Stories from the frontlines: decolonising social contracts for disasters

Siddiqi, Ayesha; Canuday, Jose Jowel

doi:10.1111/disa.12308

Cited by 22 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 69 publications

(81 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Alongside this, the language of the social contract has entered adaptation, disasters and development literatures as a broad analytical lens. Current applications invoke the social contract to highlight inequalities resulting from specific development failures which underlie unequal geographies of disaster risk reduction (DRR; Mitra et al, 2017) impact and recovery (Pelling & Dill, 2010), as a mechanism for adaptation (Adger et al, 2012;O'Brien, Hayward, & Berkes, 2009), as a lens on the evolution or stability of state-society relations in post-disaster settings (Blackburn, 2018;Siddiqi, 2013;Siddiqi & Canuday, 2018), and as the building block for more accountable development pathways (Hickey & King, 2016). The social contract has been used to articulate those conditions causing risk governance to be seen as illegitimate or unacceptable (Christoplos, Ngoan, Hoa Sen, Thanh Huong, & Lindegaard, 2017;Pelling, 2011), and to help conceptualize and visualize what fairer governance might look like in the future (O'Brien et al, 2009).…”

Section: Adaptation As Political: the (Re)emergence Of Social Contractsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The political impacts of adaptation actions: Social contracts, a research agenda

Blackburn

Pelling

2018

WIREs Climate Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Managing climate and disaster risk is a deeply political act sitting at the interface of popular expectations, legal mandate, and political fiat. This article makes the case for an expanded research agenda on social contracts in climate and disasters scholarship as a mechanism to better reveal activity across this interface, identify the winners and losers of adaptation, and improve the equity outcomes of negotiated and imposed risk management settlements. Social contracts are defined as multiple and constructed (not singular or fixed), and three distinct yet intersecting forms of social contracts are identified: imagined, practiced, and legal-institutional. The article argues that mapping the disjunctures, overlaps and transitions between these concurrent social contracts can help reveal gaps between responsibilities held de facto and de jure. This makes a timely contribution to understanding tensions between need, obligation and entitlement that underlie contestations over "who" is responsible for "what" in risk governance. It also helps reveal the dynamic boundaries of social acceptances at the centre of debates around fair adaptation governance. Such work can provide insight on how development relations, including but reaching beyond risk management and climate change adaptation, can be transformed progressively and fairly in a changing climate. This article is categorized under:Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for AdaptationAdaptation, fairness, politics, social contracts, transformation | INTRODUCTIONThis article argues that social contracts offer a rich lens for research on the politics and fairness of adaptation and its consequences. It is now well-established that the risks associated with climate change, and the effects of adaptive actions, have unequal social, spatial and temporal distributions. These inequities are mediated by and accentuate cultural and political differences (Adger, Barnett, Brown, Marshall, & O'Brien, 2012;Eriksen et al., 2011;Norgaard, 1988). Cultural norms and assumptions, legal frameworks and everyday practice constantly iterate in ways that produce and reflect dynamic but invariably asymmetric relations of power between development stakeholders and across scales. The same social-political relations through which power is exercised in development decision-making and action (interactions that might collectively be termed "development relations"), will also determine who carries the burden of impacts and the costs of absorbing losses, adapting or transforming in the face of escalating disaster risks (Pelling, 2011). The social reproduction of power through adaptation policy and action, and embedded questions of equity and representation, are increasingly recognized as important to

show abstract

Section: Adaptation As Political: the (Re)emergence Of Social Contractsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The political impacts of adaptation actions: Social contracts, a research agenda

Blackburn

Pelling

2018

WIREs Climate Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the private arena, individuals or groups of individuals may engage in resistance without overt displays. Such forms of 'everyday resistance' and 'infrapolitics' (Scott 1976), which are relatively difficult to observe and understand because they become ingrained in the social consciousness and habits, are also seen in disaster governance (Wisner 2016).…”

