Vol. 12, N°. 45, August 2011 – November 2011 http://www.dscrn.org/ COORDINATOR’ S REPORT Murat Balamir [email protected]Dear Members, Colleagues and Followers of the Disaster, Conflict and Social Crisis Research Network, As Susann Ullberg terminated her most successful four years in carrying out the task of coordination of the Re- search Network, I have been elected as the new coordina- tor; Many thanks for the confidence. Our meetings in Geneva have been most gratifying as new areas of research were exposed, and highly relevant hori- zons were explored in the presentations. We intend to convey and share the contents through our website and the Newsletter. Among primary responsibilities of a coordinator are per- haps the organization of efforts to facilitate relations be- tween members, improvements in flows of information, extension of the membership spectrum, and consolidation of the network within the larger framework of ESA. Development of a rostrum where members have the op- portunity to know about each other, their respective cur- rent research activities, and exchange ideas and informa- tion could be an immediate target for the DSCRN. We would like to enable and encourage members to reach each other without constraints or need of consent. The website and the newsletter are only to empower and com- plement this network of relations. Extension of membership in numbers and kind will serve to enrich the activities of the Network. The Geneva deci- sion to expand the scope of the Network by incorporating the concept of ‘conflict’ in the title was a step in this direc- tion. Collective forms of violent or non-violent conflicts are undeniably part of our social reality proliferating in kind and intensity that demand careful scientific analyses. Understanding of apparent and latent causes, processes and stages, objectives, parties and legal contexts involved, discourses of social conflicts, and the dynamics of violent- conflict transformation is perhaps more of an imperative today. As population increases, natural resources be- come limited, the societies become more multicultural, and with improved access to information social groups be- come more conscious of their human rights for fair stan- dards of living, conflicts are to propagate. As a research network, we must also be perceptive of the international and national bodies, academic and research institutions active in our areas of interest, which have sig- nificantly multiplied in the recent decade. We have to de- vise methods of introducing the objectives and activities of the Network both to establish institutional relations, and increase the number of individual full members. Financial support of ESA will be available for DSCRN in proportion to the relative number of our full members. We have to convince more of our friends therefore to become regular members. This should provide access to funding, allow us to plan for interim meetings, support various ef- forts of our members, meet costs of running the web site and newsletter, produce publications, etc. Statistics on the status and number of individuals affiliated with DSCRN will be frequently given in our newsletter. Having learned from her skillful management of the Net- work over the years, I hope to keep the standards Su- sann has set, and thank her again for all the valuable contributions. The responsibilities I have acquired could only be fulfilled with the efficient support of Nina Blom- Andersen, Antti Silvast, the kind guidance of Coordinat- ing Committee, and the wisdom of our founder advisors. Murat Balamir Coordinator Contents of this issue COORDINATOR’ S REPORT .............. 1 EDITOR’ S NOTE ................... 2 DSCRN WEB MANAGER NOTE ........... 2 DSCRN MEMBERS ................. 3 1
Transcript
Vol. 12, N°. 45, August 2011 – November 2011 http://www.dscrn.org/
Dear Members, Colleagues and Followers of the Disaster,Conflict and Social Crisis Research Network,
As Susann Ullberg terminated her most successful fouryears in carrying out the task of coordination of the Re-search Network, I have been elected as the new coordina-tor; Many thanks for the confidence.
Our meetings in Geneva have been most gratifying as newareas of research were exposed, and highly relevant hori-zons were explored in the presentations. We intend toconvey and share the contents through our website andthe Newsletter.
Among primary responsibilities of a coordinator are per-haps the organization of efforts to facilitate relations be-tween members, improvements in flows of information,extension of the membership spectrum, and consolidationof the network within the larger framework of ESA.
Development of a rostrum where members have the op-portunity to know about each other, their respective cur-rent research activities, and exchange ideas and informa-tion could be an immediate target for the DSCRN. Wewould like to enable and encourage members to reacheach other without constraints or need of consent. Thewebsite and the newsletter are only to empower and com-plement this network of relations.
Extension of membership in numbers and kind will serveto enrich the activities of the Network. The Geneva deci-sion to expand the scope of the Network by incorporatingthe concept of ‘conflict’ in the title was a step in this direc-tion. Collective forms of violent or non-violent conflictsare undeniably part of our social reality proliferating inkind and intensity that demand careful scientific analyses.
Understanding of apparent and latent causes, processesand stages, objectives, parties and legal contexts involved,discourses of social conflicts, and the dynamics of violent-conflict transformation is perhaps more of an imperativetoday. As population increases, natural resources be-come limited, the societies become more multicultural,and with improved access to information social groups be-come more conscious of their human rights for fair stan-dards of living, conflicts are to propagate.
As a research network, we must also be perceptive of theinternational and national bodies, academic and researchinstitutions active in our areas of interest, which have sig-nificantly multiplied in the recent decade. We have to de-vise methods of introducing the objectives and activitiesof the Network both to establish institutional relations,and increase the number of individual full members.
Financial support of ESA will be available for DSCRN inproportion to the relative number of our full members. Wehave to convince more of our friends therefore to becomeregular members. This should provide access to funding,allow us to plan for interim meetings, support various ef-forts of our members, meet costs of running the web siteand newsletter, produce publications, etc. Statistics on thestatus and number of individuals affiliated with DSCRNwill be frequently given in our newsletter.
Having learned from her skillful management of the Net-work over the years, I hope to keep the standards Su-sann has set, and thank her again for all the valuablecontributions. The responsibilities I have acquired couldonly be fulfilled with the efficient support of Nina Blom-Andersen, Antti Silvast, the kind guidance of Coordinat-ing Committee, and the wisdom of our founder advisors.
Welcome to the December edition of the DSCRNNewsletter, which covers the period August 2011–November 2011.
The 10th conference of the European Sociological Asso-ciation was held in September in Geneva, Switzerland,and as you can see, the DSCRN business meeting de-cided on a number of changes in organization. In particu-lar, as a result of a merge with the ESA Research Stream14 Regional Conflicts, our network is now called Disas-ter, Conflict and Social Crisis Research Network. Asthe new coordinator Murat Balamir noted in his report,surely this merge will bring new interesting viewpointsand create connections among research topics and themes.Nicholas Petropoulos, an advisor to the DSCRN and theformer coordinator of the RS14, also remarked: “In thefinal analysis all disaster and social conflicts are ‘socialcrises’, given the fact that even ‘natural disasters’ (at leasttheir impacts) can be mitigated with the appropriate socialpolicies for preparedness, rescue and re-construction.” Welook forward to welcoming the members of the stream tojoin the DSCRN and take part in the activities, for exam-ple in the pages of this newsletter.
What has changed as well is the DSCRN logo. To re-flect our interest in conflicts, we voted a new symbol, apeace sign, to be added to the string of photographs onthe right. One of the Coordinating Committee supportedthe choice of the image as follows: “The symbol repre-sents both ‘peace’ (as opposed to conflict in our networkname) and ‘victory’ (and in order to have a victory a priortension or conflict is required which eventually leads tovictors and losers).” The logo itself was redesigned by theeditor of this newsletter with creative help from the newcoordinator Murat Balamir.
As you will also see, the acronym of the network hasstayed the same, DSCRN. The considerations here werepractical: the acronym is concise and is already in thename of our web page and email addresses. Fortunately,the existing acronym fits with Disaster, Conflict and So-cial Crisis Research Network nicely.
Please read forward to find a nine-page written and photoreport on the DSCRN sessions at the ESA’11 conference(p. 11), the members of the new DSCRN CoordinatingCommmittee (p. 4), and research reports on ESA’11 con-ference presentations as well as notes about published re-search, a new conflict-related research concept, reports ofpast events, and finally, announcements of upcoming con-ferences.
Coinciding with our changed name and logo, the DSCRNweb site went through its own major software update re-cently. The updated, a little redesigned and more securesite is now online at http://www.dscrn.org.
In addition to the new look, probably the key expansionin the site is the new Member’s Area. The idea is to puthere content that our members may need and benefit from:for example, we will make available the direct contact de-tails to the DSCRN Coordinating Committee members. Iwill communicate the password to the area to all memberssoon.
Thanks to the software update, our public site also hasan RSS feed, which is a standard format for deliveringnews available for example at most online magazines. Thesite’s news section will publish information about disaster,conflict and crisis when it cannot reach the newsletter. Toaccess, please point your RSS feed readers here: http://www.dscrn.org/feed.
The DSCRN has received 18 new members due to theaffiliations from the ESA’11 conference registrations.Please join me in welcoming:
1. Alex Altshuler, Israel
2. Maria de Lourdes Beldi de Alcantara, Brazil
3. Colin Cremin, New Zealand
4. Wayne Crosby, Canada
5. Erna Danielsson, Sweden
6. Debra J. Davidson, Canada
7. Steven Mather, Canada
8. Keith Morgan, USA
9. Ricardo Gaspar Muller, Brazil
10. Shelley Pacholok, Canada
11. Rosemarie Sackmann, Germany
12. Mathieu Simard, UK
13. Irina Stanciugelu, Romania
14. Arzu Taylan, Turkey
15. Inci User, Turkey
16. Cloe Vallette, France
17. Andréa Vermeer, Germany/Netherlands
18. Maria Vitkovskaya, Russia
In addition, please let me share more details about one ofthese new members and join me in welcoming other threenew members:
1. Andréa Vermeer, Scientific Researcher and Medi-ator in University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany,has interests in methods of conflict regulation, inter-cultural mediation, democratisation processes, peacebuilding, formation of normative orders, attitudechange, persuasion in society and empirical qualita-tive methods.
2. Ludvina Colbeau-Justin, Associate Researcher inUniversité de Nimes, France, has interests in disas-ter management, risk perception, natural hazards andcoping strategies.
