I’m organizing two sessions at the World Congress of Sociology in Toronto in the summer of 2018. Don’t be put off that it’s a sociology conference; the International Research Committee on Disasters is for all disaster scholars regardless of discipline. (Hence my being a part of things despite being a card-carrying historian.) Submissions are due September 30, 2017.
At the last ISA World Congress of Sociology in Yokohama (2014), the late Joseph Scanlon (a pre-eminent Canadian disaster scholar) organized a session called “Learning from the Past: Research into Past Disasters.” With this paper session, we propose to pick up where Dr. Scanlon left off. In the past 15 to 20 years, there has been a renaissance of historical and historicist studies of disaster. This paper session presents recent research in the histories of disaster and disasters; that is, research into how the category of disaster was built, understood, and deployed, and how specific disasters were experienced, responded to, and remembered. These historical studies, as Dr. Scanlon well understood, are useful not only in their own right, but as ways of “learning from the past” for the sake of contemporary sociological and DRR questions. This session will also highlight research on past disasters and examine what we can learn from these historic events while also focusing on knowledge that can help protect us in the future.
I am especially eager for historians to submit to this panel. Please do!
Diaspora, Removal, and Migration: Disasters and the Movement of People
In 2016, the UN General Assembly adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants which noted that today’s “growing global phenomenon of large movements of refugees and migrants” and “unprecedented level of human mobility” are driven in part by “the adverse effects of climate change, natural disasters (some of which may be linked to climate change), or other environmental factors.” What is the relationship between disaster and the movement of people? As the declaration suggests, many disasters force or encourage the migration of people either internally or across international borders. After a disaster or in preparation for a coming disaster, governments, planners, or others sometimes move communities, either willingly or not, as part of rebuilding or mitigation strategy. Disasters also exist in the context of already-occurring migration. Pre-existing diasporic communities may raise funds or encourage international attention to disaster in the home region, or they may shape the political and diplomatic response to disaster in their host country. This session seeks to understand the multifaceted and complex connection between disaster and the movement of people.
I intentionally wrote this to be as broad as possible. If you work on disasters and the movement of people in any form, please submit an abstract.
Other disaster panels are listed here; all are now accepting abstracts as well.
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