Anandita Ghosh and Shivani Satija are pleased to introduce G&D’s special issue on disaster and resilience.
People around the world are living amidst one type of disaster or another, be it war, extreme weather events, or industrial accidents, and their damaging implications. Unsurprisingly, disasters affect the most marginalised disproportionately – those residing in ecologically fragile regions; women, children, the elderly, and people living with disabilities; Indigenous peoples, Black people, Dalits, Adivasis; gender-diverse persons and those with diverse sexualities. Disasters are not just ‘events’ that occur and exist in isolation, but are socially produced – fuelled by poor policy decisions, neoliberal urbanism, capitalism, and speculative development that produce produce ecological precarities and deepen the vulnerabilities of marginalised populations .
Within this context, the current special issue critically examines the ways in which disaster, resilience, and recovery are shaped by structural factors and histories of dispossession. It especially draws attention to community needs, efforts, and actions towards building resilience in the face of state and institutional failures, and advocates for the recognition of their efforts within global policy and funding spaces. This special issue includes articles and essays by academics as well as practitioners, and documents experiences and efforts from Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Philippines, Türkiye, USA, and Zimbabwe. These contributions identify and address gaps in policy and scholarship related to disaster prevention, management, and recovery. The authors of this Issue offer diverse readings of community-based interventions by: “(1) locating resilience within the context of the neoliberal development project; (2) situating disasters within histories of continuous dispossession; (3) acknowledging care work as political work that builds resilience; (4) recognising the need for a gender-just disaster management, relief, and recovery landscape; and (5) foregrounding community-based and community-driven praxis” (Gupta et al. 2024). Suranjana Gupta, Gayatri Menon, and Ayse Yonder bring their experience, expertise, and knowledge to this work, as guest editors of this Issue.
Locating resilience within the context of the neoliberal development project
Resilience has become a key point of development intervention in the recent decades, and it is critical to locate it within the broader context of neoliberal policy. Increasingly, survival strategies of those most marginalised are recognised as being worthy of support and strengthening; however, the part played by capital in the production of precarity and in the exacerbation of vulnerabilities is often ignored. Ajay and Devika warn against romanticising the capacity of vulnerable population to absorb the impact of disasters.
Disaster risk-reduction (DRR) approaches resilience building as a top-down infrastructural endeavour, attained through development projects, which is problematic and produces further precarities. These projects often discount local histories, contexts, and ecologically fragilities, and disproportionately affect the poor and racialised communities. For instance, Barbosa demonstrates how thousands of families living in the favelas of Rio, Brazil are being displaced in the name of climate action – with favelas being categorised as ‘high risk’ as Rio attempts to build a resilient global city.
While community resilience practices have challenged top-down understandings and practices of DRR, what ‘resilience’ means is contested and the definition of ‘community resilience’ is often depoliticised. Further, defining and understanding ‘resilience’ in purely technical and scientific terms can serve to side-line local and traditional knowledges and agency. Several contributions in this issue – Dhingra and Dutta; Esha; Tong and Topgül; Yonder; and Hyde et al. – highlight the importance of including local communities in decision-making processes, in disaster preparedness and recovery planning and intervention. Several authors argue for the strengthening of local, community-led grassroots collectives and women’s groups in decision-making spaces; the inclusion of gender and race analysis in disaster management (DM) and DRR; and the linking of local movements and efforts with the wider global movements.
Situating disasters within histories of continuous dispossession
Several authors in this Special Issue, like Yonder, highlight how disasters as well as disaster prevention, reduction, and mitigation are embedded in histories and contexts of dispossession. Ajay and Devika discuss how these histories shape resilience capacities through the lived experiences of domestic workers in Kerala, India. Banday and Dixit problematise categorisations of who is ‘disaster prone’ as they point to global policy-making and intervention practices that tend to label certain regions and groups as prone to disasters without taking into account histories of colonial and caste-based oppression that shape their experiences of disasters and capacities for resilience.
Even as top-down policies attempt to address questions of institutional infrastructures, these policies tend to disregard aspects of human vulnerability. In the context of climate-induced water scarcity, Esha, delves into the experiences of chronic anxiety that women in coastal Bangladesh face due to continuous water scarcity and disrupted and irregular water supply. Women, who are often the primary persons responsible for procuring water for the household, speak of the sense of injustice, tension, and stress resulting from the decentralisation of water infrastructures and stepping back of the State in providing public services. Dhingra and Dutta touch upon the stress, worries, and anguish of citizens, post the Bhopal gas tragedy; an industrial accident that contaminated soil and potable water around the factory and consequently led to serious health problems for those in the vicinity. It was only through sustained activism that community members were able to get the State to install water pipelines and supply potable water.
Thus, authors in this issue highlight the need for DM and DRR policy and practice to take into account how dispossession due to race, caste, ethnicity, neoliberal policies, and colonial experiences are intertwined and complicit in precipitating disasters and in worsening their effects.
Care work as political work
The invisibilisation of care work, whether in the context of humanitarian work, disaster relief, or public health services, remains an important issue. Several feminist scholars have argued for care work to be seen as a political act, particularly in the context of gaps left by the State, market, and multilateral organisations. Typically, this recognition has been denied. For instance, Ajay and Devika demonstrate how collectives of domestic workers in Kerala, India, were perceived as being a cultural organisation comprising ‘housewives’ rather than as a workers in a political trade union.