3. Slobodan Pesic, Assistant Professor in AmericanPublic University System, USA, has interests inEmergency and Disaster Theory, Crisis Planning, In-teragency Disaster Management, Crisis Communica-tion, International Crisis Management and BusinessContinuity of Operations.
4. Trude Gjernes, Senior researcher in Nordland re-search institute, Norway.
As of December 2011, the DSCRN has 193 members ofwhich 29 are paying ESA members. The up-to-date mem-ber list will always be available at http://www.dscrn.org/membership/members.
Assistant Professor Slobodan Pesic teaches Emergencyand Disaster Theory, Interagency Disaster Management(graduate), Crisis Action Planning (graduate), Emergency& Disaster Planning and Management (graduate), Haz-ard Mitigation & Resilient Communities (graduate), MassCasualty Incident Management (graduate), Crisis ActionPlanning (undergraduate), Senior Seminar in Disaster andEmergency Management (undergraduate), ConsequenceManagement (undergraduate), Weapons of Mass Destruc-tion Incident Command (undergraduate), Managerial Is-sues in Hazardous Materials (undergraduate).
Prior to teaching at American Public University, SlobodanPesic served as Government Operations Consultant andEmergency Operations Planner for the Florida State Gov-ernment in Sarasota, and Policy Specialist in the Penn-sylvania State Government in Harrisburg. In the Pennsyl-vania State Government Professor Pesic had also servedas Project Leader on a major state-wide deployment ofthe provider management and reimbursement informationsystem (PROMISe) in Pennsylvania.
Before his service in the state governments of Pennsylva-nia and Florida, Prof. Pesic had been Research Associateand Information Technology Consultant at the RidgwayCenter for International Security Studies, where he hadconducted research on the US, EU, and NATO defenseand security policy.
Professor Pesic had also served as a consultant to gov-ernments and businesses. In recent years he visited Ar-gentina, Chile, India, Serbia, Slovakia, and Taiwan. InDecember 2007 in Taiwan, he gave a lecture on interna-tional relations theory and strategic culture at the Insti-tute of Strategy and International Affairs, National ChungCheng University.
Professor Pesic has participated in the proceedings of theInternational Studies Association (ISA) and the Ameri-can Association for Russian, Eurasian, and East Euro-pean Studies (ASEEES). He has authored or co-authored anumber of studies international relations theory and prac-tice, transnational organized crime, and strategic culture.
He also teaches American Government at Argosy Univer-sity.
Professor Pesic conducted doctoral work at the Univer-sity of Pittsburgh. He holds Master of Public and Interna-tional Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh’s GraduateSchool of Public and International Affairs, and Bachelorof Science in Political Science and International Relationsfrom the University of Belgrade.
The Seventh DSCRN Coordinating Committee
The DSCRN Business Meeting in Geneva at ESA’11voted on the seventh and current Coordinating Commit-tee of the research network. The new committee of 2011-2013 is:
• Murat Balamir (Turkey), Coordinator
• Nina Blom Andersen (Denmark), Vice Coordinator
• Susann Ullberg (Sweden), Member
• Ilan Kelman (Norway), Member
• John Twigg (UK), Member
• Ariadna Rodríguez Teijeiro (Spain), Member
• Antti Silvast (Finland), Member, E-Newsletter Edi-tor and Web Site Manager
Furthermore, two of our founding members, NicholasPetropoulos (Greece) and Maureen Fordham (UK), wereinvited and agreed to be RN08 Advisors who we may con-sult in special occasions.
RESOURCES
Books, articles, reports, and recent studies by DSCRNmembers and colleagues. Book prices reflect prices at thetime of survey. The DSCRN cannot guarantee the pricesinformed. Prices are as stated in US dollars, Euros or UKpounds.
Communicating ignorance – A precondition ofbeing prepared for creeping disasters?
The term of preparedness often is used in the disaster dis-course to describe measures employed by organisations
or individuals in order to deal with natural disasters, suchas floods, earthquakes or wildfires but also technical dis-asters such as a nuclear power plant accident or militaryattacks. The “quality” of preparedness – Were organisa-tions/individuals well or unprepared? Were the measurestaken sufficient or not? – can be evaluated only after therespective disaster occurred. Thus, preparedness in thesense of measures employed to deal with foreseeable dis-asters is built upon former experiences.
The question might be raised: What does preparednessactually entail and how can it be built in order to deal withunforeseeable events? Disasters caused by natural dynam-ics such as floods or eruptions of volcanos but also trans-formation processes of contaminants in soil or ground-water seem to have many unforeseen components, suchas the spatial dimensions, the date of occurrence or theimpacts which can be expected. One can ask if existingideas and understandings of preparedness are appropriateto analyse and to evaluate such situations.
Within the presentation given at the ESA meeting inGeneva in September 2011 we discussed a conceptualidea of preparedness that takes into account the idea ofunforeseen disasters. In so doing, we took an example ofcontaminated areas which can be seen as creeping disas-ters and pose a risk for ecosystems and human health.
Contaminated soil and groundwater in many countries isthe result of human action throughout the 20th centurysuch as mining, industrial production or military activ-ities. Knowledge on former dumpsites often has beenlost because practices of recording respective informa-tion didn’t exist or the contamination causing enterprisewas liquidated and natural degradation processes trans-formed original contaminants into new substances. Thusit is hardly known what exactly and when it will happen.Dealing with such creeping disasters is permanently con-fronted with unknowns and unforeseen events. The anal-ysis of decision making processes in several remediationprojects showed that actors are aware of this ignorance.Furthermore, it became obvious that the reflection andknowledge about the unknowns enables actors to first de-cide in spite of ignorance and to second be prepared forunforeseen events.
These observations lead us to a conceptual idea of pre-paredness based on the communication of ignorance thatenables actors developing coping strategies to deal withunforeseeable disasters. In our point of view this sugges-tion is a first step towards a stronger consensus of whata sociological concept of preparedness entails. Based onthat, the concept’s relationship to widely used conceptslike resilience and uncertainty can be clarified.
(Editor’s note: this research project was presented in theDSCRN sessions at the 10th ESA Conference in Geneva,Switzlerland. The presentation slides are online on ourESA’11 pages: http://www.dscrn.org/esa-conferences/esa11/communicating-ignorance.)
Sport and its Stories: The Revitalization ofPost-Disaster Social Relations Among Youth inL’Aquila, Italy
Sport and its Stories was a one-year research project(2010-2011) commissioned by the Italian Ministry ofLabour and Social Policy. The research was implementedby the National Sports Center Libertas, an independent as-sociation which promotes sporting, culture, tourism andrecreation, in partnership with LABOS, Foundation forSocial Policy Studies in Rome, Italy.
This project studied the relation between sport and youngpeople’s social relationships with particular interest inpost-disaster periods. The focus of the empirical inquirywas the town of L’Aquila, hit in 2009 by an earthquakewhich forced more than 50,000 out of their homes. Ourstarting point and underlying interest was: did sport revi-talize the social relations among the youth that had facedthe L’Aquila disaster?
The research went through five overlapping phases (seeFigure 1). After initial sensitizing to the topic, we beganorganizing sport activities for pupils in the high schoolsand secondary schools in L’Aquila. These pupils weregiven choice over three different sports: climbing, danc-ing and basketball. Next, the project hosted a numberof workshops. These workshops actively engaged theparticipants by asking them to create audio-visual ‘sto-ries’ (such as video documentaries, photographic reports,books and theatre plays) concerning the sports they hadnow played. The aim was to relate corporeality with col-lective memory while promoting active learning, sociabil-ity and a sense of community. The project concluded witha multiple-day event, Sport and Its Stories, whose two ob-jectives were:
• to raise awareness among different ages with regardsto importance of physical activities, particularly as ameans of strengthening social relations;
• to underscore a group that needs special attention:the youngest, especially with regards to the use oftheir spare time.
1Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig
Phase 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Sensitization X X
Sports X X X X X X X X X X
Workshops X X X X X X X X X X
Analysis X X X X X X X X X
Dissemination X X
Figure 1: Sport and its Stories GANNT chart
In addition to the qualitative data from the workshops,our inquiry also drew from questionnaire surveys of 400pupils in secondary schools and high schools in L’Aquila.160 of these respondents participated in the sports andworkshops, while 240 were a control group that did nottake part in the activities. The survey questions con-cerned the regularity of playing sports, the social impactsof the earthquake (on dwellings, family relations and so-cial gatherings) and the respondents’ quality of life withregards to three dimensions: interpersonal relationships,level of self-efficacy, and family and social networks.
More than half of the survey respondents left their homesafter the earthquake, and half of these displaced peoplehad given up their previous sport activities. At the sametime, we found a high level of satisfaction with the sportsand the workshops that we organized. These activitiesseemed to revitalize social relations as well: for example,over 80 percent of the male respondents reported makingnew friends through the participation in the sports and theworkshops.
The findings of the project indicate that sport provides animportant socialization experience that can improve thequality of life after an earthquake, especially when sup-ported with participatory activities such as workshops.The conclusion, we propose, should also receive appro-priate attention from the policies, politics and practicesthat pertain to disaster risk reduction.
Further reading (in Italian)
Pressonweb (sezione Eventi e Cultura), L’Aquila – Ri-costruire il tessuto sociale attraverso lo sport. Parte il pro-getto “Lo sport e le sue storie”, Quotidiano indipendente,Elio Lamparelli, 4 Ottobre 2010.
Gasbarro L., (in) Absolute Sport Magazine, L’Aquila. Igiovani protagonisti nella ricostruzione del tessuto socialeattraverso lo sport, Nautilus, a. 2, n. 5, ott. 2010, Teramo,p. 21.
Arcieri M., (in) Libero Sport, La Libertas per L’Aquila,CNS Libertas, a. 1, n. 1, nov. 2010, Roma, pp. 1-7.
(Editor’s note: this research project was presented inthe DSCRN sessions at the 10th ESA Conference inGeneva, Switzlerland. A conference paper is on ourESA’11 pages: http://www.dscrn.org/esa-conferences/esa11/sport-and-its-stories.)
