Schooling and the Politics of Disaster

Schooling and the Politics of Disaster
Author: Kenneth J. Saltman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2010-06-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135910715

Schooling and the Politics of Disaster is the first volume to address how disaster is being used for a radical social and economic reengineering of education. From the natural disasters of the Asian tsunami and the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, to the human-made disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan, Indonesia, the United States and around the globe, disaster is increasingly shaping policy and politics. This groundbreaking collection explores how education policy is being reshaped by disaster politics. Noted scholars in education and sociology tackle issues as far-ranging as No Child Left Behind, the War on Terror, Hurricane Katrina, the making of educational funding crises in the US, and the Iraq War to bring to light a disturbing new phenonmemon in educational policy.

Disaster and the Politics of Intervention

Disaster and the Politics of Intervention
Author: Andrew Lakoff
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231146965

Government plays a critical role in mitigating individual and collective vulnerability to disaster. Through measures such as disaster relief, infrastructure development, and environmental regulation, public policy is central to making societies more resilient. However, the recent drive to replace public institutions with market mechanisms has challenged governmental efforts to manage collective risk. The contributors to this volume analyze the respective roles of the public and private sectors in the management of catastrophic risk, addressing questions such as: How should homeland security officials evaluate the risk posed by terrorist attacks and natural disasters? Are market-based interventions likely to mitigate our vulnerability to the effects of climate change? What is the appropriate relationship between non-governmental organizations and private security firms in responding to humanitarian emergencies? And how can philanthropic efforts to combat the AIDS crisis ensure ongoing access to life-saving drugs in the developing world? More generally, these essays point to the way thoughtful policy intervention can improve our capacity to withstand catastrophic events. Additional Columbia / SSRC books on the Privatization of Risk and its Implications for Americans Bailouts: Public Money, Private ProfitEdited by Robert E. Wright Health at Risk: America's Ailing Health System-and How to Heal ItEdited by Jacob S. Hacker Laid Off, Laid Low: Political and Economic Consequences of Employment InsecurityEdited by Katherine S. Newman Pensions, Social Security, and the Privatization of RiskEdited by Mitchell A. Orenstein

The Politics of Disaster

The Politics of Disaster
Author: Marvin N. Olasky
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2006
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Examines why the government failed those left stranded in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and discusses the importance of churches and the private sector in responding to major disasters.

Disaster Policy and Politics

Disaster Policy and Politics
Author: Richard T. Sylves
Publisher: CQ Press
Total Pages: 633
Release: 2019-02-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1506368719

Disaster Policy and Politics combines evidence-based research with mini-case studies of recent events to demonstrate the fundamental principles of emergency management and to explore the impact that disasters have had on U.S. policy. Paying special attention to the role of key actors—decision makers at the federal, state, and local levels; scientists; engineers; civil and military personnel; and first responders—author Richard Sylves explores how researchers contribute to and engage in disaster policy development and management. The highly anticipated Third Edition explores the radical change in policy and politics after the occurrence of recent disasters such as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria; Hawaii’s false nuclear attack warning; and responses to U.S. wildfires. This book’s comprehensive “all-hazards” approach introduces students to the important public policy, organizational management, and leadership issues they may need as future practitioners and leaders in the field.

Famine Crimes

Famine Crimes
Author: Alexander De Waal
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1997
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780253211583

Who is responsible for the failures? African generals and politicians are the prime culprits for creating famines in Sudan, Somalia and Zaire, but western donors abet their authoritarianism, partly through imposing structural adjustment programmes.

