Hybrid Disasters—Hybrid Knowledge

Abstract

Drawing from in-depth anthropological research in the San Francisco Bay Area, looking at a community of scientists, experts, and other risk-conscious residents who are preparing for the next large earthquake, this article argues for an understanding of resilience as an overarching heuristic concept with the potential to articulate multiple forms of knowledge into a collaborative approach, associating scientists, experts, and residents. Building on the corpus of literature coming from Science and Technology Studies (STS), Geography and risk Disaster Studies, this article discusses the emergence of the concept of resilience and its articulation with the existing literature. Following this exploration, I will look at the implication such concept in the re-definition of knowledge and the categories of expertise as observed during my field research in the Bay Area of San Francisco. I find that resilience can be a useful concept only if the rigid definitions that have separated academic disciplines, as well as the concepts of "science" and "experience," are recomposed in favor of a more integrated approach taking into account the multiple, and emerging, dimensions of knowledge.