Press release: Urban crisis workshop highlights‘very real’ security threats ahead of London 2012
A one-day workshop held at Coventry University’s Lon-don Campus last month brought together world leadersin the field of emergency response to present and discussnew ways to manage urban-based crises and hazards.
Amid warnings from British intelligence services that the2012 Olympic Games are set to pose an unprecedentedthreat to national security, the first Urban Crisis Work-shop set in motion plans to establish an International Risk,Resilience and Response Centre (IRRRC) to spearheadcollaborations between specialists in emergency manage-ment, training and simulation.
Former Brigadier General John Galatas, the man respon-sible for planning against the threat of chemical, biologi-cal, radiological, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) attacksat the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Greece, headedan array of expert speakers and panellists at the event, andgave an overview of the security risks associated with the2012 Olympic Games.
The speakers – which include House of Lords peers, aca-demics and professionals from key international securityand disaster management organisations – also spoke aboutlessons learned from major urban emergencies such as theLondon bombings, 9/11, worldwide flooding crises andthe tsunami-nuclear catastrophe in Japan, and proposedways to improve response capabilities.
Professor Sara de Freitas of Coventry University’s Seri-ous Games Institute (SGI)3 chaired the workshop and leda unique debate on how gaming and simulation technolo-gies can help create better, more realistic training exer-cises for modern search and rescue scenarios.
The event was sponsored by security thinktank CSARN,Arup and the Prime Minister’s Initiative for InternationalEducation – a government fund to attract more overseasstudents to Britain through investment in projects whichboost the global profile of UK education.
The Serious Games Institute and the Centre for Disas-ter Management (CDM)4 – two of Coventry University’smost prominent applied research centres – were instru-mental in devising the Urban Crisis Workshop in partner-ship with TEEX.
John Galatas, former Brigadier General and CBRNE plan-ner for the 2004 Athens Olympics, said:
“Despite the vigilance and preparations of the UK’s na-tional security agencies, a terrorist attack – conventionalor CRBNE-related – during the world’s biggest sportingevent, the London 2012 Olympic Games, remains a veryreal threat.
“There is still some time until July 2012, and this timemust be used as wisely as possible to address the impor-tant parameters in urban defence and identify the gapsand possible weak points which need to be updated andmanaged.”
Professor Sara de Freitas, director of the SGI and chair ofthe Urban Crisis Workshop, said:
“The workshop was a great success, bringing togethercommunities in risk, resilience and response to save lives.Looking ahead, the IRRC represents an exciting oppor-tunity not only for the international emergency responsecommunity and relevant policy-makers in government, butalso for game development companies.
“The industry for serious games is relatively young, butthere’s a rapidly growing appreciation for the relevanceof its technology to education and, in this instance, emer-gency planning and training. Its potential applicationsare endless.”
Wayne Harrop, director of the Centre for Disaster Man-agement at Coventry University, said:
“In the wake of urban catastrophes such as 9/11, the Lon-don bombings, the devastating tsunami in Japan and lastweek’s earthquake in Turkey, it is more important thanever to consider how the lessons identified through thesedisasters can be better learned, retained and implementedin the future. This requires better collaboration efforts andthe sharing of best practices on a global scale.
“The Urban Crisis Workshop was a perfect opportunityto make public our plans for an International Risk, Re-silience and Response Centre, and we were thrilled to beable to share them with the disaster management commu-nity as a means of encouraging continuous developmentand improvement in global response capabilities.”
For further information, please contact Alex Roache, Ex-ternal Press & Media Relations Officer, Coventry Univer-sity, on 024 7679 5050 or email [email protected].
Figure 2: Participants in ‘Piracy: Orchestrating the Re-sponse’
Event report: ‘3rd International Symposium onMaritime Disaster Management – Piracy: Or-chestrating the Response’, Al-Khobar, Kingdomof Saudi Arabia, 8-12 October 2011
The rapid pace of global industrialization has resulted ina dramatic rise in marine traffic through the world’s ship-ping lanes. This remarkable increase in maritime activi-ties has heightened the risks of accidents and disastrousevents. Piracy as a particular maritime disaster is an or-ganized crime that has probably existed for as long as theoceans were plied for commerce. With maritime piracyincreasing in range and scale, and pirate attacks posing agreat threat to the maritime communities in many regions,addressing piracy has become an urgent global priority.
To this end, the Frontier Guard General Directorate, Min-istry of Interior, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia organized the3rd International Symposium on Maritime Disaster Man-agement under the theme ‘Piracy: Orchestrating the Re-sponse’. The event provided authorities, and regional andinternational experts an opportunity to exchange knowl-edge with each other and helped them learn about newglobal development with regards to the coping with andmanagement of maritime disasters.
The Chairman of Organizing Committee, Rear AdmiralAwwad Eid Al-Balawi delivered the introductory speech.Other high-profile Saudi personalities, such as the Direc-tor General of the Frontier Guard; the Minister of Trans-port; and the patron of the Symposium, the Saudi DeputyInterior Minister Prince Mohammed Bin Naif Bin Ab-dulaziz Al-Saud, provided their own special speeches aswell. More than five hundred participants from Saudi Ara-bia and abroad attended the event. The number of papersfrom national and international experts was thirty-three.The symposium ended with a comprehensive panel dis-cussion, which presented empirical recommendations to-wards reducing maritime disasters. During the final day ofthe symposium, the personnel of the Saudi Naval Forces
Figure 3: Naeem Shahid (Pakistan), Johan Ohlsson (Swe-den), Y. M. Bala (Nigeria) and M. Mustafa (Egypt)
conducted a nightly “search & rescue” exercise in the cityof Jubail (Eastern Province Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).
Read more about the event in this URL: http://www.fg-mdm.org/
Dr. Naim Kapucu published a book titled Managingemergencies and crises (with Alp Özerdem). The bookpresents a global perspective that draws on the latestresearch while discussing the disaster response systemsused in the United States, Europe, and other continents.The book provides readers with a solid foundation in con-tingency planning, decision-making, and coordination in
order to prepare them for leadership during times of cri-sis. More information about the book can be found athttp://www.jblearning.com/catalog/9780763781552/.
Klimawandel und Konflikte: Versicher-heitlichung versus präventive Friedenspolitik?
Edited by Michael Brzoska, Martin Kalinowski,Volker Matthies and Berthold Meyer
Baden-Baden: Nomos, AFK (German Associa-tion for Peace and Conflict Studies) Friedenss-chriften, Band 37
Language: German
2011, 297 pages
29 C | Paperback | ISBN 978-3-8329-6400-9
This edited volume “Climate Change and Conflicts: Se-curitization Versus Preventive Peace Policy?” discussesthe potential impacts of climate change from the perspec-tive of peace and conflict studies. In doing so the bookpresents a critical review of the much-discussed negativeconsequences of climate change for the peaceful coexis-tence in and between human societies.
The key topics in this investigation are the specific linksbetween climate change and violent conflicts, the criti-cism of the construction of climate change as a securitythreat, and questions pertaining to preventive peace policystrategies. After a consideration of the underlying con-ceptual issues, the volume discusses the central conflictsin international climate negotiations and presents a seriesof case studies on the sectoral and regional aspects of thepotential impacts of climate change (such as migration,
violent conflicts in Africa). The outcome of the investiga-tion is a warning about alarmist predictions and a call fora calm, serious handling of data and forecasts.
The volume concludes by reflecting on the possibility ofcooperation between peace and conflict studies and cli-mate (impact) research, which should aim towards devel-oping preventive and corrective strategies.
This work is part of the AFK (German Association forPeace and Conflict Studies) Friedensschriften (“Writingsabout Peace”), Band 37.
Learning from Earthquakes. The March 11,2011, Great East Japan (Tohoku) Earthquakeand Tsunami: Societal Dimensions
The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI)has released a special report on the societal dimen-sions of the Great East Japan (Tohuko) Earthquakeand Tsunami. The report covers emergency man-agement, casualties, emergency shelter and hous-ing, economic impacts, debris management, andrecovery planning, and also develops research ques-tions for each of the topics. Read the report here:http://www.eqclearinghouse.org/2011-03-11-sendai/files/2011/03/Japan-SocSci-Rpt-hirez-rev.pdf (7 MB).
Silvast, Antti (2011). “Monitor Screens of MarketRisks – Managing Electricity in a Finnish ControlRoom” STS Encounters, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 145-174
The focus of this article is in the management of insecuri-ties in energy supply, with a particular interest in the rela-tionship between security risks and energy market trading.Grounded on ethnographic material from a Finnish energymarket control room, the research talks about the specificrisks and particular kinds of risk management that interna-tional energy markets on control room computer monitorsmake appear. The text is part in a broader STS Encoun-ters (journal of Danish Association for Science and Tech-nology Studies) special issue on attending to screens and‘screenness’, which was edited by Brit Ross Winthereik,Peter Lutz, Lucy Suchman and Helen Verran. The otherthemes covered by the special issue include: the logics ofgeneralization in judging and regulating businesses’ tax
compliance (by Karen Boll), the mapping of the 2007San Diego wildfires (by Katrina Petersen), mapping thecity and its transport in Bogotá’s Transmilenio bus tran-sit system (by Andrés Felipe Valderrama Pineda), screen-ing devices at school (by Helene Ratner), research col-laboration through screens (by Jane Bjørn Vedel), and thetechnology, ontology and enactments of screens (by MalteZiewitz). You can find the articles and read the items thatinterest you here: http://www.dasts.dk/?page_id=356.
