Sensing Disaster (eBook)

Local Knowledge and Vulnerability in Oceania

Dr. Matthew Lauer (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2023
292 Seiten
University of California Press (Verlag)
978-0-520-39208-3 (ISBN)

Infos

In 2007, a three-story-high tsunami slammed the small island of Simbo in the western Solomon Islands. Drawing on over ten years of research, Matthew Lauer provides a vivid and intimate account of this calamitous event and the tumultuous recovery process. His stimulating analysis surveys the unpredictable entanglements of the powerful waves with colonization, capitalism, human-animal communication, spirit beings, ancestral territory, and technoscientific expertise that shaped the disaster's outcomes. Although the Simbo people had never experienced another tsunami in their lifetimes, nearly everyone fled to safety before the destructive waves hit. To understand their astonishing response, Lauer argues that we need to rethink popular and scholarly portrayals of Indigenous knowledge to avert epistemic imperialism and improve disaster preparedness strategies. In an increasingly disaster-prone era of ecological crises, this provocative book brings new possibilities into view for understanding the causes and consequences of calamity, the unintended effects of humanitarian recovery and mitigation efforts, and the nature of local knowledge.

Inhalt

Contents

Acknowledgments 
Notes on the Simbo Language and Solomon Islands Pijin 
Glossary 

Prologue: “Something Was Not Right” 
Introduction 
1. The Rise of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge 
2. Ocean Knowing 
3. Ancestors, Steel, and Inland Living 
4. New Villages, a New God, New Vulnerabilities 
5. Assembling Reconstruction 
6. Vulnerable Isles? 
7. Sensing Disaster Compositions 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.3.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: anthropology of disasters • Barrier Reef • CANoe • Colonization • Community • disasterology • Earthquake • Escape Routes • European traders • Exchange • Fishing • Indigenous Ecological Knowledge • mitigation plans • Simboan people • Simbo Island • Solomon Islands • Tapurai • vulnerability
• ISBN-10: 0-520-39208-6 / 0520392086
• ISBN-13: 978-0-520-39208-3 / 9780520392083