Against this backdrop, authors in this special issue draw attention to the ways in which women’s care work has sustained communities and fostered resilience and recovery. Caron deploys the frame of a feminist ethics of care to understand hosting arrangements. In doing so, she uncovers the potential of human connection, ecological sustainability, and solidarity in building resilience, focusing on aspects of relational practices in fostering resilience, instead of just material conditions. Tong and Topgül highlight aspects of mutual care within neighbourhood networks of refugee women in Gaziantep, Türkiye during and after the pandemic.
Additionally, women are often primarily identified as a vulnerable group in disaster management and humanitarian policies. This tends to obfuscate women’s efforts and work safeguarding their families and communities and their political work in community development in times of crises. Yonder draws on existing literature to highlight how the systematic depoliticisation of participatory processes and community-based work erodes their collective agency and work, especially in the context of disasters.
The need for a gender-just and intersectional approach to disaster management and relief
Framing women primarily as victims within DM policies and programmes has meant that their role as agents and leaders who are driving meaningful change is ignored. Women’s grassroots organisations have been driving local responses to reduce the effects of disasters. While women’s leadership is being increasingly recognised within policy spaces, such as through the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030), this recognition is not reflected among most policymakers, practitioners, or in financial resources available to local women’s collectives. Additionally, funds tend to narrowly focus on emergencies, instead of focusing on aspects of collective leadership, property rights, and organising caregiving, all of which are foundational for building resilience. In this context, Gupta and co-authors discuss the Huairou Commission’s Community Resilience Fund, which funds grassroots women’s organisations. Such resourcing enables women to build collective leadership and test solutions to diverse problems. The development of decentralised financial mechanisms is essential for the development of a dynamic ecosystem that empowers women and advances community resilience in poor and marginalised communities.
Further, it is critical to adopt an intersectional framework in reading disasters as well as DM and DRR. Diab, in this issue, highlight the power dynamics that underpin humanitarian spaces in Lebanon, specifically in the context of LGBTQ+ led NGOs. In the aftermath of the Beirut Port Blast, these organisations played a critical role in creating conditions of security for LGBTQ+ citizens and refugees. In the context of the US, Yonder touches upon the work of women and non-binary collectives in creating safe spaces for marginalised groups during the pandemic; in India, Banday and Dixit demonstrate how caste shaped capacities for resilience and experiences of disaster. Additionally, healing and social repair facilitated by cultural heritage and collective ritual are often ignored in DM and DRR policies. Oflazoğlu and Dora discuss how rituals and cultural heritage shape recovery post-disaster, and its policy implications, in Antakya, Türkiye. Collective healing was an important part of the journey for justice and fight for acknowledgement of the damage to communities, in the case of both Antakya and Bhopal.
The importance of community- based and driven practice
Contributions highlight the importance of centring community-generated knowledge as well as practice. Oflazoğlu and Dora in highlight how symbols such as earthquake monuments and flood warning stones can afford support to people by giving spaces meaning or serving as markers of remembrance; Yonder draws attention to community archives that can serve as a source and practice of knowledge building. Dhingra and Dutta, discuss the knowledge generated for awareness and action campaigns by the community, while advocating for their water rights in the context of the Bhopal gas tragedy in India. Bridging knowledge generation with praxis, Tong and Topgül demonstrate how needs evaluation assessments carried out by grassroots organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic shaped relief work in Gaziantep, Türkiye. Hyde and co-authors demonstrate how disaster management and risk reduction plans need to centre the voices of the community and take into consideration solutions proposed by community members. Apart from centring voices and practices of those most affected, DM and DRR plans and policies need to take into account cultural heritage and collective rituals, which may be powerful tools for building resilience.
Conclusion
This special issue situates disasters and resilience efforts within the context and frameworks of colonialism, neoliberalism, and the climate crisis. Articles showcase the many ways in which ideas and practices of resilience are fetishised by the State and other institutions of power, without taking into account vulnerabilities and precarities manufactured within contexts of historical and continued dispossessions (through racism, patriarchy, casteism, colonialism, and so on). Authors highlight the complexity of and stakes in defining disasters and resilience. Further, they draw attention to the need and urgency of employing an intersectional lens in defining and understanding the meaning, impact, and conditions that lead to disasters and shape resilience. Authors critique the depoliticisation of these ideas and interventions, while also demanding support from the state and funding. Instead of only focusing on the immediate material and spatial considerations, DM and DRR policies need to account for gendered and historical contexts. Such an approach is critical for sustainable practices that would ensure gender just infrastructures and institutions. For the authors, “the focus has been on the collective efforts of women in all their diversity to secure the lives and livelihoods of their communities, to transform the relations of power that produce vulnerability to disaster, and to inform policy on what needs to happen to cultivate resilience in places and institutional processes that have thus far been hazardous to impoverished, alienated, and stigmatised lives.” (Gupta et al. 2024)
This blog is based on the introduction to the special issue authored by Suranjana Gupta, Gayatri Menon, Ayse Yonder, Shivani Satija and Anandita Ghosh.
References:
Suranjana Gupta, Gayatri Menon, Ayse Yonder, Shivani Satija & Anandita Ghosh (2024) ‘Disaster and resilience: intersectional approaches towards establishing resilient communities during crises’, Gender & Development, 32(3):625-640, DOI: 10.1080/13552074.2024.2433350