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Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience
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JC Gaillard seminar online seminar, 22nd June 2022, 1:00pm to 2:00pm

1 June 2022
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JC Gaillard

Join the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience for a one-off online seminar with Professor JC Gaillard. Professor Gaillard will be giving a seminar surrounding his new book ‘The Invention of Disaster: Power and Knowledge in Discourses on Hazard and Vulnerability’. The seminar will be followed by a group reading tutorial and drinks reception on 30th June 2022 from 2pm to 4:30pm.

Hybrid seminar hosted by the IHRR: 22nd June 2022, 1:00pm to 2:00pm

Join the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience for a one-off online seminar with Professor JC Gaillard. Professor Gaillard will be giving a seminar surrounding his new book ‘The Invention of Disaster: Power and Knowledge in Discourses on Hazard and Vulnerability’. The seminar will be followed by a group reading tutorial and drinks reception on 30th June 2022 from 2pm to 4:30pm. The reading group and drinks receptions will take place room w007, department of geography, Lower Mountjoy, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE

To register: https://durhamuniversity.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pceGvrT0uGNYKvNh1ffdBYLbMBc7VkLUs

Title: The Tout-Monde of disaster studies

Abstract: This seminar will build upon and expand some of the key tenets of a recent book titled The Invention of Disaster: Power and Knowledge in Discourses on Hazard and Vulnerability. The book questions why we, disaster scholars, argue that disasters are social constructs while we continue to use concepts and methodologies inherited from the Enlightenment that we take for universal in understanding the experiences of people across very diverse cultures and societies. Addressing this epistemological tension requires to reconsider some ontological assumptions about disasters, including normative expectations about life that lead to drawing a line that sets the dis- in the -aster. It further entails to accept that there may be multiple truths about disaster and that these multiple truths cannot be essentialised. They are likely to be hybrid or creole, that is, that they integrate multiple influences that reflect historical heritages and contemporary globalising forces. As such, moving beyond the hegemonic and normative legacy (in its own diversity) of the Enlightenment in disaster studies will entail focusing on diversity and plurality but also hybridity and the inherent opacity of cross-cultural encounters and relations - themes that this seminar will draw from the philosophy of Martinican novelist and poet Edouard Glissant.

For further information:
https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/hazard-risk-resilience/
For queries:
ihrr.admin@durham.ac.uk