Lessons of Disaster

Lessons of Disaster
Author: Thomas A. Birkland
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2006-11-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781589013599

Even before the wreckage of a disaster is cleared, one question is foremost in the minds of the public: "What can be done to prevent this from happening again?" Today, news media and policymakers often invoke the "lessons of September 11" and the "lessons of Hurricane Katrina." Certainly, these unexpected events heightened awareness about problems that might have contributed to or worsened the disasters, particularly about gaps in preparation. Inquiries and investigations are made that claim that "lessons" were "learned" from a disaster, leading us to assume that we will be more ready the next time a similar threat looms, and that our government will put in place measures to protect us. In Lessons of Disaster, Thomas Birkland takes a critical look at this assumption. We know that disasters play a role in setting policy agendas—in getting policymakers to think about problems—but does our government always take the next step and enact new legislation or regulations? To determine when and how a catastrophic event serves as a catalyst for true policy change, the author examines four categories of disasters: aviation security, homeland security, earthquakes, and hurricanes. He explores lessons learned from each, focusing on three types of policy change: change in the larger social construction of the issues surrounding the disaster; instrumental change, in which laws and regulations are made; and political change, in which alliances are created and shifted. Birkland argues that the type of disaster affects the types of lessons learned from it, and that certain conditions are necessary to translate awareness into new policy, including media attention, salience for a large portion of the public, the existence of advocacy groups for the issue, and the preexistence of policy ideas that can be drawn upon. This timely study concludes with a discussion of the interplay of multiple disasters, focusing on the initial government response to Hurricane Katrina and the negative effect the September 11 catastrophe seems to have had on reaction to that tragedy.

Doom

Doom
Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2021-05-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0593297385

"All disasters are in some sense man-made." Setting the annus horribilis of 2020 in historical perspective, Niall Ferguson explains why we are getting worse, not better, at handling disasters. Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet in 2020 the responses of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China were badly bungled. Why? Why did only a few Asian countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? While populist leaders certainly performed poorly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work--pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Ferguson has studied the foibles of modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online fragmentation. Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn, if we want to handle the next crisis better, and to avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.

The Battle for Paradise

The Battle for Paradise
Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 53
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1608464318

Fearless necessary reporting . . . Klein exposes the ‘battle of utopias’ that is currently unfolding in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico” (Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) “We are in a fight for our lives. Hurricanes Irma and María unmasked the colonialism we face in Puerto Rico, and the inequality it fosters, creating a fierce humanitarian crisis. Now we must find a path forward to equality and sustainability, a path driven by communities, not investors. And this book explains, with careful and unbiased reporting, only the efforts of our community activists can answer the paramount question: What type of society do we want to become and who is Puerto Rico for?” —Carmen Yulín Cruz, Mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico In the rubble of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans and ultrarich “Puertopians” are locked in a pitched struggle over how to remake the island. In this vital and startling investigation, bestselling author and activist Naomi Klein uncovers how the forces of shock politics and disaster capitalism seek to undermine the nation’s radical, resilient vision for a “just recovery.” All royalties from the sale of this book in English and Spanish go directly to JunteGente, a gathering of Puerto Rican organizations resisting disaster capitalism and advancing a fair and healthy recovery for their island. “Klein chronicles the extraordinary grassroots resistance by the Puerto Rican people against neoliberal privatization and Wall Street greed in the aftermath of the island’s financial meltdown, of hurricane devastation, and of Washington’s imposition of an outside control board over the most important U.S. colony.” —Juan González, cohost of Democracy Now! and author of Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America

The Shock Doctrine

The Shock Doctrine
Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 721
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1429919485

The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global "free market" has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.

Disaster Education

Disaster Education
Author: John Preston
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2012-09-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9460918735

From ‘Duck and Cover’ in the 1950s, when American schoolchildren were instructed to hide beneath their desks in the event of nuclear attack to contemporary campaigns against pandemic flu, education campaigns have been used to prepare the general public for apocalyptic events. Governments have made use of various media from films, leaflets and television to the internet to inform, inspire and scare populations. Forms of disaster education also permeate popular culture with films and television programmes illustrating survival techniques from dealing with terrorist attacks in ‘24’ to thwarting zombie apocalypse in ‘The Walking Dead’ and ’28 Days Later’ . Using critical race theory and whiteness studies the book argues that information about disasters has always, tacitly or overtly, prioritised the survival of certain groups of citizens above others. Drawing on examples from the UK and the US, from past and contemporary disaster education and popular culture, it considers that rather than being kitsch, naïve and ephemeral, such campaigns are central to the way in which states define survival, life and death. The book will be of interest to educationalists, historians, sociologists and cultural theorists as well as those working in emergency planning, public health and communications.