Disasters, Risks and Revelation : Making Sense of Our Times

Disasters are part of the modern condition, a source of physical anxiety and existential angst, and they are increasing in frequency, cost and severity. Drawing on both disaster research and social theory, this book offers a critical examination of their causes, consequences and future avoidance. Cover 1 Contents 8 List of Tables 10 Acknowledgements 11 1 Introduction 13 Bad times on happy island: a not-so-fortunate place 13 More, bigger, dearer, worse: disasters define the times 16 Disasters, intensive and extensive 18 Key questions, concerns and themes 20 2 Sociology and Disasters 23 Grounding grand theory 24 Exposing social arrangements 27 Disasters: what counts? 27 Disasters: who counts? 29 The patterns of disasters 32 Speaking truth to power 33 Is there such a thing as a natural disaster? 37 Social transformation 43 3 Accidents, Disasters and Revelation 47 Of earthquakes and enlightenment 47 Ruptures, techs and wrecks 49 The practice of disaster: accidents and disasters as methodology 54 4 The New Normal 60 The worst of times 60 Who’s in control? 63 The machine that runs without us 65 The flash crash 67 Modernity and trust: expertise on trial 69 Normal accidents and expert systems 70 Shit happens 76 5 Riskworld? New Species of Trouble 79 Life in the fast lane: Virilio’s dromology 80 Side effect society: Beck’s world of risks 83 Manufactured uncertainty 86 A new evidence base 88 A new materiality 90 A new spatiality and temporality 92 A new vulnerability 95 A new species of trouble 99 A new subjectivity: Homo timens, the sum of all fears 102 6 Political Economy, I: Capitalism and Disaster 107 Mentioning the ‘C’ word: going beyond Virilio and Beck 107 The pinto stalls again 109 Neoliberalism and (electrical) power 112 Neoliberalism and the organization of disaster 110 New public management 115 Disaster capitalism: the misery-industrial complex 116 Reacting to disaster: rebuilding after Katrina 119 Anticipating disaster: reconfiguring Kadifekale 121 Neoliberalism and the logic of events 123 The charitable-industrial complex 125 Neoliberalism and the logic of victimhood 128 7 Political Economy, II: Capitalism as Disaster 131 Capitalism: the accidental system 131 Disaster capitalism before neoliberalism 133 Capitalism as disaster: exploiting the living, killing the dead 135 Zombies R us? 139 8 Everyday Disaster: Notes on Low Visibility Catastrophe 141 Disasters unbound 141 Disasters in place: from external to embedded 144 Coming in from the disaster archipelago 144 The dialectic of ordinary disaster 146 The time of disasters: from events to process 148 A social autopsy 148 A five-hundred-year earthquake 154 Seeing the structure of totality: big coal as everyday disaster 157 9 Conclusions 161 What is to be done? 161 Learning from disaster 163 Getting the risk culture right: better practices 166 Democratizing democracy: letting the people in 173 Disaster communitas 175 Today disaster, tomorrow utopia 179 References 181 Index 207 Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-10 Sociology and Disasters....Pages 11-34 Accidents, Disasters and Revelation....Pages 35-47 The New Normal....Pages 48-66 Riskworld? New Species of Trouble....Pages 67-94 Political Economy, I: Capitalism and Disaster....Pages 95-118 Political Economy, II: Capitalism as Disaster....Pages 119-128 Everyday Disaster: Notes on Low Visibility Catastrophe....Pages 129-148 Conclusions....Pages 149-168 Back Matter....Pages 169-204