Recovery practices following the loss of home, sense of security, space and possessions, have recently become a focus of UK government attention. How people recover from disasters is seen to have a direct bearing on individual, community and economic well-being, so that the recovery itself becomes a form of social change. A plethora of instruments: templates, checklists and guidance documents have been produced to effect this recovery. We term these 'technologies of recovery', which work within a wider context of disaster planning aimed at bringing order where much is uncertain, reactive and dependent on emerging relations between people, things and spaces. While such protocols are not necessarily unwelcome, they carry many assumptions. We show how these technologies are built from official, distal narratives, versions of recovery remote from situated practices or recovery-in-place. Official emergency planning builds on 'lessons' from previous emergencies, to be then applied to future crises. Knowledge that is situated, complex and partial is potentially useless because emergency planners seek accounts that don't depend on highly localized circumstances. From a five-year ethnography of both a flooded community and the development of government recovery guidance, it became clear that technologies or recovery became transformed and remade in localized practice when enacted by newly formed and precarious collaborations of residents and local responders. Operating alongside, and sometimes underneath, the official response, residents and local responders demonstrated a remaking of the politics of recovery. Introduction: flooding in Toll Bar, Doncaster, UKToll Bar is a settlement of 1,400 residents in Doncaster, South Yorkshire and is described as a 'village'. It lies in a bowl-like area in a part of the UK hit most severely socially and economically by the closure of the pits in the early 1990s following the 1984-5 miners' strike. In June 2007 parts of England experienced devastating and unseasonal storms and rainfall and South Yorkshire experienced severe flooding, with 48 areas of the large borough of Doncaster affected. In the borough 3,286 homes were flooded, with 2,275 suffering 'major damage' as defined by the local council and 283 businesses were also affected (Doncaster bs_bs_banner The Sociological Review, 62:S1, pp. 135-158 (2014),
Increasing scrutiny of the role and actions of emergency responders in the aftermath of mass casualty events has led to improvements and advances in terms of treatment and care. However, despite these improvements, the authors have identified a growing concern relating to the identification of incapacitated patients and those unable to provide any identifying details, such as pediatric patients. The use of visual identification and the reliance on personal effects within the vicinity of a victim, either living or deceased, has resulted in mistaken identification in a number of major international incidents. The purpose of this article is to consider whether commonly used scientific methods for identification of the deceased could and should be broadened to include victims who are incapacitated and unable to confirm their own identity. The medicolegal questions that may arise when applying identification methods established for deceased patients to the living casualty will also be examined. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;page 1 of 7).
The status of funeral directors, including whether or not the industry can be considered a legitimate 'profession', has long been a topic of interest in this journal. Contributing to this ongoing debate, this paper considers opportunities and barriers to professional development in the UK funeral industry. In so doing, the paper makes particular reference to 'communities of practice' (CP), a model of situated learning. Previous research in comparable sectors has indicated that CP enhances individual and organisational performance through emphasising commitment to sharing and developing best practice within an area of common interest. Drawing on interviews with and presentations given by funeral directors/arrangers, the paper examines perceptions of performance, alongside issues of mistrust and resistance to change. Data will show that participants conveyed a situation of competing forces in terms of a hierarchical structure within the industry that perpetuates a lack of incentive to invest in education and training. At the same time, a new generation of staff is developing an alternative vision of funeral directing, which includes wider public recognition of their skills. In view of the industry's long-standing drive for professional standing, the paper identifies the potential of CP as a means of negotiating such competing forces to provide a medium through which issues associated with regulation can be addresse
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