis learning is critical for ensuring that better actions are taken for an impending or a future crisis. Learning from past epidemics enables public health authorities to assess aspects of the overall response system to improve the system. Moreover, learning during a crisis makes it possible to develop an approach to address unique and rapidly evolving epidemic situations. In this study, the literature was reviewed, and interviews were conducted with a director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a regulatory manager of a multinational medical equipment company. On the basis of that research, this article examines how crisis learning has facilitated a South Korean disease control agency's surveillance of infectious diseases and its development of in vitro diagnosis kits. Those kits enabled qualified private health providers to diagnose COVID-19 infections in cooperation with multiple partners in the early period of the outbreak response. The agency's learning from a past epidemic crisis, shared sense-making, and proactive efforts helped the nation to flatten the curve of the numbers of the confirmed cases in a short period of time. This study provides insights for national public health authorities tackling infectious disease outbreaks.

The parallel universe of cyberspace, created by computer networks, ones, and zeros, has changed the rules of the game. It would be inevitable for crisis management research to remain unaffected by the new challenges arising. The present article delves into the underexplored concept of cyber crises, by initiating an academic problematization of crisis conceptualization. Drawing from transboundary crisis management theory, it examines two major cyberattacks, the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack and the 2016 hacking of the DNC, and explores an empirical puzzle: why are these cases not characterized as crises even though they fit already existing definitions? The article contributes to the theory of transboundary crises by shedding light on previously overlooked cyber crisis characteristics and attempting to propose a definition of cyber crises. The way we perceive crises has a direct impact on how we manage them. Broadening the research agenda and understanding the concept of a cyber crisis could pave the way for a more effective and proactive response to new threats, which is what the following pages attempt to demonstrate.

Because planning is often viewed as being external to the total management process, planning activities are often isolated from the management system within which they take place & which they are intended to serve. As a result, the use & utility of the planning product as a tool for management decision-making, & a more rational approach to the allocation of society's resources are significantly diminished. To a large extent, the "drug crisis" & society's response to it has suffered from this isolation of planning activity from the management process. The practical side of the process as it actually takes place is discussed, concentrating on the major factors that affect the ultimate use, or nonuse, of the product. More specifically, the various purposes for research data in the area of drugs & social policy are described; different types of planning activities that may be used to obtain the data needed are defined & described; major approaches to planning as currently utilized are given; some of the problems in current planning activities are highlighted; & improvements that can be made in the planning process & in the use of its products are recommended. Modified HA.

Governments around the world are utilizing data and information systems to manage the COVID-19-crisis. To obtain an overview of all these efforts, this global report presents the expert reports of 21 countries regarding the relation between the COVID-19-crisis and the information polity. A comparative analysis of these reports highlights that governments focus on strengthening six functions: management of information for crisis management, publishing public information for citizens, providing digital services to citizens, monitoring citizens in public space, facilitating information exchange between citizens and developing innovative responses to COVID-19. The comparative overview of information responses to the COVID-19-crisis shows that these responses cannot only be studied from a rational perspective on government information strategies but need to be studied as political and symbolic interventions.

Governments around the world are utilizing data and information systems to manage the COVID-19-crisis. To obtain an overview of all these efforts, this global report presents the expert reports of 21 countries regarding the relation between the COVID-19-crisis and the information polity. A comparative analysis of these reports highlights that governments focus on strengthening six functions: management of information for crisis management, publishing public information for citizens, providing digital services to citizens, monitoring citizens in public space, facilitating information exchange between citizens and developing innovative responses to COVID-19. The comparative overview of information responses to the COVID-19-crisis shows that these responses cannot only be studied from a rational perspective on government information strategies but need to be studied as political and symbolic interventions.

AbstractThe distribution of the patients among available hospitals is pivotal to effectively manage a terrorist attack. Unfortunately, by the time of the arrival of the first relief unit, victims self‐present to the hospital outside any distribution plan (spontaneous hospitalization). This paper presents an evidence‐based investigation of victims' spontaneous hospitalization and distribution of patients in the immediate aftermath of the Manchester Arena Bombing with a focus on patients who self‐presented at the local hospitals by nonambulance vehicles. Despite the quick arrival of the relief units, 85 patients (61%) made their own way to the hospitals, self‐presenting at an emergency department outside the dispersal framework. Results of this paper show that, differently from the literature, survivors not always decided to go to the closest hospital but, for people living close to the event (less than 15 miles) the decision is to go toward the most familiar hospital close to their home rather than the event. This paper can be used to improve response plans after terrorist attacks that consider victims' behavior and the phenomena of "reverse triage" and "wave of casualties"; without such consideration, in fact, a planned distribution and the consequently management plan effectiveness and efficacy are lower.

