WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:00:00.700 --> 00:00:08.500 there are two common ways to approach crises and disasters both within and outside of Academia the 00:00:08.500 --> 00:00:15.899 first one is to see crisis as a turning point or a new opportunity. The second is to see crisis as 00:00:15.899 --> 00:00:23.100 the culmination of a long historical process both of them concern how we think about time and I 00:00:23.100 --> 00:00:29.900 suspect you all know both of these approaches to crisis in some way you've seen them both of them NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:00:29.900 --> 00:00:37.100 perhaps being and played out this year and last year but you might not have thought about them 00:00:37.100 --> 00:00:44.100 consciously and explicitly, so that's what I'm going to try and do now. So the first common approach 00:00:44.100 --> 00:00:51.900 crisis is a pivot point a turning point a kind of a temporal rupture and opening 00:00:51.900 --> 00:00:59.000 something that allows us to look forward towards the future. The idea here is that crisis can be seen 00:00:59.000 --> 00:00:59.950 as an opportunity NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:00:59.950 --> 00:01:07.000 to reimagine the way we organise our society and opportunity to do things differently in this 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:12.600 approach the crisis it is something that can allow us to see things that weren't noticeable before 00:01:12.600 --> 00:01:17.750 allows to rethink things we have taken for granted for a long time. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (H?Y) 00:01:17.750 --> 00:01:24.000 this way the thing about crisis and disaster is not just a common approach in Academia but also very 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:26.900 prevalent outside of Academia. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:01:26.900 --> 00:01:34.700 some of our readings also have elements of this kind of approach. Dawdy for instance writes that 00:01:34.700 --> 00:01:41.800 ruins are tears since spatial-temporal fabric through which new social forms can emerge so they are 00:01:41.800 --> 00:01:48.100 opportunities through which something new can come into being. Some of you are reading sources 00:01:48.100 --> 00:01:52.700 of hope in situations of Crisis and I have more to say about that in one of the other 00:01:52.700 --> 00:01:57.250 videos, but for now I'll point out that hope often lies in seeing NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:01:57.250 --> 00:02:02.700 Crisis, catastrophes and disasters as a certain kind of opening towards future. Hope and 00:02:02.700 --> 00:02:07.600 disasters and crises situations can lie in the possibility that they can help us to look at things 00:02:07.600 --> 00:02:09.400 differently. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:02:09.400 --> 00:02:15.400 this approach is also tricky and potentially problematic in certain ways and it's an approach that 00:02:15.400 --> 00:02:21.900 anthropologists have criticised quite a lot on the one hand there is opportunity in crisis there is 00:02:21.900 --> 00:02:27.900 creativity in situations of disaster as Dawdy for instance describes in the case of Katrina and 00:02:27.900 --> 00:02:33.400 there are openings allowing us to think otherwise and there is life that flourishes in the wake of 00:02:33.400 --> 00:02:35.000 disaster NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (H?Y) 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:42.900 but on the other hand the crisis as opportunity idea maybe Insidious it might be a rhetoric 00:02:42.900 --> 00:02:51.500 that the newness and and opportunity it's something that conceals the past in a way to insist that 00:02:51.500 --> 00:02:56.900 there's a better future ahead might appear to downplay the severity of the crisis and What's led up 00:02:56.900 --> 00:03:02.900 to it to say that crisis is an opportunity can be saying like saying that we put all of that stuff 00:03:02.900 --> 00:03:05.200 that led up to the crisis behind us now NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (H?Y) 00:03:05.200 --> 00:03:11.200 We've turned the corner let's now wipe the slate clean and let's look towards the future with a new optimism 00:03:11.200 --> 00:03:16.600 and when people in positions of power say that there's opportunity in crisis that we would do well 00:03:16.600 --> 00:03:24.000 to ask opportunities for whom and who are excluded from taking part in the opportunities. It is not a 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:29.900 new beginning for everyone the past through supposedly put behind us is still very much present for 00:03:29.900 --> 00:03:34.800 those that are still recovering after hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico for instance NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:41.000 this