Emergent emergency response: Speed, event suppression and the chronopolitics of resilience

Abstract

Emergency responses are premised on the hope that, even when events cannot be wholly predicted and prevented, timely action in the present can be exercised to strip an emergent event of its disruptive potential. Yet, while the speed of emergency responses plays a critical role in underpinning UK resilience, it has been a relatively neglected subject in studies of resilience advanced through the paradigm of preparedness. This article aims to contribute to and extend work in the field of emergency governance by arguing that concerns surrounding the speed of response contribute to a distinct form of security enacted in contemporary emergency response strategies, which I term ‘event suppression’. Drawing on policy analysis, preparedness exercise observations and practitioner interviews, this article investigates how speed operates as a core problematic informing the design of UK emergency responses, organized through the Integrated Emergency Management framework. Integrated Emergency Management promises to accelerate emergency response operations by utilizing advances in communications technologies to drive the bottom-up emergent self-organization of emergency responses. Event suppression ensures security not by preventing an event from happening, but by quickly closing down the ‘disruptive’ time of the emergency event and restoring the linear historical time of standard political processes.

Harm reduction in an emergency response to homelessness during South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown

“…The Caledonian Stadium emergency shelter is the outcome of an emergent emergency [27]. Arising rapidly and unexpectedly from complex, often unpredictable processes, the emergency was triggered by the decision to lockdown the country to contain COVID-19.…”

“…Notwithstanding ministerial, National Department of Health and WHO Africa Office efforts to mobilise government COVID-19 preparedness in the 6 weeks before the declaration of a National State of Disaster [28], the challenges of responding to the combination of homelessness and dependence on substances was neither foreseen nor planned for. Unlike preparation that is always anticipatory and hypothetical, this is not exceptional in emergencies, because responding to them is concrete, material and immediate [27].…”

Data, Disasters, and Space-Time Entanglements

“…As research participants, the disaster-affected people might not come to center the hazard as an event. Meanwhile, dominant and formal political actors are likely to reinforce the notion of disaster governance phases, and through that process center the event (Anderson 2010 ; Aijazi 2014 ; Zebrowski 2019 ). Research participants are not likely to place their emphases regarding the phenomenon unwittingly either, as they are likely to care about its representation (Alvesson 2011 ).…”

“…This phase-based approach centers the disaster event and reinforces the linearity of time where before, during, and after disaster follow one another (Aijazi 2014 ). In the response phase, Zebrowski ( 2019 ) argues that political actors strive to suppress events and their “disruptive” time quickly, aiming to restore the linear time of the everyday. Disaster recovery perspectives, similarly, tend to emphasize the role of institutional actors in addressing the political threat of disasters as events, even if an emphasis on resuming everyday life and rehumanizing the self might be more relevant for disaster-affected people (Aijazi 2014 ).…”

Ethical Decision Making in Emergent Emergencies under a Veil of Ignorance

“…• Resilience: The capacity of a broad array of complex adaptive systems to absorb, withstand and 'bounce back' quickly and efficiently from a perturbation by exercising their own inherent capacities of emergent self-organization (Zebrowski, 2019).…”