When societies are faced with a crisis, the reputation, or even the fate, of the authorities hangs in the balance. If the authorities manage to communicate their handling of the crisis successfully, the crisis can strengthen credibility and trust between the public and its authorities. But if they don't succeed, the crisis can discredit the authorities. This study explores how the Norwegian Government and the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) successfully managed to communicate an imminent terror threat to the general public during the summer of 2014. This is examined in a qualitative study that applies theory within crisis communication and framing. Based on the theories, this study understands successful crisis communication as the authorities' ability to show their side of the story and get their frames accepted by the media, and hereby win the dominant narrative of the crisis. This study proves the "evade responsibility frame", the "reducing the offensiveness frame", the "cultural congruence frame" and the "united management frame" to be central in the crisis communication by PST and the Government. The study further concludes that the media accepted these frames and that these frames were successfully disseminated in the media coverage, which contributed to shape the authorities' handling of the crisis as successful. The only critical frame detected in the media coverage was the "exploitation of the crisis frame". Within the "exploitation of the crisis frame" the media commentators warned about possible exploitation of the event and unfortunates consequences, for example that this event could be used to implement new policies that could be deemed detrimental to an open democracy. However, based on the media's overall acceptance of the authorities' frames, it is safe to conclude that PST and the Government successfully managed to communicate the terrorism threat. The authorities managed to win the dominant narrative of the crisis, which contributed to define the authorities' handling of the crisis as successful and must likely shape public opinion in their favour. In this study, I have thus demonstrated how a crisis does not only pose a threat towards the authorities, but also an opportunity if the crisis is communicated successfully. ; M-IR

International audience ; As Ulrich Beck noted in « The Risk Society » (1986), the radical change in the threats to contemporary societies implies an equally radical change in the way in which collective action is managed and regulated. The process of globalization further aggravates the distortion between crisis-control capabilities and the reality of threats. In this context, the real challenge of public reforms lies in the ability of States to answer some questions: how can the framework and modes of action of the nation-state, which remains the unavoidable place of democratic control, be changed in a process of globalization that is accompanied by an increase in systemic risks? how can public strategies be adapted to collective action based on the paradigm of sustainable development, involving new forms of arbitrage between public goods and market activities ? In the face of these challenges, the strategies for reforming the States in and their management systems are totally obsolete. To support this finding, this paper compares the fundamental principles of organizing public action with the analyzes of a few sociologists who have particularly thought about the changes taking place: Antony Giddens and « the consequences of modernity »; Ulrich Beck and « the risk society »; Hans Jonas and « the imperative of responsibility »; Jean-Pierre Dupuy and « the enlightened catastrophism »; Francis Chateauraynaud and « the whistleblowers »; Saskia Sassen and « the global city » etc. This confrontation highlights the extent of the delay in the way public action adapts to the challenges of the contemporary world. ; Comme Ulrich Beck le notait dans « La société du risque » (1986), le changement radical des menaces qui pèsent sur les sociétés contemporaines implique un changement tout aussi radical des modalités de pilotage et de régulation de l'action collective. Le processus de mondialisation aggrave encore la distorsion entre les capacités de maîtrise des crises et la réalité des menaces. Dans ce contexte, le véritable enjeu des réformes publiques se situe dans la capacité des États à répondre à quelques questions : comment faire évoluer le cadre et les modes d'action de l'État-nation, qui reste le lieu incontournable du contrôle démocratique, dans un processus de globalisation qui s'accompagne d'une multiplication des risques systémiques ? comment adapter les stratégies publiques à une action collective fondée sur le paradigme du développement durable, impliquant des formes d'arbitrage nouvelles entre biens collectifs et activités marchandes ?Face à ces enjeux, les stratégies de réforme des États et de leurs systèmes de management sont totalement obsolètes. Pour étayer ce constat, ce papier confronte les principes fondamentaux d'organisation de l'action publique aux analyses de quelques sociologues qui ont particulièrement pensé les mutations en cours : Antony Giddens et « les conséquences de la modernité »; Ulrich Beck et « la société du risque » ; Hans Jonas et « le principe responsabilité »; Jean-Pierre Dupuy et « le catastrophisme éclairé » ; Francis Chateauraynaud et « les lanceurs d'alerte » ; Saskia Sassen et « la ville globale » etc. Cette confrontation met en évidence l'ampleur du retard dans la façon dont l'action publique s'adapte aux défis du monde contemporain.