Recent publications by Joe Scanlon and col-leagues
Articles in refereed journals:
• Marion, Nicole and Joseph Scanlon (2011) “Massdeath and mass illness in an isolated Canadian town:coping with pandemic influenza in Kenora, Ontario,in 1918–1921”Mortality Vol. 16 No, 4 pp. 325-342
• Scanlon, Joseph and Alex Hunsberger (2011) “Deal-ing with the Dead in Disasters: A Professional andInternational Process” Brown Journal of World Af-fairs Vol. XVII No. II pp. 99-111
• Scanlon, Joseph and Terry McMahon (2011) “Deal-ing with mass death in disasters and pandemics:Some key differences but many similarities” Disas-ter Prevention and Management, Vol. 20 No: 2, pp.172 – 185
• Stoney, Christopher, Joseph Scanlon, Kirsten Kra-mar, Tanya Peckmann, Ian Brown, Cynthia LynnCormier and Coen van Haastert (2011) “Steadily In-creasing Control: The Professionalization of MassDeath” Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Man-agement Vol. 19 No. 2 pp. 1-9
Articles in professional journals:
• Scanlon, Joe (2011) “Buying Down Risk: Step-by-Step Guide to Cost-Effective Protection of Trans-portation Assets” TR News July-August pp. 16-17
• Scanlon, Joseph (2011) “Two hats, one hazard” Nat-ural Hazards Observer Vol. 35 No. 6 (July) pp. 5-7
Thanks to help received from the editor of this newslet-ter, some who read the newsletter and other colleagues
in various countries in Europe, Joseph Scanlon and hisresearchers have managed to locate more than 40 songsabout Titanic including songs in Finnish, Norwegian,Swedish, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Old Dutch andYiddish. For the most part the songs – unlike the media,movies and novels – accurately describe what happenedwhen the ship hit an iceberg and sank. Some of the songsof course were ballads that could have applied to any mar-itime disaster but most were specifically about Titanic.
The songs by the way haven’t stopped:
Men sing about Titanic and it seems they always will,Far away from Baffin Bay the birds come drifting still,A symbol you may picture of the mighty fall of pride,Is an iceberg with Titanic’s name red paint scraped on itsside.5
Scanlon says his favourite was not a song but a poem re-cited by Les Barker from Yorkshire. It can be found online by typing in, “Any news of the iceberg?”.
It’s the story of a sad eyed old polar bear who wandersinto a pub in Liverpool in 1912 and asks:Have you got any news of the iceberg?My family were on it you see.Have you got any news of the iceberg?They mean the whole word to me.
Professor Scanlon presented his findings at a Songs of theSea symposium at Mystic Seaport Connecticut and he andhis researchers have submitted an article to a Canadianmusic journal. They are waiting to hear if it will be pub-lished.
The following paragraphs want to raise awareness on con-flict regulation methods as an object for social scientificresearch. The focus is on norm conflicts and their regu-lation as a social phenomenon in multicultural societies,with a special consideration in the role of religion andgender. The context of the research proposal is a newEuropean Directive (2008/52/EC), On Certain Aspectsof Mediation in Civil and Commercial Matters, which
5MacDonald, John Spyder. 2000. “Voyage of the Iceberg.” On BySea, By Land. Self-produced, 2000, compact disc.
6Peace and Conflict Studies, Member of Center of Conflict Studies,Philipps-Universität Marburg
concerns alternative and cross-border dispute resolutions(ADR) as judicial decisions.
The ratification of this Directive has been accompanied bygreat confusion and lobby fights in Germany. These argu-ments are one of the starting points for developing this so-ciological research proposal. The comparative, empiricaland qualitative study proposed here focuses on differentmethods of conflict regulation including but not limited tocourt-based litigation.
Much of the legal norm-setting in this context currentlystems from the European Commission. The Commissionasks explicitly that EU Member States communicate tothe Commission the national legal frameworks which theyadopt in the field of the above Directive, under the Mem-ber State’s own civil and commercial law.
However, at the same time, it is difficult to find almost anysocietal-norm-setting with regards to dispute mediationsat least in Germany. Hardly anyone in Germany knowsabout such mediations; not to mention the lack of aware-ness on how certain conflicts, for example between busi-ness partners or within families, could be resolved out-side court-yards and without lawyers. Indeed, mediationis only one out of many methods of initiating a processof conflict regulation — often understood more as facili-tation. The most popular methods use five or six phasesto pass through the process of mediation (Ballreich/Glasl2007). The aim of the mediators is to lead the conflictparties to the phase where they are ready to negotiate, tochange perspective, and to find common solutions or man-ners of conflict regulation. At the same time, although itis obvious that conflict regulation connects with themesof social interaction, behaviour patterns, attitude changeand communication skills, social scientific research aboutmediation has remained rare.
The first survey studies, such as the online questionnairein German by SOKRATeam GbR, present an unclear vi-sion on mediation. The outcomes of other evaluations areunclear as well; in political mediation, only 8% of con-flicts were altogether regulated, and 37 % were regulatedpartly, whereas up to 85 % of family mediations were suc-cessful (Burrell, Zirbel and Allen, 2003). Nobody actu-ally knows why such differences exist. Indeed, it seemsthat the mediation market is full of methods on conflictanalysis that lack evidence on their own accuracy.
Nevertheless, practitioners in dispute mediation empha-sise the importance of social cooperation, communica-tion, integration and conflict regulation. It seems that thecore concept to be found here is empathy. This concept ismentioned in literature in many different senses: the Hei-deggerian notion of ‘care’, Lukács’s ‘empathetic engage-ment’, or Dewey’s concept of ‘interaction’ which empha-sizes how everyday activity of human beings takes place
through the efforts to involve ourselves with given circum-stances in the most harmonious possible way. There aretwo competing concepts on the nature of human beings interms of empathy. One is based on evolution theory andargues that human beings only help each other when theyget benefit, thus co-operation stems from a perceptionof a win-win-situation. The second concept takes it forgranted that human beings are genetically determined tocooperate because they have mirror neurons, as outlinedby modern studies of consciousness and neuroscience.
As a matter of fact, conflicts appear on all differentiatedsocial fields (e.g. law, economy, family, science, and pol-itics) and this opens up several theoretical approaches tomake sense of them. It is difficult to say how much theprocesses of conflict regulation and mediation in partic-ular should be aware of social scientific conflict theoriesand findings, but certainly to ignore them completely isnot an alternative.
This research proposal deals with the question of socialnorm conflicts and the impacts of religion and gender inconflict mediation processes. The aim is to place media-tion in the context of social and social-psychological sci-ence, including the existing theories and empirical quali-tative data.
In order to resolve the research question, the recognitiontheory by Axel Honneth offers an ideal starting point forthe empirical work. This theory outlines a structure ofthree relations of recognition: emotional care, cognitiverespect and social esteem.
First, emotional care describes the need and the natureof affection that a human being requires; for example, achild receives love and friendship from primary relations,which creates self-confidence. Mistreatment or abuse vi-olate this emotional affection and weaken physical in-tegrity. Second, cognitive respect defines the moral andlegal competence of a person to understand universal re-spect and to acknowledge each other’s rights. That is tosay, the cognitive comprehension of the autonomy of an-other person is the condition through which an egalitarianreverence is created. Struggles for rights and social ex-clusion can decline a person’s social integrity. Finally,social esteem expresses the ability and characteristics ofa human being to live in a community of values and toexperience solidarity. Through a process of individuali-sation and egalitarianism, the individual develops socialesteem. Any form of offence or degradation will attack aperson’s honour and dignity. This is a brief presentation ofthe theoretical framework to the extent to which it may beapplicable to the research question. The categories couldbe a starting point to find out about the conflict parties’fight of recognition.
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The category of social esteem could be especially help-ful for dealing with religious motivations and narrativesin conflict. The concept of a community of values is pop-ular in research discourses on normative conflicts. Theidea here is that there is a natural and permanent conflictbetween cultures because each in-group tries to bring for-ward their own way of life, propagating their own virtuesand abilities.
Gender can play a role in conflict regulation yet how muchit has an impact on the process of conflict regulation israrely investigated. Post-modern feminist conflict theo-ries consider a duality in the structure of gender roles.Beer (1990) argues that women themselves behave in away that preserves the given different structures or dis-mantles them. But do women have a different approach todevelop empathy than men? Are women easier to medi-ate because they are less afraid of showing emotions thanmen, and therefore, do women deepen the process of con-flict regulation to make a resolution more possible?
Mediators, on the one hand, do stress that empathy isneeded for the successful outcome of the mediation. Onthe other hand, the mediators do not seem to care about theunderlying rules regarding how empathy is constructedand reproduced. Probably this process of trust buildingdepends on gender as well as cultural factors.
When mediators work with conflict parties there are var-ious methods to be implemented in order to support theprocess of cognitive change. In this context visualisa-tion plays a major role, thus if the communication still isblocked, a mediator could invite the conflict parties to ex-press their needs and emotions in a drawing. There is littleempirical evidence to suggest that female conflict partiesare more eager to accept methods of visualisation thanmen – It has not been confirmed if this is also the casein other cultural contexts.
Finally, the proposal outlined here has to figure outwhether to conduct interviews and observations on micro,meso, and/or macro level. Regarding such choice of levelof inquiry, the distinction of private and public sphere willbe of vital importance; public struggles of recognition aredifferent from private struggles.
It is highly likely that the new Directive and laws on medi-ation will push people to reflect on their conflict behaviourin a renewed manner. Scientific research shall be neededto improve the understanding on conflicts, not only on the-oretical but also on empirical grounds. It will be interest-ing to see how, in the long term, legal norm-setting influ-ences the societal norm-setting with regards to how peo-ple deal with conflict. This will be especially challengingfor multicultural societies, where, for example, the con-struction of mosques has caused a deep gap in Europeansocieties.
The author welcomes any and all feedback to this re-search proposal. You may contact Dr. Vermeer [email protected].
(Editor’s note: the references are omitted, please contactthe author to find them.)