way of looking at crisis as opportunity can at worst be a rhetoric for the powerful to 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:44.649 absolve themselves of responsibility for the past NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:03:44.649 --> 00:03:50.300 another kind of critique of seeing opportunity in crisis that it's a view based on certain Western 00:03:50.300 --> 00:03:56.600 and particularly Christian concepts of time to see new life amongst the rubble of a catastrophic 00:03:56.600 --> 00:04:03.100 event can be almost like a born-again narrative and these critiques it's because 00:04:03.100 --> 00:04:09.100 of our Western cultural history that we understand all our worlds through this lens of Crisis and 00:04:09.100 --> 00:04:14.300 renewal when we think about our society as going through crisis and coming out better on the other 00:04:14.300 --> 00:04:14.900 side NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:04:14.900 --> 00:04:21.899 this is a way to re-narrate for ourselves those foundational myths of the Western World the stories of 00:04:21.899 --> 00:04:28.600 the Deluge and Noah's Ark and crucifixion and resurrection and the Rapture and even back to Greek 00:04:28.600 --> 00:04:35.000 myths like Orpheus and eurydice all of these are crisis and renewal narratives these are stories of 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:41.000 death that brings new life and our cultural Consciousness might be said to be in such rated by these 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:44.799 kinds of stories which could be a reason why this in particular NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:04:44.799 --> 00:04:48.100 is what we see when we look at the world today NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:04:48.400 --> 00:04:56.750 the other approach to a crisis is called the crisis as culmination and Injustice NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:04:56.750 --> 00:05:01.900 if the first approach takes crisis as a point from which we can look towards the future then this 00:05:01.900 --> 00:05:08.600 second approach maintains that the past is still present and with us. In this approach crisis and 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:16.300 catastrophes are seen as culminations of long slow structural processes of violence in this approach 00:05:16.300 --> 00:05:22.500 disasters and catastrophes are events that render visible neglect abandonment and structural 00:05:22.500 --> 00:05:27.050 violence this approach argues that the disastrousness of disasters NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:05:27.050 --> 00:05:34.900 that is why an event becomes the crisis is as much down to underlying structures of inequality as it 00:05:34.900 --> 00:05:43.700 is the occurrence itself. In this approach the implication is also that natural disasters are rarely 00:05:43.700 --> 00:05:51.750 if ever just natural and that the most disastrous parts of natural disasters often come as a result of 00:05:51.750 --> 00:05:56.900 them exacerbating underlying neglect and inequalities NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 37% (LAV) 00:05:56.900 --> 00:05:58.000 yeah NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:05:58.100 --> 00:06:05.400 so this argument is that often it is the underlying structural neglect that leads to the real 00:06:05.400 --> 00:06:12.400 disaster rather than the event itself, this can also lead us to also see the crisis event the way 00:06:12.400 --> 00:06:18.500 of looking at the crisis as a singular event as like a smokescreen you know like a distraction as a 00:06:18.500 --> 00:06:25.000 noise that drowns out the real problem which is the underlying neglect to emphasise the 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:28.450 exceptional in the disaster events can also be to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:06:28.450 --> 00:06:34.700 silence and conceal the underlying neglect so it may be real reason for much of the suffering 00:06:34.700 --> 00:06:43.800 and we have elements of this kind of crisis as combination approach in few of the readings that you 00:06:43.800 --> 00:06:53.200 read so far and especially and most clearly in Davis and Todd about the anthropocene as a 00:06:53.200 --> 00:06:58.299 reverberation the anthropocene is not the event, the anthropocene is not a catastrophe NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 60% (MEDIUM) 00:06:58.299 --> 00:07:04.850 It's just a reverberation of colonial violence they argue NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:07:04.850 --> 00:07:14.100 you also see something similar in the Perfecto et. Al article about coffee where it is long 00:07:14.100 --> 00:07:21.350 process of material relations becoming aligned in such a way that the spread of the coffee fungus 00:07:21.350 --> 00:07:30.200 was possible that is as