The Long Shadow of Disaster: Memory and Politics in Holland and Sweden

Abstract

Disasters remembered and forgottenMany big disasters such as the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the Bhopal chemical disaster, or major oil spills in Alaska, France, Spain and elsewhere have a major and lasting impact on public health, the environment, and the social and economic fabric of the communities affected (Davidson, 1990;Jasanoff, 1994). Still, despite such objectively recognizable footprints, not all disasters become equally deeply rooted in collective memory. Why are some mass catastrophes more or less 'forgotten'-a case in point is the Chicago heat wave of 1995 that claimed more than 700 lives, but has been practically erased from American public memory, which has retained much more vivid images of much less deadly disasters such as hurricane Andrew and the Lockerbie Pan Am tragedy (Klinenberg, 2001), and more recently has been mesmerized by '9-11'-whereas others are so vividly remembered in monuments, commemorations and public discourse? This general question inspired the research reported in this article. Specifically, we wanted to study how and to what extent people and communities victimized by disaster are able to shape and correct 'official,' governmental efforts at disaster investigation and remembrance.Our key claim is that the extent and nature of disaster remembrance is not solely a question of physical characteristics such as the number of casualties, nor of the degree of social disturbance they cause at the time of their occurrence; instead it should be viewed as a product of a political encounter between 6International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters

Negotiations of Acknowledgement among Middle Class Residents: An Analysis of Post Disaster Interactions and Performance in a Danish Context

“…For some, it was important to have their situation acknowledged several months after the accident, whereas others understood and accepted the decrease in interest and recognition. As emphasised in other studies, incidents that are kept on the agenda and stay in the collective memory , or incidents that are placed in the top of the hierarchy of grief (Butler 2004), or that keep their place in top of the hierarchy of affectedness are the result of negotiation (Bos et al 2005).…”

“…In a discussion of theories of modernity, Edelstein (2000) has approached the relationship between people affected by a technological disaster and those outside who have not experienced the same calamities. Kroll-Smith and Couch (1990) show the mutual evaluations of citizens in between in a town threatened by a technological disaster, whereas Bos, Ullberg, and 't Hart (2005) analyse how different victim communities are more or less able to work for remembrance of disasters and the mourning of those who lost their lives. It is argued that people have to be articulated in order to keep the public agenda focused on the event, the grievances, and the questions that remain unanswered (p. 22).…”

“…Previous studies point both in the direction of disaster response being militarized in case of Hurricane Katrina (Tierney et al 2006) and in the direction of caring officials (Linenthal 2001;Wachendorf 2004) and media contributing to the acknowledgement of victims in a somewhat parallel situation (Bos et al 2005). The question is whether the level of conflict or care depends on institutional and macro sociological traits in a society, or if the interactions between officials and the media on the one side and people struck by an incident on the other side should be explained with reference to the local context and circumstances.…”

Disaster mobilities, temporalities, and recovery: experiences of the tsunami in the Maldives

“…Indeed, there is a rich body of work on the post‐disaster commemorative landscape (Simpson and Corbridge, 2006; Simpson and De Alwis, 2008; Logan, 2015), one ‘replete with memorials that help communities collectively remember destructive events and recover psychologically’ (Zavar and Schumann, 2019, p. 157). Reflections and representations of the past are expressed in, and shaped by, formal and informal remembrance practices that organise memory and ‘make’ history within and beyond affected populations (Bos, Ullberg, and ‘t Hart, 2005). Eyre (1999, p. 23) identified several such practices, ‘including contributions to disaster funds, a routine media discourse (consisting of interviews with “heroes”, attributions of blame, calls for accountability and for lessons to be learned) and, later on, coverage of inquests and inquiry procedures’.…”

Recalling Chernobyl: Reflections among Swedish Farmers

“…The influence of previous experience of accidents or disasters on personal protective behavior has also been shown to be dependent on how the individual interprets this experience (Weinstein, 1989). Long-term impressions from major crisis events can be expected to be influenced both by interpretations of personal experience and by collective influences via media reports, public inquiries, etc (Boholm, 1998;Larsson and Enander, 1997;Kofman Bos, Ullberg and t´Hart, 2005). Few studies have, however, attempted to trace the processes by which individuals recollect, reflect upon and possibly reassess such experiences after diffuse threat situations.…”