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Dramatic alterations to the natural environment due to human activity have produced a permanent rupture in the Earth system; the relative stable epoch of the Holocene has given way to a volatile Anthropocene. Acceptance of these claims means that we now live in this altered physical reality, inviting us to rethink how we conceptualise disasters. Yet, disaster scholars have been hesitant to apply the Anthropocene label and to acknowledge the profound changes that it can bring to the study of disasters. This paper queries whether this label is a necessary adage or unnecessary baggage for disaster studies by examining the possibilities and the challenges associated with engaging with the Anthropocene. An analysis of the concepts, causes, and consequences of disasters reveals how the Anthropocene provides, as the very least, a theoretical heuristic for challenging linear temporal assumptions, the epistemological status of uncertainty, and the location of agency in disaster studies.

This book critically examines the global diffusion and local reception of resiliencethrough the implementation of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programmes inPacific and Caribbean island states.Global efforts to strengthen local disaster resilience capacities have become astaple of international development activity in recent decades, yet the successfulimplementation of DRR projects designed to strengthen local resilience remainselusive. While there are pockets of success, a gap remains between global expectationsand local realities. Through a critical realist study of global and localworldviews of resilience in the Pacific and Caribbean islands, this book arguesthat the global advocacy of DRR remains inadequate because of a failure to prioritisea person-orientated ethics in its conceptualisation of disaster resilience.This regional comparison provides a valuable lens to understand the underlyingsocial structures that makes resilience possible and the extent to which local governments,communities and persons interpret and modify their behaviour on riskwhen faced with the global message on resilience.This book will be of much interest to students of resilience, risk management,development studies and area studies.

European states may no longer expect inter‐state violence, but they do expect complex threats emanating from storms, epidemics, terror attacks and earthquakes. The EU has answered these threats through the rapid and far‐reaching institutionalization of European security cooperation. However, member states hesitate to use their common capacities. While both intergovernmental and constructivist approaches treat this pattern as evidence of weak integration and as unimportant to the European security community, we examine this cooperation through the lens of practice theory and reveal how the growth of EU capacities is fully compatible with a critical and cautious approach to activating these resources in the everyday work of national officials. Using unique empirical data retrieved through participant observation in the first multisectoral crisis management exercise held by the EU, the findings of this analysis sketch the contours of a new type of security community.

International relations and disaster studies have much to gain by thinking critically about their respective theoretical and epistemological assumptions. Yet, few studies to date have sought to assess the potential value of linking these two disciplines. This paper begins to address this short-fall by examining the relationship between disasters and conflict as a research sphere that intersects international relations and disaster studies. Through an analysis of whether or not disasters contribute to intranational and international conflict, this paper not only provides a review of the state of the art, but also serves to invite scholars to reflect on related concepts from other fields to strengthen their own approaches to the study of disasters in an international setting. An evaluation of the conceptual and theoretical contributions of each subject area provides useful heuristics for the development of disaster–conflict scholarship and encourages alternative modes of knowledge production through interdisciplinarity.

The global diffusion and reification of resilience – as the innate acceptance of vulnerability and suffering – has become an increasingly common feature in global development and humanitarian discourses. The advocacy of Disaster Risk Reduction represents a central technique of this global ontology of resilience that aims to influence the individual, the society and the state. This article explores how this global worldview of resilience is received by local rationalities of resilience in the Caribbean. This is achieved by examining Caribbean art as a re-presentational form of identity that shapes distinct ontological understandings of insecurity and vulnerability, which subsequently affects the possibilities of subjectivisation which lead towards local creative resistance or a global consent of suffering.

Global framework agreements on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) aim to reduce the vulnerability of states from the effects of natural hazards and guide international development strategies. The effects of these agreements have surely saved lives and buffered shocks to economic systems. Yet, there remains a gap between global aims and envisioned outcomes in local communities. This paper argues that cultural determinants of risk, which shape the reception and translation of ideas on DRR, must be taken seriously if international organizations wish to enhance their efficacy and reduce vulnerability. Elucidating the importance indigenous practices of resilience, time and governance have for the global diffusion of DRR can help to reduce this gap and encourage more effective development policy in the future.

This article analyses the underlying structures that contribute to the boundaries of appropriate behavior in global Disaster Risk Management (DRM). Understood as a policy field committed to mitigating the effects of natural hazards and assisting states in responding to disasters, international dimensions of DRM have received increased attention by academics and practitioners. Yet, little reflection has been made on the ideational structures that define this field. Based on a discourse analysis on key texts, this study argues that three dominant categories—a humanitarian ethics of care, scientific rationality and sovereignty—demarcate the boundaries of cooperation on DRM. Understanding the relationship between these categories is considered vital for reflecting on the current and future trajectory of this important policy field.