Guest editorial: Introduction to the special issue on “conversations with disasters: deconstructed”

Citation

Chmutina, K. and von Meding, J. (2023), "Guest editorial: Introduction to the special issue on “conversations with disasters: deconstructed”", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 381-383. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-06-2023-422

It is our great pleasure to present this collection of conversations, hosted on the podcast Disasters: Deconstructed [1], in which established and early-career researchers, practitioners and activists from around the globe engage in dialogues on a central question pertinent to the study of disasters. Each dialogue challenges the status quo of disaster scholarship and practice and foreshadows alternative future where we might cultivate and cherish more reciprocal and respectful relationships.

These (and many other) conversations have highlighted the salience and timeliness of the Power, Prestige and Forgotten Values Manifesto and the Accord [2]. We need a disruption of normative disaster research; we need to reconsider how we do – and should do – disaster research. The perspectives emerging from this Special Issue open up difficult conversations for the disaster studies community, but this is the only way to chart pathways for moral, ethical and politically and socially salient research and practice.

In fact, the podcast itself was a result of difficult conversations between us on our inability to articulate in written – academic – form what needs to be challenged in disaster studies and why. We wanted a discussion rather than pages and pages of words; we wanted to listen to people from whom we have so much to learn – and interact in a way that does not fit into the accepted academic format.

Since the podcast was launched in 2019, we have talked to academics, journalists, artists, community activists and practitioners from all around the world. Over 8 seasons to date, we have reflected on diverse disciplinary and ideological understandings of disaster and problematised the fact that some voices are heard while others are unheard or made silent in these understandings.

It is through these conversations that our thinking has evolved and matured. Unlike sterile academic paper, conversations can sometimes take an unexpected twist, reveal an idea that perhaps has not even been vocalised before. Following Freire (1996), we believe that dialogue is critical for allowing a deeper understanding of the context and meaning of disasters; dialogue helps us to develop empathy and humility that should be at the core of disaster scholarship. It is “how we learn to be human” (Waisbord, 2020, p. 450). The dialogue is never finished and always open – and this principle is critical for disaster studies as there is never one solution that fits all (Chmutina and von Meding, 2022).

Which brings us back to this collection: we were inspired to try to publish these conversations as we were reading Judith Butler (Butler, Laclau and Žižek, 2010; Butler and Athanasiou, 2013) – and we were encouraged to do so by our friend and the editor of this journal, JC Gaillard. Publishing these conversations was not without a challenge: Who is the first author (the position of leadership, in the case of our discipline)? Should the co-hosts be included as the authors? How much editing should be done? How do we reference? We were eager to forego these norms, as per Hendriks et al. (2022) [3], a collection of early-career scholars and guest editors of two Special Issues in this journal in early 2022, who “prioritized a shared working process and making room for each other's views, knowledges and time constraints over concerns about authorship orders” (p. 5). The authors in this Special Issue appear in alphabetical order; the lists are thus non-hierarchical and only feature the names of the guests rather than the co-hosts.

What follows are five conversations that we were privileged to host on Disasters: Deconstructed during 2020–2021, when virtual conversations proliferated and became “the new normal”. The dialogues occurred during difficult times, when many of us were stuck at home without the possibility of seeing our loved ones. For many this brought a significant sense of anger and despair. But this is what makes what follows even more important: these five conversations highlight challenges of disaster scholarship but also give us hope; they emphasise and recognise our collective ties and interconnections.

1. Sarah Beaven, Djillali Benouar, Mihir Bhatt, Lori Peek and Terry Gibson reflect on the good and the bad of disaster scholarship and practice and explore the importance of ethics – but most importantly, they show that there is hope.

2. Nnenia Campbell, Kaira Zoe Alburo-Cañete, Shefali Lakhina and María N. Rodriguez Alarcón focus on representation, power imbalances and research extractivism and reciprocity [4].

3. Wesley Cheek, Claudia Gonzalez-Muzzio, Victor Marchezini, Holmes Julián Páez Martínez, Mittul Vahanvati and Dewald van Niekerk discuss how disaster capitalism manifested during the COVID-19 pandemic around the world.

4. Jamie Vickery and Carlee Purdam co-hosted a conversation with Zulema Alvarez, Tristia Bauman, Amite Dominick and Tony Messenger – activists and advocates – about stigmatisation and marginalisation as well as the reproduction of vulnerability, incarceration and homelessness.

5. Finally, we reflected on the past decades of disaster scholarship and practice and celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Radix network with Bob Alexander, Maureen Fordham, Rohit Jigyasu, Mayfourth Luneta and Ben Wisner.

Among the diverse voices, one theme is prominent: achieving disaster risk reduction requires collaborative and decentralised effort that challenges the long-established systems and ideological structures of neoliberalism, neocolonialism, patriarchy and racism. To talk about disasters means to talk about systemic root causes with oppressive foundations. What we say and do when it comes to disaster risk reduction should be about ethics, equity, power, responsibility, solidarity and hope – and not about hazards or economic growth.

We would like to thank our podcast guests, the editors of DPM and reviewers for making this special issue possible. We hope you enjoy – and join – the conversations!

Notes

1. You can find the podcast on any podcast platform – and follow us on Twitter @DisastersDecon

2. The Manifesto and the Accord can be accessed at: https://www.radixonline.org/manifesto-accord

3. Hendriks et al. published their editorial and will publish their forthcoming shared work under the pseudonym C. A. Eelaferi, which draws from the initials of our co-author team Eefje [Hendricks], Laura [Kmoch], Femke [Mulder] and Ricardo [Fuentealba].

4. The authors thank Loid Le De for providing the translation from Spanish during the livestream and in preparation of this transcript.