A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Almost 68.5 million refugees in the world today live in a protection gap, the chasm between protections stipulated in the Geneva Convention and the abrogation of those responsibilities by states and aid agencies. With dwindling humanitarian aid, how do refugee communities solve collective dilemmas, like raising funds for funeral services, or securing other critical goods and services? In Networked Refugees, Nadya Hajj finds that Palestinian refugees utilize Information Communication Technology platforms to motivate reciprocity-a cooperative action marked by the mutual exchange of favors and services-and informally seek aid and connection with their transnational diaspora community. Using surveys conducted with Palestinians throughout the diaspora, interviews with those inside the Nahr al Bared Refugee camp in Lebanon, and data pulled from online community spaces, these findings push back against the cynical idea that online organizing is fruitless, emphasizing instead the productivity of these digital networks.

When and under what circumstances are disaster survivors able to speak for themselves in the public arena? In Consuming Katrina: Public Disaster and Personal Narrative, author Kate Parker Horigan shows how the public understands and remembers large-scale disasters like Hurricane Katrina, outlining which stories are remembered and why, as well as the impact on public memory and the survivors themselves.Horigan discusses unique contexts in which personal narratives about the storm are shared, including interviews with survivors, Dave Eggers's Zeitoun, Josh Neufeld's A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's Trouble the Water, and public commemoration during Hurricane Katrina's tenth anniversary in New Orleans. In each case, survivors initially present themselves in specific ways, counteracting negative stereotypes that characterize their communities. However, when adapted for public presentation, their stories get reduced back to those stereotypes. As a result, people affected by Katrina continue to be seen in limited terms, as either undeserving or incapable of managing recovery. This project is rooted in Horigan's experiences living in New Orleans before and after Katrina, but it is also a case study illustrating an ongoing problem and an innovative solution: survivors' stories should be shared in a way that includes their own engagement with the processes of narrative production, circulation, and reception. When survivors are seen as agents in their own stories, they will be seen as agents in their own recovery. Having a better grasp on the processes of narration and memory is critical for improved disaster response because the stories that are most widely shared about disaster determine how communities recover.

Although Germany was one of the principal colonising nations in Africa and today is the world's second largest aid donor , there is no literature on the postcolonial condition of contemporary German development policy. This book explores German development endeavours by state institutions as well as NGOs, and provides evidence of development policy's unacknowledged entanglement in colonial modes of thought and practice. It zooms in on concrete policies and practices in selected fields of intervention: development education and billboard advertising in Germany, and - taking Tanzania as a case in point - obstetric care and population control in the Global South. The analysis finds that disregarding colonial continuities means to perpetuate the inequalities and injustices that development policy claims to fight. This book argues that colonial power in global development needs to be understood as functioning through the transnational character of development policy at home and abroad.

An account of the Flint water crisis shows that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water is part of a broader struggle for democracy. When Flint, Michigan, changed its source of municipal water from Lake Huron to the Flint River, Flint residents were repeatedly assured that the water was of the highest quality. At the switchover ceremony, the mayor and other officials performed a celebratory toast, declaring "Here's to Flint!" and downing glasses of freshly treated water. But as we now know, the water coming out of residents' taps harbored a variety of contaminants, including high levels of lead. In Flint Fights Back, Benjamin Pauli examines the water crisis and the political activism that it inspired, arguing that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water was part of a broader struggle for democracy. Pauli connects Flint's water activism with the ongoing movement protesting the state of Michigan's policy of replacing elected officials in financially troubled cities like Flint and Detroit with appointed "emergency managers." Pauli distinguishes the political narrative of the water crisis from the historical and technical narratives, showing that Flint activists' emphasis on democracy helped them to overcome some of the limitations of standard environmental justice frameworks. He discusses the pro-democracy (anti-emergency manager) movement and traces the rise of the "water warriors"; describes the uncompromising activist culture that developed out of the experience of being dismissed and disparaged by officials; and examines the interplay of activism and scientific expertise. Finally, he explores efforts by activists to expand the struggle for water justice and to organize newly mobilized residents into a movement for a radically democratic Flint.