Citizens without a City (eBook)

Destruction and Despair after the L'Aquila Earthquake

Jan-Jonathan Bock (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2022
274 Seiten
Indiana University Press (Verlag)
978-0-253-05887-4 (ISBN)

Infos

A fascinating read for anyone interested in the politics of disaster relief, Citizens without a City illustrates how survivors tried to remake effective political agency—and their lives—in a ruined town.

— Bock is an early-career scholar who is steering his career toward nonprofit and charity-based work which seeks to establish clear dialogue around issues of diversity in religion, gender, and ethnicity. — This work is important because it provides a critical understanding of the ways in which political maneuvering can misdirect desperately-needed aid and responses after natural disasters and other crises. — The work contributes to critical debates about the possibilities of citizenship as a practice of political belonging under circumstances marked by urban decay and state instability as well as crisis and emergency. — The audience is students and scholars working on modern Italy and urban anthropology, state crisis management, trauma and memory studies, issues of nationality, and modern European history.

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In 2009, after seismic tremors struck the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila, survivors were subjected to a "second earthquake"—invasive media attention and a relief effort that left them in a state of suspended citizenship as they were forcibly resettled and had to envision a new future.

In Citizens without a City, Jan-Jonathan Bock reveals how a disproportionate government response exacerbated survivors' sense of crisis, divided the local population, and induced new types of political action. Italy's disenfranchising emergency reaction relocated citizens to camps and sites across a ruined townscape, without a plan for restoration or return. Through grassroots politics, arts and culture, commemoration rituals, architectural projects, and legal avenues, local people now sought to shape their hometown's recovery. Bock combines an analysis of the catastrophe's impact with insights into post-disaster civic life, urban heritage, the politics of mourning, and community fragmentation.

A fascinating read for anyone interested in urban culture, disaster, and politics, Citizens without a City illustrates how survivors battled to retain a sense of purpose and community after the L'Aquila earthquake.

Autor

Jan-Jonathan Bock received his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. He is editor (with Sharon Macdonald) of Refugees Welcome? Difference and Diversity in a Changing Germany and (with John Fahy and Samuel Everett) of Emergent Religious Pluralisms. Jan currently directs the Business Council for Democracy (BC4D) for the Hertie Foundation, Germany.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: The L'Aquila Earthquake
2. The State of Emergency
3. Disaster Politics and the War Among the Poor
4. Contesting Urban Recovery
5. Activism and Grassroots Politics
6. Culture and Social Recovery
7. Mourning in Court
8. Conclusion: A Future for L'Aquila
Bibliography
Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.2.2022
• Zusatzinfo: 22 b&w illus.
• Verlagsort: Bloomington
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 150 x 150 mm
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Sozialpädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: 2009 • Citizenship • Earthquake • Emergency • Government • humanitarian • Italy • media • natural disaster • Policy • Recovery
• ISBN-10: 0-253-05887-2 / 0253058872
• ISBN-13: 978-0-253-05887-4 / 9780253058874