Cultures and Disasters

Understanding Cultural Framings in Disaster Risk Reduction

Fred Krüger, Greg Bankoff, Terry Cannon, Benedikt Orlowski, E. Lisa F. Schipper, Fred Krüger, Greg Bankoff, Terry Cannon, Benedikt Orlowski, E. Lisa F. Schipper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317754633
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Why did the people of the Zambesi Delta affected by severe flooding return early to their homes or even choose to not evacuate? How is the forced resettlement of small-scale farmers living along the foothills of an active volcano on the Philippines impacting on their day-to-day livelihood routines? Making sense of such questions and observations is only possible by understanding how the decision-making of societies at risk is embedded in culture, and how intervention measures acknowledge, or neglect, cultural settings. The social construction of risk is being given increasing priority in understand how people experience and prioritize hazards in their own lives and how vulnerability can be reduced, and resilience increased, at a local level.

Culture and Disasters adopts an interdisciplinary approach to explore this cultural dimension of disaster, with contributions from leading international experts within the field. Section I provides discussion of theoretical considerations and practical research to better understand the important of culture in hazards and disasters. Culture can be interpreted widely with many different perspectives; this enables us to critically consider the cultural boundedness of research itself, as well as the complexities of incorporating various interpretations into DRR. If culture is omitted, related issues of adaptation, coping, intervention, knowledge and power relations cannot be fully grasped. Section II explores what aspects of culture shape resilience? How have people operationalized culture in every day life to establish DRR practice? What constitutes a resilient culture and what role does culture play in a society's decision making? It is natural for people to seek refuge in tried and trust methods of disaster mitigation, however, culture and belief systems are constantly evolving. How these coping strategies can be introduced into DRR therefore poses a challenging question. Finally, Section III examines the effectiveness of key scientific frameworks for understanding the role of culture in disaster risk reduction and management. DRR includes a range of norms and breaking these through an understanding of cultural will challenge established theoretical and empirical frameworks.

PART 1

The culture of (de-)constructing disasters

1

FRAMING DISASTER IN THE ‘GLOBAL VILLAGE’

Cultures of rationality in risk, security and news

Kenneth Hewitt

Introduction

Every culture and every age has its favourite model of perception and knowledge that it is inclined to prescribe for everybody and everything.

McLuhan 1964, p. 21

In the disasters field, questions of culture fall into two main sets. First, since calamity affects distinctive, often diverse, groups of people, the case for cultural awareness and understanding, or efforts to minimise what are ‘lost in translation’, can be made. This is usually stressed in encounters between different ethnic groups. However, in modern societies, techno-scientific expertise or agency agendas of, say, disaster risk reduction (DRR) or ‘homeland security’, hardly speak the languages of lay publics and subcultures, or for multi-cultural cities. For them, cultural awareness and communication can be equally important issues.

Second, the cultural forms and baggage of modernity exert enormous influence in public life and professional disaster ideas or management agencies (cf. Douglas 1992, Steinberg 2000, Klein 2007, Hannigan 2012). Modern ideas shape how danger and responses are addressed (cf. Burchell et al. 1991, Ericson and Haggerty 1997, Franklin 1998, Gilbert 1998). Behind accepted forms are histories of social struggle and so-called paradigm shifts (Green 1997, Quarantelli 1998). As discussed below, some entrenched or newly advocated developments in the disasters field have become problematic for thought and practice. They invite cultural critique.

Other chapters, and sources cited below, make the case for involving culture and cultural critiques in DRR. It seems fair to say, however, that modern disaster management largely ignores this in its own concerns. A positivist, ‘applied science’ or technocratic stance prevails, focused on material realities. Systems are supposed to be rationally devised to work with or towards an exact mirror of environmental phenomena. Arbitrariness is despised. Science is required to respect the sovereign facts, peer review and solutions constrained by clear methods. Even as one can support such values, one must recognise them as just that. The dangers of an implied superiority over alternatives can inhibit engagement with other cultures, generally at risk communities, and awareness of biases in our own socially constructed forms.

Some elements of culture critique

A useful approach is to think of ‘culture’ as it is in ‘agriculture’ or ‘horticulture’. Humans are likely to cultivate whatever they come into contact with: gardens, clients, friendships and danger. With respect to nature, culture carries a sense of taming or domestication. Lack of cultural debate in the disasters community may reflect, in part, the dubious view of disasters as natural or ‘untamed’ threats. Discussion of the counter-argument that most, if not all, modern disasters are more appropriately called ‘unnatural’, even if earthquake or flood trigger them, is as much a cultural as technical and practical debate. It speaks to modern interpretations of disaster and responsibilities of the DRR community (cf. Wijkman and Timberlake 1984, Mileti 1999, Steinberg 2000).

