We said, they said: the politics of conceptual frameworks in disasters and climate change in Colombia and Latin America

Abstract

PurposeFew people living in informal settlements in the Global South spontaneously claim that they are “resilient” or “adapting” to disaster risk or climate change. Surely, they often overcome multiple challenges, including natural hazards exacerbated by climate change. Yet their actions are increasingly examined through the framework of resilience, a notion developed in the North, and increasingly adopted in the South. To what extent eliminate’ do these initiatives correspond to the concepts that scholars and authorities place under the resilience framework?Design/methodology/approachThree longitudinal case studies in Yumbo, Salgar and San Andrés (Colombia) serve to investigate narratives of disaster risks and responses to them. Methods include narrative analysis from policy and project documents, presentations, five workshops, six focus groups and 24 interviews.FindingsThe discourse adopted by most international scholars and local authorities differs greatly from that used by citizens to explain risk and masks the politics involved in disaster reduction and the search for social justice. Besides, narratives of social change, aspirations and social status are increasingly masked in disaster risk explanations. Tensions are also concealed, including those regarding the winners and losers of interventions and the responsibilities for disaster risk reduction.Originality/valueOur findings confirm previous results that have shown that the resilience framework contributes to “depoliticize” the analysis of risk and serves to mask and dilute the responsibility of political and economic elites in disaster risk creation. But they also show that resilience fails to explain the type of socioeconomic change that is required to reduce vulnerabilities in Latin America.

Community resilience implications for institutional response under uncertainty: Cases of the floods in Wayanad, India and the earthquake in Port‐au‐Prince, Haiti

“…dimensions that constitute the agency of community resilience in action enabled dealing with uncertainty due to the unexpected event (as illustrated by Imperiale & Vanclay, 2016 In Haiti, however, the uncertain conditions are structural, embedded in governance of urban services and of the responses to crises. This case supports other studies showing the limits of the application of resilience to describe the response of communities to hazards and structural vulnerabilities and uncertainties (Lizarralde et al, 2020).…”

Measuring Resilience in the Assumed City

“…Some argue that a concept of resilience is also contradictory as well as meaningless in non-Anglophone contexts. Chmutina et al (2020) and Lizarralde et al (2020), for instance, show that ''resilience'' does not reflect local contexts, and its use instead reinforces quasi-imperialist impositions of ideas. Many authors also highlight the current use of the concept, which is predominantly driven by neoliberal ideas of ''growing the wealth of the poor'' (Bracke 2016, p. 52) and using it as a pathway to (re)build the capacity of financial systems and national economies in the aftermath of disasters, thus reinstating the pre-disaster conditions.…”

Examining relational social ontologies of disaster resilience: lived experiences from India, Indonesia, Nepal, Chile and Andean territories

“…184). Even more critically, Lizarralde et al (2020) in interrogating the strangeness of academic theoretical concepts to lived experiences, suggest that any analysis of the current challenges of climate change, or disasters should not be withdrawn from the struggles of social justice.…”

“…For example, Enarson (2012), drawing heavily from US-based Women of Color grassroots organising, has suggested that feminist approaches to disasters should acknowledge and work on a structural approach to resilience that emphasises human action finding expression through groups, organisations, coalitions and networks (Enarson, 2012, p. 184). Even more critically, Lizarralde et al (2020) in interrogating the strangeness of academic theoretical concepts to lived experiences, suggest that any analysis of the current challenges of climate change, or disasters should not be withdrawn from the struggles of social justice. Accordingly, Cretney (2019) has suggested a more dynamic and complex understanding of the politics of disasters, drawing attention to the empirical "everyday", when the de/re-politicisation of disaster experience, and interpretations of better futures are constantly contested.…”