Section: This Conception Reflects Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, when seen in the light of the colonial history and people's resistance to the dominant powers (Casimir and Claypool 2012), these expressions can also be understood as part of a larger pattern of societal defiance of the 'self-interested' state. Because people felt powerless to address the marginalization by the state in a public manner, other forms of resistance became part of everyday life as a means of negotiating power; Scott (1985) has referred to this as 'infra-politics'. Occupying public buildings by refusing to leave the shelters can be seen as a way of pressuring the state to continue providing aid because what has been supplied has not been sufficient.…”

Section: Resisting State Power: Reluctance and Protestmentioning

confidence: 99%

Weathering the storm: contesting disaster governance after Hurricane Matthew in Haiti

Melis

Jean

2021

Int J Humanitarian Action

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As a disaster unfolds, survivors’ experiences, actions and motives often become overshadowed by the humanitarian response. This is especially the case in contexts where the national state and international organizations are seen to perpetuate (colonial) power structures. This article is based on 4 months of fieldwork in Haiti, where the authors conducted interviews and focus group discussions with people affected by Hurricane Matthew and with a variety of state officials and humanitarian response actors in Port-au-Prince, Jérémie, Les Cayes and Dame Marie. This study aimed to understand the role and power of societal actors in a context where there is a strong disarticulation between the state and society. The findings show that state–society tensions have been intensified in the response, leading to the politicization of aid and limiting the inclusion of affected communities in disaster governance. In this context, society-based actors negotiate the conditions of aid through resistance and solidarity, with strategies ranging from public protests to everyday resistance and from social networks to alternative aid structures. The article argues that disarticulation between society and the state needs to be addressed to make a more locally led response possible.

show abstract

“…The marginalized also tend to lack citizenship at various scales: whether that means statelessness (e.g., Rohingya; see Ahmed et al, 2018) or informality (e.g., Meriläinen, Fougère, & Piotrowicz, 2020). Siddiqi and Canuday (2018) illustrate that, when scrutinizing social contracts in case of disasters, one should not start with the static notion of a state, but rather foreground people's experience of citizenship. That might mean observing, as the authors do, how the state-citizenship contract and its inequalities weather a disaster relatively unscathed (Siddiqi & Canuday, 2018).…”

Section: Limitations Of the Division Of Moral Labor In Challenging Neoliberal Disaster Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Blurred Responsibilities of Disaster Governance: The American Red Cross in the US and Haiti

Meriläinen

Mäkinen

Solitander

2020

PaG

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The influence of private actors, such as non-profit organizations (NPOs) and firms, has been increasing in disaster governance. Previous literature has interrogated the responsibilities of states towards citizens in disasters, but the roles of private actors have been insufficiently challenged. The article politicizes the entangled relations between NPOs, states, and disaster-affected people. It proposes the Rawlsian division of moral labor as a useful, normative framework for interrogating the justice of disaster governance arrangements in which ‘liberal’ states are involved. Liberal states have two types of responsibilities in disasters: humanitarian and political. The humanitarian responsibilities imply provision of basic resources needed for the capacity to make autonomous choices (domestically and abroad), while the political responsibilities imply provision of the institutions needed for the liberal democratic citizenship (domestically). Through this analytical lens and building on the wealth of existing scholarship, we illustrate the disaster governance role of the American Red Cross in the United States (a 2005 hurricane) and in Haiti (the 2010 earthquake). Where, in Rawlsian terms, United States is interpreted as a ‘liberal’ society, Haiti is framed as a ‘burdened’ society. The article proposes five points to consider in analyzing disaster governance arrangements under neoliberal regimes, structured around the division of humanitarian and political responsibilities. The article illustrates how NPOS are instrumental in blurring the boundaries between humanitarian and political responsibilities. This might result ultimately in actual vulnerabilities remaining unaddressed. While the Rawlsian approach challenges the privatization and lack of coordination in disaster governance, it is limited in analyzing the political construction of ‘burdened’ societies.

show abstract

Stories from the frontlines: decolonising social contracts for disasters

Cited by 22 publications

References 69 publications

The political impacts of adaptation actions: Social contracts, a research agenda

The political impacts of adaptation actions: Social contracts, a research agenda

Weathering the storm: contesting disaster governance after Hurricane Matthew in Haiti

Blurred Responsibilities of Disaster Governance: The American Red Cross in the US and Haiti

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About