Of cultivation, conversation and meaning

Cultivation has the comfortable ring of practicality but depends on broader cultural matrices and worlds. Behind each situation are many conversations between members of a group and outsiders. To appreciate a culture requires upbringing and training, an ability to share experience with others by speaking the community’s language(s). Societies live in webs of symbolic communication that give distinctive meaning to feelings and perspectives, placing a huge burden on brainwork, invention and dialogue. In the modern world, a range of media and institutionalised exchanges add to and complicate more conventional cultural dialogues.

As knowledge workers, culturally given notions need our attention. They include definitions of ‘disaster’ itself – as Quarantelli (1998) insists. Other core concepts with cultural overtones are hazards, accident, uncertainty, vulnerability and resilience (cf. Green 1997, Bankoff 2001, Alexander and Davis 2012). Troublesome ideas, shared with the larger cultural milieu, include ‘nature’, land management, sustainability, security and social justice (see Wisner 2012, Hilhorst 2013, Renaud et al. 2013).

Professionals, such as those in DRR, work within modern disciplines and enterprises, and with evidence or messages developed in institutional frameworks that have their own culture milieus. They include safety cultures, perhaps of ‘(high) reliability’ and others that appear ‘risk-takers’. DRR activities require us to negotiate with officials and community leaders, pre-existing agencies, laws and protocols. Ideas inherited from our mentors and disciplines are hard to shake or challenge, not least those ideas that some of us helped to set up and want to defend. However, a culture is unlikely to take shape and persist without some consensus among most members, or the more influential ones. A degree of continuity, conformity and entrenched formality is required. Even so, cultures are rarely, if ever, monolithic. Living cultures are partly transitional, if not provisional, struggling to adapt to new conditions. Some try to return to or re-invent old ones. Cultural concerns are most likely taken seriously when they seem threatened, or basic disagreements and contradictions arise.

Some contradictions

Everything is permeated by ambivalence; there is no longer any unambiguous social situation. Just as there are no more uncompromised actors on the stage of world history.

Bauman and Donskis 2013, p. 5

For its critics, modernity is an odd as well as a compelling and dangerous business. It is said to favour material and secular values, evidence and demonstration over traditional or privileged authority, innovation, growth and progress. As such, it has had a good press. On the negative side, those values are constantly under attack or are sources of conflict. ‘Rational’, industrialised forms have inspired some of the worst disasters. Stalin and Hitler sit at the head of this table, but are not alone. Discussions of disaster and modernity can hardly ignore the world wars. The greatest calamities in history, they were conflicts between the most modern states and generated many of today’s prevailing cultural forms, including how disasters are treated (cf. Hewitt 1997).

For DRR the most troubling contradiction is, perhaps, how an increasing trend in disaster losses coincides with unprecedented growth in disaster-related investment and institutions. Few doubt that disaster numbers and losses have been growing (EM-DAT 2013). Less often mentioned is the great expansion in resources and organisations devoted to disaster concerns. Of late, profitable industries have developed around disaster response in reinsurance, security technologies, relief and reconstruction. According to Calhoun (2004), ‘management of emergencies [is] a very big business […] mobiliz[ing] tens of thousands of paid workers and volunteers […]’. Hannigan (2012, p. 22) finds ‘natural disasters’ to comprise, ‘[…] a global policy field […] becoming considerably more crowded and turbulent [with] the influx of thousands of new NGOs into emergency operations […]’. He identifies further marked expansion – if greater confusion – as disaster management is entwined with climate change adaptation. Meanwhile, some places and activities do seem to enjoy safety standards, reliability and options far beyond anything in the past. They highlight questions of why such improvements and protections are missing where disaster losses increase worldwide for ‘at risk’ majorities.

The language and practices of disaster management emanate mainly from the wealthiest countries, but they are polarised there too. Some of us emphasise preventive, adaptive and sustainability agendas, a focus on people at risk, and long term prevention (cf. Pelling 2003, Wisner et al. 2004, Cannon 2008, Hewitt 2013). Similar concerns affecting DRR are official priorities of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) and agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 2004) and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRCRCS 2004). However, in our so-called homelands, disaster management is increasingly part of broad security complexes with other priorities and subordinate to other threats. This is the more immediate context of the discussion.

Rationalities of risk, security and news

Risk is not assessed exclusively in terms of scientific knowledge […] determinations are made within the prevailing criteria of rational acceptability among knowers in a particular culture.

