This session will be streamed, recorded, and archived on the site until June 25th, 2023

Curated Track: 

Description:

At a time when geography is making significant strides in bridging the divide between critical theory and physical geography to say something new about river pollution (Whitman et al 2015), ecosystem management (Barron et al 2015) and urban climatology (Beray-Armond 2022), disaster research seems woefully out of step. The divide between hazard and vulnerability paradigms is still going strong, where the former is seen to be the domain of physical geography, while the latter - the subject of critical theory. This sharp split between the two fields within disaster research and limited engagement on bringing critical theory into conversation with physical risk environments, has had particularly serious material and epistemic consequences in postcolonial, non-Western societies (Donovan 2010, Carrigan 2013), where ‘science’ still holds substantial political power and other ways of knowing, regularly marginalised. Critical physical geography (CPG) argues that landscapes are as much a product of “unequal power relations, histories of colonialism, and racial and gender disparities as they are of hydrology, ecology, and climate change” (Lave 2015). Is it then productive to continue constructing separate geographies of hazards, and those of risk and vulnerability within disasters research?

This session is interested in re-imagining and re-writing hazard risk in geography, drawing on learnings from critical physical geography (CPG) and other similar debates. It is especially interested in humanities driven approaches and research being used to address questions related to hazard risk. This will include research bringing together experiential and lived knowledge of hazards together with ‘scientific data’ to re-imagine and re-know hazard risk.

Non-Presenting Participants