Evacuation

The Politics and Aesthetics of Movement in Emergency

Peter Adey

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781478030584, 9781478026396
• eBook ISBN: 9781478059578
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

In Evacuation, Peter Adey examines the politics, aesthetics, and practice of moving people and animals from harm during emergencies. He outlines how the governance and design of evacuation are recursive, operating on myriad political, symbolic, and affective levels in ways that reflect and reinforce social hierarchies. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, from the retrieval of wounded soldiers from the battlefield during World War I and escaping the World Trade Center on 9/11 to the human and animal evacuations in response to the 2009 Australian bushfires and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Adey demonstrates that evacuation is not an equal process. Some people may choose not to move while others are forced; some may even be brought into harm through evacuation. Often the poorest, racialized, and most marginalized communities hold the least power in such moments. At the same time, these communities can generate compassionate, creative, and democratic forms of care that offer alternative responses to crises. Ultimately, Adey contends, understanding the practice of evacuation illuminates its importance to power relations and everyday governance.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Footsteps: Diagramming High-Rise Evacuation
• 2. Mobile Medical-Military Machines
• 3. Evacuation and Euphemism: Memory, Lexicality, and Aphasia—From the Holocaust to Japanese American “Internment”
• 4. “The City is to be Evacuated”: Roads, Race, and Automobility During the Early Cold War
• 5. Companion Evacuations at the Boundaries of Life
• 6. A Disengagement: Evacuation Trauma, Colonial Vertigo, and National Reproduction
• 7. Seeing Evacuation Logistically
• 8. Burn
• Conclusion: The End
• Notes
• References
• Index