THE ESA’11 CONFERENCE
The 10th Conference of the European Sociological Asso-ciation (ESA) was organized at the University of Geneva,Switzerland from 7-10 September 2011. The DSCRN ar-ranged eight sessions altogether with a total of 33 paperspresented. For those of you who were not present and tosupport our collective memory, we are publishing here ashort report about each session and their key points anddebates. The reports were written by the session con-veners as indicated below; the photographs are courtesyof Nicholas Petropoulos, Susann Ullberg, and Arzu Tay-lan. (For lack of space and with the presentations totaling33, we can unfortunately not include everyone’s photo-graph here. Please see more photos on our homepage:http://www.dscrn.org/esa-conferences/esa11/photos.)
We would like to thank the conveners and everyone thatparticipated for making the sessions lively and interestingand look forward to meeting you in future conferences!
Figure 4: Members of the DSCRN Coordinating Com-mittee, DSCRN advisers and participants: Susann Ull-berg, Elvira Santiago Gómez, Ariadna Rodríguez Teijeiro,Juan de Dios Ruano Gómez, Antti Silvast, Nina BlomAndersen, Wayne Crosby, Nicholas Petropoulos, DebraJ. Davidson and colleague (back), and Murat Balamir, thenew coordinator (front)
The focus in Session I was on human generated disasters,and particularly social conflicts that have caused or havea potential for causing mass casualties. The first presenta-tion, “Segregation: Terrorism as a Catalyst for StructuralChange” was made by Rickard Sandell, Social ScienceDepartment, IMDEA, Madrid. It explored the impact ofthe 11 March 2004 Al-Qaeda commuter trains attack (151deaths, 1800 wounded) on the distribution of the Muslimsub-population, vis-à-vis the general population and thesocial clustering of various ethnic groups. Using nationaland international migration events statistics from the localpopulation registers for the period 1900-2009, the studyconcluded that the Madrid bombings increased social seg-regation among the Arab Muslim subpopulation. Thesefindings show that terrorism as a strategy for change canactually have reactionary structural impacts in the targetsociety. If not already done, the study can be comple-mented by social psychological field surveys of “major-ity” and “ethnic’” populations to assess social interactionpatterns and social attitudes following the Madrid bomb-ings.
The second presentation, “Social Identification in theFace of Crisis- the Case of Finnish Television Discus-sions on 9/11”, by Hanna Rautajoki of the School ofSocial Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere,Finland, dealt with the “domestication” of the 9/11 WTCterrorist attack by the Finnish society. Using the ethno-methodological approach, Hanna analyzed the “situatedaccomplishments of actions and identities” of participantsin three “multiparty” national TV discussion programs(of various composition, ranging from experts to ordi-nary people) which took place within weeks following the9/11 attack. Contrary to her expectations, it was not somuch the “violent act of terror that caught their attentionbut the target’s reaction..” The author concludes that theparticipants resolved the crisis caused by the terrorist at-tack by making “multilayered divisions, identifying polit-ically (“us”). but distancing themselves morally (“them”)from the U.S. The moral dissociation served to stress thecontrast in the self-conceptualizations, between the “con-siderate, peace-oriented and responsible Finns and Euro-peans” and the “violent war rhetoric of the USA”. Al-though ethno-methodology is a legitimate method, thechair would also like to know if the above observationscan be cross-validated by population survey methods.
In contrast to the above two presentations that focusedon past acts of terrorism, the third presentation , “Ter-
Figure 5: Rickard Sandell
Figure 6: Hanna Rautajoki
rorism Risk Perception and Crisis Communication Plan-ning on Food Chain Security”, by Irina Stanciugelu andher colleagues from the National School of Political andAdministrative Studies of Bucharest and the Middle EastTechnical University of Ankara, focused on preparationfor response to bioterrorism attacks on the food chain.Following a survey of Romanian and Turkish managersand directors involved in the food chain regulatory agen-cies, and assessing the impact of various “cognitive” (e.g.perceptions of probability, seriousness, coping efficacy,etc.) and “social-contextual” (e.g. institutional prepared-ness) factors, the researchers noted that “perceived cop-ing efficacy” emerged as the best predictor of a “favor-able response to terrorism”. The findings according tothe authors can assist the respective ministries in the twocountries (e.g. Agricultural, Rural Development) in theformulation of risk-management and risk-communicationstrategies. Nonetheless, the chair would like to have moredetails on the relevance of the “perceptual factors” to theactual level of preparation by the regulatory agencies (e.g.the presence of an emergency plan for food chain bio-terrorism). In addition to terrorist attacks on the foodchain, our Network may also expand its interests to coverterrorist attacks on water resources that often cross na-tional borders, as well as the role of conventional agricul-
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tural practices on the food and water chains (“slow onsetdisasters).
The last presentation, “The Alcora Exercise and Turbu-lent Relations during Nationalist Struggles in former Por-tuguese African Colonies: The Roots of Present Day So-cial Crisis and Uncertainty?”, by Celso Braga Rosa andcolleagues from the Centre of Social Studies of the Uni-versity of Coimbra, explores the sociopolitical impacts ofthe “Alcora Exercise,” a secret pact between Portugal andthe white regimes of S. Africa and Rhodesia, signed on 14October 1970 and declassified in 2007. The pact aimed atthe suppression of black nationalist movements and theprotection of white supremacy in S. Africa. Part of theColonial War strategy, the ”Alcora Exercise” has becomea focus of research for Portuguese social scientists. Theauthors suggest that the Colonial War can be seen eitheras a “regional conflict” –the suppressing of black indepen-dencies in Southern Africa by the colonial powers- or as a“global one” – with Southern Africa constituting anothertheater of the Cold War. Undoubtedly, there is some truthin both of these models. More specifically, the authorsare exploring the impact of the “Alcora Exercise” and/orof the Colonial War, that comprise part of the collectivememory of the affected countries, on the “civil wars” inthe liberated territories as well as on the current sociopo-litical crises in all the affected countries. A challengingresearch task would be to isolate, if possible, the impactsof “the “Alcora Exercise” from the general impacts of thecolonialist wars.
Five papers were presented at this session. Three of these(Brittingham, Tataryn, Twigg) looked at the challenges foroperational agencies in addressing the needs and concernsof people with disabilities, both in practice and with re-gard to the approaches and tools used. The other two(Simard, Kett), while identifying such issues, were alsoconcerned with evidence of existing good practice, theopportunities for change and innovation and the poten-tial levers of such change. A common theme in all thepapers was the need for better networking between dis-abled people, their organisations and disaster profession-als, and for promotion of more inclusive attitudes amongdisaster organisations and their staff – here lies the keyto mainstreaming disability into all aspects of emergencyand disaster management.
Special needs or civil rights: evacuation and shelteringconcerns for the functionally and developmentally im-
Figure 7: Myroslava Tataryn
paired (Rochelle Brittingham, Disaster Research Cen-ter, University of Delaware; [email protected]).This presentation, based on a survey of North Carolinahouseholds, focused on the specific concerns of individu-als with functional and developmental impairments (FDI)and those who care for them, and how these concerns in-fluenced their evacuation decision-making process, theirevacuation strategies and the type of shelter they mightseek during a hurricane. As shelters in the USA are nowrequired to accept individuals regardless of a potential im-pairment, there are planning implications for the resourcesneeded at shelters and what this means for providing ser-vices. It was suggested that emergency managers shouldtap into existing disability networks when developing andimplementing plans.
Evaluating physical rehabilitation interventions inpost-earthquake Haiti (Myroslava Tataryn, LondonSchool of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; [email protected]). The humanitarianresponse to the January 2010 earthquake included a mas-sive mobilisation in the delivery of physical rehabilitationservices. A study in 2011 evaluated the effectivenessof the emergency rehabilitation response. Significantchallenges centred on major difficulties in coordination,the lack of involvement of the Haitian government andthe exclusion of Haitian civil society. Interventionsfocused on centres and projects instead of adoptinga sectoral approach encompassing various aspects ofrehabilitation (including information system, policies andlegislation). Wider questions were raised about agencyprofessionalism and ability to learn.
Disability, Invisibility and Vulnerability and CapacityAssessment (John Twigg, University College London;[email protected] ). This paper reported on a pilot studythat reviewed at a range of VCAs and how they identifiedand analysed disability in the context of disaster vulner-ability. It found that VCAs do not usually identify dis-ability as a key factor in vulnerability and disabled peoplecontinue to be overlooked in assessments. This can only
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Figure 8: Maria Kett
partly be explained by limitations in data-gathering meth-ods: it seems to be more the result of the initial attitudesof implementing agencies towards disability.
Disaster risk reduction strategies and inclusion of personswith disabilities: purposive examples of good practices(Mathieu Simard, University College London; [email protected]). Recognising that there is a very lim-ited body of literature on how to best include personswith disabilities into disaster risk reduction strategies, thisstudy set out to identify opportunities and challenges,based on an analysis of existing policy and practice amonginternational NGOs. Among the key weaknesses identi-fied were lack of knowledge about disability and rigid-ity of institutional mandates. It was suggested that theway forward in mainstreaming disability in disaster workwas through developing collaborations between disabilityand disaster organisations and networks, more inclusivepolicies and altering conventional attitudes within disas-ter management or response organisations.
Disability and disasters: where to in the next 10years? (Maria Kett, University College London;[email protected]). This paper reflected on the successes,mistakes and lessons learnt in this field which can help toguide progress in the next decade. Successes includedgreater emphasis being put on rights-based approachesin humanitarian assistance. Among the weaknesses weredefinitional inconsistency, lack of good data and continu-ing failure to involve disabled people and their organisa-tions. International standards and guidelines are not yetadequate for addressing the needs of persons with disabili-ties but progress is being made (e.g. inclusion of disabilityin the latest edition of the Sphere standards).
The objective of the session was to explore the impactsof the recent changes in international disasters policy thatpromote DRR. The reorientation since 1990’s in under-standing and action related to disasters was not only sub-ject to ‘turbulent times’ itself, but also gave rise to furtherturbulence and eddies in many countries. Most frequentis the set of conflicts between authorities and beneficia-ries of the previous policy and those implied by the newpolicy.