much part of the 00:07:30.200 --> 00:07:35.250 catastrophe the crisis as the real event NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:07:35.250 --> 00:07:43.900 when the leaf rust actually became an outbreak, and we see this kind of thing in Kate Brown about the 00:07:43.900 --> 00:07:49.800 Chernobyl where she argues that Chernobyl is a continuation of many decades so violent in the 00:07:49.800 --> 00:07:59.000 wrenches in nature not a singular event and Bonilla that you're reading about Puerto Rico is 00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:05.200 of course another one that looks at disasters as kind of a culmination of Injustice NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:08:05.200 --> 00:08:14.200 she writes about hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017 and all disasters are socially 00:08:14.200 --> 00:08:22.650 produced she argues that some people are vulnerable to the things nature does is a product of a long 00:08:22.650 --> 00:08:30.800 often Colonial history and we've talked quite a lot about how Colonial forms Logics and practices 00:08:30.800 --> 00:08:35.000 still permeate to work today and still NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:42.799 the world today so I'd like to emphasize something a little bit different right now from this 00:08:42.799 --> 00:08:52.300 article namely what she's says about time so she emphasizes something about the temporal Logics of 00:08:52.300 --> 00:08:57.150 emergency, how time works in disasters. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:08:57.150 --> 00:09:05.400 One thing is distinction between slow violence and seemingly the seeming suddenness of 00:09:05.400 --> 00:09:12.900 disasters and she argues that it is slow violence which lies for instance in extraction and 00:09:12.900 --> 00:09:20.800 dispossession and neglect and the practices that cut off people from their land it is this kind 00:09:20.800 --> 00:09:26.500 of slow violence that cause suffering and death of natural disasters NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:09:26.500 --> 00:09:32.150 and then another thing that's slow violence highlights and a little way in which disaster is not 00:09:32.150 --> 00:09:38.700 singular and discrete event is the ways that the disaster lingers and has effects that last a really 00:09:38.700 --> 00:09:46.800 long time she writes about the weight of disaster which is a particular kind of experience of 00:09:46.800 --> 00:09:54.300 time and in the time after Hurricane Maria when you might expect the healing and the rebuilding 00:09:54.300 --> 00:09:56.900 process to begin instead people in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:09:56.900 --> 00:10:01.950 Puerto Rico were in the state of forced waiting and delay. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:10:01.950 --> 00:10:09.800 Help and Aid took a very long time to get there she writes that for weeks on end there were no Aid 00:10:09.800 --> 00:10:15.200 workers no helicopters no military personnel no distribution centers. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:10:15.200 --> 00:10:25.450 in a sense people were sort of waiting for the after to begin the after this Hazard at the state 00:10:25.450 --> 00:10:34.000 when the disaster they were waiting for the after state to begin but they remained in this limbo 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:40.800 in a drawn-out state of waiting and even two years later she writes things remain stubbornly 00:10:40.800 --> 00:10:42.400 unchanged NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:10:42.400 --> 00:10:49.000 so this case I think let's us question critically something like when does 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:57.400 disaster begin and when does it end. Disasters lie in the socially and historically structured 00:10:57.400 --> 00:11:05.400 vulnerability which is very long and drawn out in time that comes long before any hurricane or wild 00:11:05.400 --> 00:11:12.400 fire what have you hits and then afterwards disasters stretches out for a long NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:11:12.400 --> 00:11:19.800 Time as well it doesn't end it remains through this limbo period of delay and waiting. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (H?Y) 00:11:20.800 --> 00:11:28.800 so there's another useful set of terms I like to introduce two which is misfortune and injustice and 00:11:28.800 --> 00:11:38.400 I'm taking this from an article which is not part of your syllabus but which I'll post 00:11:38.400 --> 00:11:46.800 on canvas if anyone's interested so misfortune and injustice. We can think of an 00:11:46.800 --> 00:11:51.000 earthquake as misfortune but the fact that people live in old Houses NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:56.200 That collapse easily While others live in houses that are solid that's Injustice right. A 00:11:56.200 --> 00:12:01.800 wildfire is a misfortune but the fact that some people can evacuate While others have no choice but to 00:12:01.800 --> 00:12:09.200 stay and work outside picking vegetables in small case that is injustice and hurricane like 00:12:09.200 --> 00:12:15.800 Hurricane Katrina is misfortune that minority communities in New Orleans predominantly 00:12:15.800 --> 00:12:21.000 live in low-lying and more flood-prone areas with poorly maintained infrastructure NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:27.800 that is injustice and generally the argument is that the disaster lies in the injustice as much 00:12:27.800 --> 00:12:32.600 as it does if not more in the misfortune NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:12:33.800 --> 00:12:40.700 and in natural disasters is always an element of Misfortune but this approach says that there's 00:12:40.700 --> 00:12:47.200 always also an element of injustice and very often what causes people to suffer 00:12:47.200 --> 00:12:53.300 and die is the injustice rather than misfortune so on the one hand this is an approach that tries to 00:12:53.300 --> 00:13:01.800 separate the injustice from the misfortune in order to shine a light on the Injustice or neglect on 00:13:01.800 --> 00:13:03.750 the structural violence NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:13:03.750 --> 00:13:10.100 but there's also some interesting things happening and one is that nowadays because of climate 00:13:10.100 --> 00:13:19.300 change and how they make many natural disasters a lot worse there's also an injustice built into the 00:13:19.300 --> 00:13:26.800 misfortune itself so in the sense that natural events are made worse by the practices of those that 00:13:26.800 --> 00:13:33.300 are least affected by them that's the way in which the injustice seeps into what we think of 00:13:33.300 --> 00:13:34.500 as misfortune. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:13:36.900 --> 00:13:43.800 all right so these are two approaches to crisis and disaster one sees it as an opening towards a 00:13:43.800 --> 00:13:50.000 future, the other as a culmination of a long process of injustice and I'll leave you with one 00:13:50.000 --> 00:14:01.100 other idea which is this what about when catastrophe and disaster become routine and some have 00:14:01.100 --> 00:14:04.050 argued that this is what's happening NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:14:04.050 --> 00:14:13.200 nowadays take firing in California for instance in 2017 they had what was the worst wildfire 00:14:13.200 --> 00:14:21.100 in the state's modern history then in 2018 they had an even worse fire season and then in 2020 it's 00:14:21.100 --> 00:14:28.100 it was even much worse than both of those again and then again in 2021 there's been 00:14:28.100 --> 00:14:33.800 a fire that was again like the largest in California history NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:14:33.800 --> 00:14:40.900 we're in a time when the state of emergency threatens to become the normal State and according to 00:14:40.900 --> 00:14:48.900 sociologists and when apocalypse happens every year which is like this weird paradox 00:14:48.900 --> 00:14:58.150 right and it also introduces a new and interesting version of time NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:14:58.150 --> 00:15:07.700 what happens when time comes to this great ending point and it does so seemingly every 00:15:07.700 --> 00:15:15.300 year what happens to our sense of ourselves in history then and one question you can think about 00:15:15.300 --> 00:15:22.000 is which one of the two approaches are outlined which one can tell us most about this kind of 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:26.700 situation where the crisis becomes routine is there one that seems more suitable than the other 00:15:26.700 --> 00:15:28.700 perhaps or is this situation NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:15:28.700 --> 00:15:33.800 one that maybe necessitates a completely new approach NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:15:33.800 --> 00:15:39.100 some seem to think so and then another thought is that this is a situation that might be sort of 00:15:39.100 --> 00:15:47.500 Beyond theorisation a situation that confounds our abilities to imagine and to write and to 00:15:47.500 --> 00:15:53.700 think and the point with a decision has been doesn't make sense to try to make sense of and a 00:15:53.700 --> 00:15:59.300 philosopher I'm gonna put this out and canvass for those 00:15:59.300 --> 00:16:04.050 That are interested he's written about disaster and he writes that in this situation we are NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:16:04.050 --> 00:16:09.600 are sane and becoming crazy if we feel like the world doesn't make sense well that's an accurate 00:16:09.600 --> 00:16:12.200 perception nowadays.