Ericson and Haggerty 1997, p. 90, emphasis added

For present purposes, aspects and implications of three modern notions highlight some key issues: risk, security and news. These are found in common use, as well as in quite narrow technical and practical domains. Some see risk as the defining notion of modernity (cf. Douglas and Wildavsky 1982, Hacking 1990, Garland 2003). It gives a particular meaning or slant to public and private affairs. In itself, risk is an abstract concept to express the potential for harm. Narrower technical usage looks at the probabilities of adverse outcomes. In this way risk, or risk-benefit, can be used to bracket bio-ecological and economic life. It implies an actuarial framework, more or less well informed, but rooted in value judgements about what constitute gains and losses. In everyday talk, risk refers more to a sense of dangers or expectation of harm. It engages with anxieties, luck and life chances. The usage is broader and more flexible than quantifiable uncertainties, if less precise.

Security identifies concerns and organised actions to provide safety in the social and political realm. Formerly, the modern emphasis was on social security, safety nets for citizens against personal, economic or health misfortune, shared safety in cooperative and unionised groups. These now seem under attack even where they were formerly well entrenched. Security against external and internal ‘enemies’ receives ever more investment and actions. Where disaster management is housed in ‘homeland security’, threats dramatise survival of the nation or way of life, variously seen as actual, ‘existential’ or contrived (cf. Buzan et al. 1998). The prospect of harm or disaster is used to justify and legislate extraordinary measures. Below, some parallels are identified with sécurité as investigated by Michel Foucault.

For most of us, news means mass media coverage of current events, a source of information of compelling interest for citizens. Disasters are often front page or prime time news. In disaster management, there is limited discussion of media coverage, although quality or accuracy are widely questioned and attributed to a lack of well-trained disaster news hounds (Radford and Wisner 2012). This is unlikely to be an accident. Nevertheless, from a cultural perspective, the role of news media in popular and political notions of disaster is hard to overestimate – hence McLuhan’s (1964) ‘global village’, cited in my title.

‘The risk society’

[…] the production of risks is the consequence of scientific and political efforts to control and minimize them.

Beck 1998, p. 12

A major concern is to define and assess ‘disaster risk’, the likelihood of extremely destructive events, or casualties and damage. Discussions see people as being ‘at risk’ or ‘living with risk’ (UN/ISDR 2002). As a calculation of exposure to losses, risk is identified with damage statistics, probability functions and actuarial science. Typically, risk expresses a potential, is identified with ‘uncertainty’ and appears future-oriented. Ideally, it encompasses exposure to natural or technological hazards, vulnerability, resilience, access to and absent protections among other factors of endangerment. Technical projections for the future are mainly based on risk profiles from past events.

An influential idea, proposed by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck (1992), is of ‘the risk society’. He sees it as ‘a new modernity’; a world beset by ‘manufactured risks’ and people or policies preoccupied with them. Beck looks especially to dangers from modern industrial and consumer lifestyle, hazards and weapons of mass destruction or, rather, how these are perceived and treated in urban-industrial societies. Seemingly intractable, he believes that is because they overshadow the stereotypical features of modernity, its productive forces and the drive for wealth, growth and advancement. As such, the risk society not only differs from other cultures, but from modern culture before the later twentieth century. From its origins in the West, an emergent ‘global risk society’ is foreseen (Beck 1999).

While underscoring threats, Beck does not find modern life necessarily less safe than other times and places – although it can be. A counter-intuitive view is how new risk obsessions preoccupy the otherwise main beneficiaries of modernity who seem, from other perspectives, the most affluent, safest populations in history. Yet they are filled with anxieties about threats to health, habitat and social freedoms. He sees techno-scientific initiatives lying behind this as they experiment with public safety and personal health, and threaten ecological survival. He also suggests that, in the risk society ‘the state of emergency threatens to become the normal state’; a ‘catastrophic society’ even without disaster as usually understood (Beck 1992, pp. 98–9, emphasis in original). It is as if a pessimistic DRR mindset takes over.

From a cultural perspective, Beck’s more radical claim is to trace today’s great problems to ‘the failure of techno-scientific rationality’ (Beck 1992, p. 59, emphasis added). Does this also lie behind the increase in disasters? One could readily imagine that New Orleans after ‘Katrina’, or Fukushima, no less than the Bhopal or ‘Deep Water Horizon’ disasters, as examples of such failures. However, there are singular difficulties in blaming technocratic culture.

Rationalising failure

Disasters often involve regulatory failures. Somebody was responsible for safety and failed to ensure it, through negligence or l...