Murat Balamir, “Organizational and Professional Con-flicts in Meeting New DRR Policy Objectives”, [email protected]
The conventional and new international disasters policyobjectives describe different organizational, legal and pro-fessional responsibilities and act as a major source of con-flicts. Change of focus from post-D to pre-D implies con-trasts in interests and provisions and gives rise to differentnational responses. Many countries are observed to resistadopting the new policy, or superficially comply with it.Recent legal and organizational changes in Turkey servedonly to consolidate the post-D units. The powerful lobbyof conventional D-workers, earth scientists, and engineersobstruct other professional responsibilities as required bythe new policy. Social scientists and planners are specif-ically excluded from taking roles in the risk managementof cities. The aphorism propagated by engineers that “itis the buildings that kill people” is one of the basic argu-ments that obstruct methods of intervention for DRR atthe urban planning level. Yet it was possible for the firsttime to expose material evidence that in the city of Ada-pazari, 900+ independent changes made between 1985-1999 in the then existing plan were primarily based on pri-vate interests and indicate strong correlation with losses oflife in the 1999 earthquake. Thus, existing buildings arenot the only source of risks in cities, but plan decisionsprior to building activity could affect significant levels ofloss. Risk management in socio-economic spatial sys-tems requires special regulatory devices and planning ex-pertise other than conventional post-disaster occupations.To implement policy change, administrative and legal re-arrangements must be made identifying the necessary setof new responsibilities and expertise.
Alex Altshuler, “How to Improve Emergency Prepared-ness on a Local Level? A Theoretical Model and Empiri-cal Illustration”, [email protected]
This research concentrated on the examination of emer-gency preparedness of Jewish and Arab local authori-ties throughout Israel, and the factors, which may pre-
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Figure 9: Alex Altshuler
dict the level of preparedness in empirical terms. A struc-tured questionnaire included 74 items, divided into 9 sub-questionnaires distributed in May-July 2008 among 177local authorities’ chief emergency managers all over Israelusing a random sampling technique. The response ratewas 80.8%. Results indicated that the regression modelwas of relatively high predictive capability (adjusted Rsquare of 49.3%). The following factors predicted signifi-cantly the preparedness level of the local authorities: jointactivity of local emergency managers with governmentaland non-governmental stakeholders, socio-economic sit-uation in a local community, collective efficacy and thecity’s previous war exposure. However, risk perception,population size, ethnic composition of a local commu-nity and financial resources were not significant in themodel. The identification of the factors contributing topreparedness level and the validation of the measurementinstruments has important theoretical and practical impli-cations. Three of the five significant factors (joint activ-ity of local emergency managers with governmental andnon-governmental stakeholders, and collective efficacy)are related to cooperation and coordination. In terms ofboth public policy and research insights, it highlights therelevance of networks and effective involvement of stake-holders from various societal sectors for a high level ofemergency preparedness performance.
Arzu Taylan, “Hazard Insurance and Individual Behav-ior in the Turbulence of New Disaster Policy”, [email protected]
Hazard insurance is a financial risk-sharing mechanismrelated to disaster risk reduction (DRR) in support oflow-income groups. Insurance practices vary in differentcountries depending on the social, economic, cultural andhistorical processes as well as on available technology.
Figure 10: Arzu Taylan
Whether purposes of creating disaster resilient societiesthrough insurance offers a solution or addresses chaos is arelevant question. This requires the investigation of insur-ance techniques in terms of the individual/collective re-sponses. Four implementation forms are observed:
1. Contingency funds seem to prevent people and commu-nities to perceive risks and take DRR measures includingself-insurance.
2. Hazard insurance in market, and related instruments aremore successful in developed countries rather than others.This could encourage people to take risk mitigation mea-sures if risk-rated premiums are applied. Market failuresusually result in catastrophic losses and expensive sup-ply due to incalculability and high correlation of risks aswell as low demand, which increases State-aid expecta-tions. The un-insurability of natural hazards especially inlow-income countries is due to high vulnerability of ur-ban environment, low capacity of insurers, and a lack ofinsurance culture. The market environment can also cre-ate social discrimination and inequalities, and low-incomegroups in high-risk areas are usually excluded.
3. Public-private partnerships: National and regionalcatastrophe insurance pool is another trend encouraged byinternational donors, particularly the World Bank. Thesehave the same objective as increasing the capacity of in-surers and lessening State-aid after disasters by increasingthe number of insured citizens. However, chaos is ob-served in implementation and in priorities of the state andprivate insurance.
Former gives priority to social equity, fairness and inclu-sion of all citizens through compulsory insurance, whichcan cause preventing people to take DRR measures. Thelatter gives priority to efficiency and accumulation oflower risks in the pool through implementing voluntaryinsurance with risk-rated premiums, which can result in
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social discrimination and exclusions because of marketsegmentation. The Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool(TCIP) in Turkey presents an example that lies in be-tween these two techniques that may have inverse impactson society. Although TCIP aimed to be linked to saferconstruction practices through compulsory purchase andrisk-rated premiums, the insurance premiums are boughtvoluntarily and the insurance tariff does not reflect accu-rate risk-rated premiums that can be linked to constructionpractices. To reduce the insolvency risk, un-authorizedhousing stock with low-income households at high-riskareas is directly excluded. A field survey in Zeytinburnudistrict of Istanbul, vulnerability positions were createdbased on the household attributes (education and incomelevel), perceived attributes of earthquakes (loss, probabil-ity, and controllability), perceived political context (per-ception of insurance purchase as compulsory) and culturalhabits (sense of belonging). Findings indicate that leavinghouseholds into individualized decision process may re-sult in fatalistic behavior, particularly among low incomehouseholds at high risk areas, which in turn prevents tak-ing DRR measures.
4. Micro-insurance mechanisms: Implementing DRR col-lectively and within social equality principles necessitatestrategies beyond market. Some countries have producedstrategies for the access to financial protection as collec-tive insurance, micro-insurance and inclusion of insur-ance poverty reduction strategies. Moreover, access toDRR can be seen as tax-reductions for retrofitting, hous-ing credits as linking mortgage with loans and hazard in-surance, slum upgrading and infrastructure programs, so-cial housing programs, micro-finance for housing, micro-credits with micro-insurance. Enhancement of commu-nity capacities can be supported by hazard insurance pro-grams with specific funds, community grant programs, fi-nancial incentives for prevention. Yet all these methodsare left to the innovative but fragmented efforts of coun-tries.
Elif Daldeniz, “Transfer of Concepts of the New Inter-national Policy for Disaster Risk Reduction: the Case ofTurkey”, [email protected]
This paper presented the search results of a researchthat is connected to a project (No.110K 406) funded byTÜBITAK (The Scientific and Technological ResearchCouncil of Turkey). The research interrogated the trans-fer of the concepts of the new international policy forDRR into Turkey and the Turkish language. The trans-fer processes were discussed on the basis of an analysis ofa corpus of texts that included the official report of Turkeyprepared for the Kobe conference, and a report preparedby the Commission for Disaster Preparation and Manage-ment of Urban Risks (appointed during the Council forUrbanization in 2009 in Turkey). The reason for choos-
ing these texts was that both showed the interaction be-tween the conventional and modern approaches to disas-ter management in Turkey. Written in different languages(one in English the other in Turkish), both texts demon-strated how old and new conceptions are negotiated. Inaddition, during the preparation of both texts, translationwas used. The research was based on a multi-disciplinaryframework. The texts were investigated according to thethree-dimensional framework of ‘Critical Discourse Anal-ysis’ whereby tools of Translation Studies and Concep-tual History shaped the overall approach as embedded inUrban Sociology. The study revealed that the transfer ofconcepts or of policies is not a smooth process and thatawareness is needed to see these processes of transfer ascomplex. This would help to overcome simplistic top-down approaches and encourage agents to give priorityto “communicative labor”. It was further emphasized thattexts - as an important form of social action - were the siteswhere the struggle between new and old ideas takes place.Considering that new policies adopted at the internationallevel and formulated in the relevant lingua franca need betranslated into the languages of the national/local context,the use of translation in the production procedures has tobe taken into account as a part of the social action.
The underlying concern of these two sessions was withrisk techniques: those calculations, propositions and prac-tices that scientific, political, economic actors apply whenthey try to control the impacts of unwanted events. Suchresearch object was deemed as important and relevantstarting point especially as it differs from what social sci-entists normally mean with risk. In contrast to mainstreamdiscussions, the session’s interest was not so much withmajor societal transformation, such as the arrival of a ‘risksociety’, or with risk ‘cultures’, which are presumed tobe something different from the technical and objectiverisks, but rather with the various expert measures that fig-ure in risk management as well as their effects. The morespecific objective was to discuss this theoretical interestin relation to the prevention, anticipation and mitigationof various disasters and catastrophes. Eight presentationsfollowed and explored the diversity of expert risk tech-niques and expert risk knowledge as well as their critiquesand shifts.
The first presentation was given by Alena Bleicher, co-authored by Chloe Begg (both from the Hemholtz Cen-tre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig), and its
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focus was in creeping disasters: that is to say, in slow-onset disasters that are ‘waiting to happen’. This no-tion of creeping disasters was exemplified by soil andgroundwater contaminations. The contaminations havehappened throughout the 20th century, yet the knowledgeon the location of the dump sites has often been lost atthe same time as many original contaminants have trans-formed into new chemicals substances. The disasters arehence “creeping”, yet their anticipation and prevention isriddled with what the authors called “(known) unknowns”and “ignorance”. However, by studying several revital-ization projects empirically, the authors were also able toobserve that scientific actors are often aware of the ig-norance. When such ignorance is admitted and commu-nicated, it may become grounds for decision-making inspite of the various “unknowns”. The presentation’s con-clusion was a formal risk communication model that in-corporates experts’ ignorance, and posits an opportunityto prepare for creeping disasters thus also situating theconcept of preparedness in relation to other popular risk-related concepts such as resilience and uncertainty.
