Disaster Financialization: Earthquakes, Cashflows and Shifting Household Economies in Nepal

Abstract

The political economy literature on post‐disaster reconstruction tends to contrast ‘disaster capitalism’ narratives denouncing the predatory character of neoliberal rebuilding, and ‘building back better’ policies supporting market‐driven reconstruction. This article seeks to provide a more nuanced account, developing the concept of ‘disaster financialization’ through a case study of household‐level changes experienced through processes of post‐earthquake reconstruction in Nepal. The concept of disaster financialization describes not only the integration of disaster‐affected households into the cash‐based logic of reconstruction instituted by donors and government authorities, but also the financialization of their lives, social relations and subjectivities. It is a transitive process involving a shift into financialized mechanisms of disaster prevention, adaptation and recovery. Analysing contrasting experiences across three earthquake‐affected districts in Nepal, this study proposes disaster financialization as an integrative term through which to understand the simultaneous acceleration of monetization, the leveraging of cash incentives by donors and government to ‘build back better’, and the flurry of financial transactions associated with reconstruction processes. While some aspects of disaster financialization have had negative social impacts, such as debt‐related anxieties and a breakdown of voluntary labour exchanges hurting the most vulnerable, the process has taken on variegated forms, with equally variegated effects, reflecting household characteristics and interactions with financial institutions.

Contextualizing patterns in short-term disaster recoveries from the 2015 Nepal earthquakes: household vulnerabilities, adaptive capacities, and change

“…Kashigaun also had more diversified livelihoods with a balance of herding and farming and primarily received loans from family and friends to rebuild compared to banks or microcredit, which created more debt, particularly in accessible settlements. Debt from loans was common in a nearby district (Le Billon et al 2020).…”

Geopolitical priorities, governance gaps, and heritage subjectivities: The perils of heritage-making in the post-disaster reconstruction in Nepal

“…Disaster financialization is an integrative term through which power is being shifted around in the post-disaster reconstruction, and this penetrates through the local communities and activists as well. Le Billon et al (2020) argue that the Nepalese government has relied on the leveraging of cash incentives by donors and government to accelerate the ‘build back better’ concept, which others argue (Rawal et al, 2021) has not benefited the low-income and vulnerable population.…”

Unsettling the American Dream: Mobility, Migration and Precarity among Translocal Himalayan Communities during COVID‐19

“…The pandemic and associated lockdown have restricted international travel and prevented the movement of people within Nepal during peak tourist seasons. COVID‐19 has exposed the uncertainty of the tourism industry in a much more convincing way than the Nepal earthquakes of 2015 (Le Billon et al., 2020) when tourism bounced back quickly. The pandemic has made Mustangi communities come to terms with tourism's precarity, linked as it is to a reliance on remittances and cyclical migratory flows, on the one hand, as well as the capacity for foreign and domestic travel, on the other.…”