Aftermath: The imprint of state-society relations on disaster response in South Asia

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Natural disasters regularly elicit humanitarian support from around the world. Stemming the aftermath of human suffering seems the obvious solution in the short term. What comes next is a little less certain. Most large-scale disasters have political impacts that are hard to predict. They, however, rarely provide a clean slate from which to start anew. Rather the socio-political dynamics that predate calamity shape how governments, international agencies, and local residence respond. This panel will take a comparative look at how existing state-society relations impact natural disaster interventions in South Asia. We are specifically interested in exploring how different South Asian governments are positioned to provide aid to their people in the wake of natural disasters, how transnational agencies’ view of the government affects foreign approaches to providing support, and how citizens’ view of their government and transnational agencies poise them to mobilize in particular ways. The panel papers cover both large-scale discreet disasters including earthquakes in Kashmir and Nepal and the tsunami in Sri Lanka as well as chronic seasonal disruptions such as floods in Bangladesh and North India. By exploring these different dynamics, the panel will identify similarities and differences in how people, states, and transnational entities respond to natural disasters in South Asia and the degree to which these responses disrupt or maintain the socio-political status-quo.  The panel critically questions humanitarian neutrality and the degree to which it is complicit in reproducing structural inequality and cementing existing societal tensions.

Area of Study

• South Asia

Session Organizer

• Amanda Snellinger, University of Oxford

Chair

• Amanda Snellinger, University of Oxford

Individual Presentations

• State-Society Sponsored Comprehensive Disaster Management Program of Bangladesh - Golam M. Mathbor, Monmouth University

• De-exceptionalising Disasters: A Central Himalayan Flood in Historical and Political Context - Radhika Govindrajan, University of Washington

• Disaster Nationalism: Tsunami, Civil War, and Technologies of State Power in Sri Lanka - Vivian Y. Choi, University of Tennessee

• Strengthening Civl Society? Humanitarian Jihad in Kashmir and Hacking Nepal’s Earthquake - Amanda Snellinger, University of Oxford; Cabeiri Robinson, University of Wahington

Discussant

• Sara Shneiderman, University of British Columbia