The second paper presentation by Hannu Hänninen(Aalto University School of Economics, Helsinki) dealtwith visor-related shipping accidents on the Baltic sea.Culminating in the Estonia shipping disaster in 1994, suchaccidents had actually happened on the Baltic for sev-eral decades. The presentation’s question was: why hadthe failures and close calls at sea not been monitoredmore efficiently before? The paper proposed to assessthe question by studying classification societies of ship-ping, which inspect ships and create norms for shipbuild-ing. Or such are their official functions, yet, the buildingnorms are also shaped by experiences gained from pre-vious accidents. Hence the author argued that the clas-sification societies and their rules had been establishedas a “memory archive” of risks of shipping. Confiden-tial and hidden away from the public, such arrangementmight indeed hold back open dialogue on the risk regu-lation of shipping. The discussion about the paper notedthat this important conclusion could be expanded to aninquiry into another group of professionals: namely, in-surers, and the manners in which the insurance industrytranslates shipping accidents into collective memory andaffects risk management.
Susann Ullberg (CRISMART, Stockholm) continuedwith the theme of remembering risk – or to put differ-ently, of forgetting it – by presenting on urban flood man-agement in the city of Santa Fe, Argentina. Drawing onrecent discussions in anthropology and science and tech-nology studies, this presentation developed an interest ina particular risk-related ‘artefact’: the 2005 contingencyplan that strove to anticipate and mitigate the effects ofthe recurrent disastrous flooding of the city. This plan,
while being a pioneering integrated crisis managementdocument, only incorporated some aspects of social life,history and urban development to explain the vulnerabil-ity to the flooding while it “omitted” or even “ignored”others. The presentation also talked about the manner inwhich the plan was not put in use in the 2007 flooding andwas later replaced by another renewed plan.
Our first session was concluded by Antti Silvast (Uni-versity of Helsinki) with a presentation on Finnish elec-tric energy supply and security. Inspired from emerginganthropological research on security and infrastructures,the paper traced the history of Finnish thinking about na-tional security, emergency preparedness and civil and mil-itary contingencies. Defence preparedness of the indus-tries has long roots in Finland, yet on the level of concreterisk management, Finnish preparedness thinking also sawmarked shifts and turning points as the presentation dis-played. The author drew particular attention to the 1970sand its worries over energy crises, computerization andinternational interdepencies. He argued that the then-developed risk responses and critical debates still are aclear influence on the contemporary Finnish discussionson civil contingencies and security of networked infras-tructures.
The second session began by a joint presentation by ArhoToikka and Nina Janasik (University of Helsinki), whichdealt with carbon nanotubes and endocrine-disruptingchemicals. While nanotechnological innovations are of-ten framed as promising, they may also posit complexrisks and health effects according to many experts. Hav-ing studied the expert knowledge that pertained to therisks of both nanotubes and endocrine disruptors, the au-thors noted that this knowledge was shaped by ambiguity:multiple scientific experts and regulators tried to addressthe risks each from a particular vantage point. Towardsa policy recommendation, the presentation highlightedhow human skills, or the Aristotelian practical wisdom,phronesis, could help experts to rise above their existingknowledge domains and recognize patterns among com-plexity. The discussion that followed considered the levelof knowledge and expertise that a social scientist himselfor herself needs to acquire to understand innovative andcomplex technologies, which has indeed been a pivotalquestion in science and technology studies.
Martin Leijten (Delft University of Technology) contin-ued the discussion of risk expertise by presenting a case oncomplex infrastructure projects. Focusing in the ways thatrisk analysis – and risk analysers in particular – figure insuch projects, the author proposed that managers of com-plex projects tend to suffer from double binds: when mak-ing sense of mishaps and incidents, the managers receiveconflicting messages and can only pay attention to someinput while ignoring others. However, rather than to claim
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Figure 11: Adrien Gey
Figure 12: Trude Gjernes
this finding is highly problematic, the overall conclusionof the presentation was constructive. The proposal was todevelop inquiries into double binds in order to measurehow experts generate heuristics and make sense of risks,even in the absence of “best practice” and while undesiredeffects cannot be avoided.
The topic of Adrien Gey’s (Universite de Grenoble) pre-sentation dealt with the ‘Grand Paris’ project. This is anurban development project that raises an interest in the re-lationship between the city, its natural environment andthe impacts of natural disasters. The string of the presen-tation was historical, situating a generic curiosity aboutthe changing perceptions of the relationship between theenvironment and the city. The ‘Grand Paris’ differed fromprevious considerations of this relationship in two ways:by highlighting nature as inherently dangerous on the onehand; and by stressing nature – for example, the plant-ing of trees – as a key element in risk management on theother hand. The presentation illustrated these concerns byshowing various new technological devices that managethe risks of natural disasters in the context of the project.Such arrangements also give increasing influence to tech-nical risk experts more than to citizens or technology usersas the discussion about the presentation remarked.
The final presentation in these sessions was given byTrude Gjernes (Nordland Research Institut, Bodø). Thefocus in the presented pilot study was ethnographic, con-cerning a Norwegian rescue coordination center and itsmanners of managing risks. Multiple knowledge sourcesfigure in the working practice of such coordination cen-ters: ranging from electronic maps, weather forecasts andcommunications from vessels in trouble to other rescuecoordination centers and direct observations by the cen-ter’s workers. In fact what seems to emerge here is a caseof distributed risk management across various social ac-tors and multiple technological equipment. At the sametime, the rescue coordination center is an emblematic sitethat in some manner reconstructs global risks locally – in-deed the signals that arrive to this center may stem fromvarious locations starting from Norway and extending toNorwegian vessels in trouble in Somalia. Certainly suchsites of control and coordination display another aspect ofexpert risk techniques and their diversity. Particularly, thesite illustrates that in addition to shifting historically andamong policy domains, risk techniques can also tend toshift and be readjusted on the spot almost in real-time.
Oral Presentations: Prof. Juan de Dios Ruano Gómez,Prof. Ariadna Rodríguez Teijeiro and Elvira SantiagoGómez
The discussion in the session VI, Social Acceptance cri-teria for refuge ports in Europe, began with the question:why does the media not pay much attention to issues relat-ing to ports of refuge in comparison with the media cov-erage that pertains to all sorts of accidents and sinking ofships? The answer revolves around the idea that the massmedia wants to cover disasters and catastrophes and is-sues that create controversy regarding the possible portsof refuge. Here the catastrophe is a media issue per seand the controversy is more of an interest that concernsthe population; in fact, this is evident in the discussiongroups carried out on this subject matter. The session alsodiscusses why the potential ports of refuge at the coast ofSpain are raised in a confidential report by the Govern-ment and authorities – a decision which makes it very dif-ficult to provide a solution to the controversy surroundingthis issue.
Moreover, the presentations made by the research team,led by Prof. Ruano, generate interesting thoughts aboutthe manner in which one must confront the MaritimeSafety understanding: through underscoring that refugeports are a controversy to which there are different solu-
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Figure 13: Elvira Santiago Gómez, Ariadna RodríguezTeijeiro, Juan de Dios Ruano Gómez and Susann Ullberg
tions and directions. Thus, we can understand the am-bivalence in the Spanish public perception with regards torefuge ports. The program Prisma, adopted by the SpanishMinistry of Development, responds to European demandsand public complaints about the need and obligation to es-tablish a protocol for delimiting areas or places of refugefor ships in distress on the basis of social and environ-mental geography. Yet, at the same time, many Spanishpeople are suspicious and oppose a ship in distress to takerefuge in a port area or near their residence. This is the ex-pression known as Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY). Giventhis ambivalence, institutional-level efforts should focuson the communication towards population and to the ac-ceptance of the fact that if a ship needs to approach a portarea shelter, a strong social protest movement will occuras it has in previous occasions. And in Spain, the mistrustof the population in institutions is social reality and growswith each new crisis.
Also discussed during the debate was the need for moreempirically based studies that shed real ideas on com-plaints and feelings of people in matters of risk. In thissense, beyond deciding which theoretical paradigm weuse in our studies, we must deepen the involvement ofpeople and their claims to the overall risk managementand risk of maritime safety in particular.
With a joint interest in theoretical movements NinaBlom Andersen, Pernille Almlund and Laurence Creton-Cazanave suggested a DSCRN session under the headline
“Theories of Social Relations in Times of Uncertainty:Going Through Existing Theories and Bringing in NewOnes”. In the proposal we e.g. suggested a discussion ofthe dominant thoughts as well as an investigation of newapproaches, theoretical as well as methodological withinthe disaster and social crisis research field. Though theidea did not alone come from our own interests, in theproposal we were as well drawing on the overall themeof this years’ ESA conference of how to approach the no-tion of “Social relations in turbulent times” which is verymuch in the center of the disaster and social crisis researchscope.
A number of interesting abstracts made us establish twosessions. Since we had to divide the papers into two,we made a rough division suggesting that the first ses-sion should deal with the question of using theories notoften seen within the research field while the second ses-sion should gather around methodological approaches andfindings regarding social relations in turbulent times. InGeneva the discussions did not fall out to be as dividedas the headlines indicated although both theoretical andmethodological discussions appeared in both sessions.
The four presentations in the first session discussed twotheoretical directions that do not appear often withinthe disaster and social crisis research area: First thework by theorist Margaret Archer exploring the dimen-sion of reflexivity, agency and change of structures andsecondly theoretical approaches focusing on configura-tions of agents and objects in networks. Wayne Crosbyand Debra J Davidson, both from University of Al-berta, Canada, respectively presented the papers “Agency,structure and social crisis: exploring social relations intwo forest-based communities in rural British Columbia,Canada” and “Resilience meets reflexivity: anticipatingclimate change catastrophe”. Both presenters took theirpoint of departure in the way threats like e.g. climatechanges and the global economic crisis are understood associal crisis and handled in local communities. Crosbyand Davidson showed how the use of Archer’s theoreticalnotion of “morphogenetic trajectories” offers a theoreticaltool in order to understand how social crisis can lead tocollective responses in local communities that again canlead to structural changes.
