Benevolent discipline: governing affect in post-Yolanda disaster reconstruction in the Philippines

‘Forgotten crises’ as forgotten sites of knowledge production for building lasting peace

“…Several studies have pointed out that in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, the disaster was even used as an opportunity for state‐sanctioned land grabbing and dispersals of informal settlers (Uson, 2017; Yee, 2018; Alburo‐Cañete, 2022). The case of Haiyan corroborates broader claims advanced by scholars looking to more global cases to draw attention to how the presence of conflict can have the unintended consequence of preserving land and biodiversity by rendering these spaces as ‘off limits’ to development projects and extractive industries.…”

From pity to fear: security as a mechanism for (re)production of vulnerability

“…This affective approach is the vehicle for outpourings of compassion that Danewid (2017) claims are embedded in ‘colonial amnesia’. As Alburo‐Cañete (2022) demonstrates in the case of the Philippines post Super Typhoon Yolanda (2013), by mobilising pity as affect, the state can pose as ‘benevolent’ while targeting the vulnerable—in this case, informal settlers—with disciplinary techniques to produce ‘governable subjects’.…”

Standardised indicators for “resilient cities”: the folly of devising a technical solution to a political problem

“…Defenders often claim that standardisation is rooted in rationalism and is merely a technical, politically neutral exercise that is best performed by experts who are not influenced by sociopolitical considerations, and therefore, are not interested in picking winners or losers. Marxism and neo-Marxism (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1979) argue for the need of standardisationalthough its consequences in communist societies in most cases have been tragic as standardisation has erased local practices, differences and values. Scott (1998) demonstrates how authorities on the left and the right of the political spectrum, obsessively plan, manage and regulate cities and territories.…”

“…It is also not clear what these numbers actually tell: does it mean that by having fewer homeless people a city is becoming more resilient? There are many examples where in the name of IJDRBE 14,4 resilience, "vulnerable" residents have been resettledand consequently, their social cohesion has been destroyed (Oliver-Smith, 1991;Alvarez and Cardenas, 2019;Staupe-Delgado, 2019;Alburo-Cañete, 2022). Gentrification is also becoming an almost unavoidable outcome of enhancing resilience in apolitical manners (Anguelovski et al, 2018), such as the one proposed by the Standard.…”