Laurence Créton-Cazanave, France, followed with apresentation of the paper “The distance analysis frame-work: A new understanding of warning processes”.Drawing on the French pragmatic sociology and a deepstudy of the French flash floods warning process in Gard,Créton-Cazanave presented the central points of the Dis-tance Analysis Framework, and showed how it allows tolead symmetrical, integrated and practices centered stud-ies of warning processes. The approach brings in an at-tention to action (instead of behaviour) and the way ac-
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tors achieve to adjust, ground, and coordinate actions in athreatening situation.
The final presentation in this session was made byPernille Almlund and Nina Blom Andersen fromRoskilde University, Denmark, based on the paper “Theuse of actor-network theory in analysis of social crisis anddisasters”. Almlund and Andersen showed how theoreti-cal concepts of Actor-Network-Theory and a focus on sit-uational analysis of risks and threats can be brought intoplay in order to analyze communication processes. The2009 pandemic flu served as a case and it was showed inthe presentation how the vaccination that was supposed toprotect people from the virus turned out to be presentedas an even worse threat than the virus H1N1 itself in aDanish context.
Following in the second session, Barbara Lucini fromthe Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy, dida presentation on the possible benefit of combining ofphenomenological and symbolic interactionistic approachin process of analyzing empirical datamaterial under theheadline “An innovative theoretical analysis by sociolog-ical perspectives in social crisis contemporary context:Rethinking phenomenological and symbolic interaction-ism approaches and their methodological relapses”. Lu-cini presented a theoretical and methodological discussionof how a combination of theoretical notions within the tra-dition of phenomenology on the one hand, and symbolicinteractionism on the other hand, is suitable for analyzingcrises in a broad sense. Concepts of context, role, iden-tity, and interaction were pointed out to be able to coveranalysis of elements in core of a variety of crises; envi-ronmental, political as well as institutional ones.
Three of the presentations dealt – though in very differentways - with studies of the way children and adults makesense of and handle post disaster situations. LudvinaColbeau-Justin from Laboratoire de Psychologie sociale,Université de Nîmes, France, presented the study “Theorder of things and the world order: making psychoso-cial and environmental sense after disaster”. Colbeau-Justin presented the concept of “Environmental Psychol-ogy” based on a comprehension of the interplay betweenthe psychological restoring and the restoring of urbanspace in the aftermath of a disaster. Through a number ofpictures from sites destructed by disasters, Colbeau-Justinshowed how restoring spatial order can be understood asan interplay between physical, psychological as well assymbolical ways of acting and dealing with devastation.
Jo Moran-Ellis, University of Surrey, United Kingdom,presented a study conducted by her and a number of col-leagues with the title: “Children and resilience in environ-mental disasters”. The research project on children’s re-covery, that took its departure on the flood in Hull, aimedat analyzing the dynamics in children’s experiences with
Figure 14: Ludvina Colbeau-Justin
a flood through methods such as individual interviews,group discussions and the use of storyboards. Moran-Ellisshowed how the study firstly has contributed in gaining acloser insight in children’s experiences in different con-texts within their own family as well as within the localcommunity in the aftermath of a flood, and secondly howit has provided insight in the characteristics of children’sdisaster experiences. At the same time children’s way ofcoping are in line with and so much different from thoseof adults. The children are seen as vulnerable in casesof floods, though Moran-Ellis’ study stresses the dynamicbetween vulnerability and need for special care on the oneside, and childrens ability to contribute to the recovery onthe other side.
Marco Pasini from LABOS - Foundation for Social Pol-icy Studies in Rome, Italy, presented the paper “Sport andits stories. The central role of the youth in the constructionof the social cohesion thorough sport”. In the presenta-tion Pasini discussed a study of a project carried out in theItalian town L’Aquila hit by earthquake in April 2009. Aproject of intervention was established in order to engageyoung people in the town in physical activity in the postdisaster period dominated by a considerable reconstruc-tion of the town which had a strong impact on the citi-zens’ everyday life. Based on the assumption that physicalactivity improves both physical and psychical conditionsand strengthens the development of social relations in theaftermaths of a disastrous event, the study e.g. exploredthe competence the participants gained related to copingand problem solving as well as the ways the project of-fered a socializing context in a moment of social crisis.
Apart from papers dealing with analysis of actual disas-trous events a presentation of a study of an exercise re-quiring authorities, organisations as well as private com-panies to organize in case of a fictitious crisis was pre-sented as well. Erna Danielsson and Roine Johanssonpresented the paper “Joint staff for emergency responseoperations” and discussed their findings in relation to thequestion how joint staff collaboration meetings during a
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Figure 15: Erna Danielsson and Roine Johansson
large exercise, in a Swedish local setting, are organized ina context with no experiences to draw on. Through obser-vations of the staff members practices during the exercisecombined with short interviews, Danielsson and Johans-son argued that even though the collaboration got moreorganized as the exercise developed it was still impairedby barriers like time pressure, lack of routines, as well asthe fact that the tasks and the gains of cooperation wereunclear.
Call for Papers: The 26th Annual Congress ofthe Association of European Schools of Planning(AESOP), Ankara, Turkey, 11-15 July 2012
The Association of European Schools of Planning (AE-SOP) will hold its 26th Annual Congress in Ankara,Turkey, from 11 to 15 July 2012. As 2012 will also markthe 25th Anniversary of AESOP our aim is to celebratethe occasion with the participation of many distinguishedguests and keynote speakers, along with a number of spe-cial sessions and activities. The Congress will also pro-vide the setting for stimulating workshops, round-tablediscussions, and exciting excursions, during which issuesof spatial planning and development specific to Ankaramay also be explored.
We believe that the congress motto "Planning toAchieve/Planning to Avoid" is an umbrella for a widespectrum of planning concerns, and explicitly expresses
the variety of functions planning has to accommodate inthe face of the material conditions of the modern world.Global warming, environmental and ecological degrada-tion, depletion of natural resources, natural and man-madehazards, and economic crises affect our modes of produc-tion, consumption, and mobility patterns, demanding fornew strategies in socio-spatial organization and conduct.
Participants to the congress are expected to contributeto the dilemmas of growth/degrowth, vulnerabilities/ re-silience, and the contemporary relevance of planning intheoretical and practical terms, while pointing to thestrengths and weaknesses of educational systems, andproblems of local and regional geographies..
We welcome our colleagues to a vibrant environment ofsociable discussion.
Important Dates
• Abstract Submission Deadline: 15 January 2012
• Notification of Acceptance of Papers: 29 February2012
• Deadline for Submission of Full Papers: 30 April2012
• Early Bird Deadline: 30 April 2012
• Deadline for Authors’ Registration: 31 May 2012
• Congress Sessions: 11 July 2012 - 14 July 2012
• One-day tour and the start of other post-congresstours: 15 July 2012
To learn more, please go to the congress web site: http://www.arber.com.tr/aesop2012.org/index.php/home
Call for Papers: ‘Emotions, Rationalities and Dy-namics: uncertainties in crisis’, Porto, Portugal,20-23 June 2012
The Research Committee Sociology of Emotions (ST11)is an initiative of a group of social sciences’ researchersfocusing on the growing complexity of the social world,and the multiple dimensions acting upon and/or influ-enced by social actors.
Our goal is to understand not only how emotions framesocial action and interaction, but also, how the actor devel-ops bonds to social and cultural structures and how theseframe emotions.
The 6th Meeting of the Portuguese Sociological Associa-tion under the theme Society, Crisis and Reconfigurations,
to be held between the 20th and 23rd June, 2012, in Porto,will gather researchers interested in discussing the role ofsocial emotions in processes of social changes, specifi-cally in the analysis of the economic and financial crisis,emergent social movements, reconfiguration of social in-stitutions as well as how social actors experience thesechanges and act upon them.
It is our pleasure to invite you to submit (an) abstract(s)of your work on Emotions, Rationalities and Dynamics:uncertainties in crisis, specifically, but not exclusively, tothe following topics:
• Juridical and social normativity: the unpredictabilityof social action and interaction in contexts of crisis;
• Observing social emotions: How to identify andmeasure;
• Emotions and violence: exploring emotional dimen-sions associated with violent contexts including gen-der violence;
• Economic crisis: rationalities and the emergence ofnew emotional processes;
• Emotions and new social movements: the inputs ofsociology of emotions to the explanation and under-standing of emerging social movements.
This is the periodic electronic newsletter of the Disaster,Conflict and Social Crisis Research Network (DSCRN).The purpose of the DSCRN is to promote the study, re-search and analysis of “natural”, “technological” and “so-cial” disasters with a view to contributing to the develop-ment of disaster resilient European communities, and pre-venting or mitigating the human, economic, social, cul-tural and psychological effects of crises and disasters.
The DSCRN Electronic Newsletter is published threetimes a year (April, August, December). The previouslypublished newsletters are downloadable at the network’swebpage: http://www.dscrn.org.
Announcements of conferences, book, film, and CD-ROM reviews, reportage on conferences, disaster di-aries, brief articles on best or worst practices in disas-ter prevention and recovery, commentaries on disastersand crises, human interest stories relevant to disasters,etc. should be sent electronically to the editor, Antti Sil-vast ([email protected]) no later than the first ofthe month of publication. Contributions to the newslettershould preferably be written in a concise format (½-1 pagelong maximum) in order to make reading comprehensivealbeit focused. Ideas should be referenced (Author, year),but there is no need for a complete reference list.
Relevant contributions from the field of disaster, conflictand crisis research, as well as from applied disaster, con-flict and crisis management practice, are most welcome!
All “signed” texts express the opinions of the authors andnot necessarily those of the coordinators, the editor or ofthe DSCRN.
