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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Social impact of disasters
This book examines three consecutive famines in Cambodia during the
1970s, exploring both continuities and discontinuities of all
three. Cambodia experienced these consecutive famines against the
backdrop of four distinct governments: the Kingdom of Cambodia
(1953-1970), the U.S.-supported Khmer Republic (1970-1975), the
communist Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979), and the
Vietnamese-controlled People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979-1989).
Famine in Cambodia documents how state-induced famine constituted a
form of sovereign violence and operated against the backdrop of
sweeping historical transformations of Cambodian society. It also
highlights how state-induced famines should not be solely framed
from the vantage point in which famine occurs but should also focus
on the geopolitics of state-induced famines, as states other than
Cambodia conditioned the famine in Cambodia. Drawing on an array of
theorists, including Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Achille
Mbembe, James A. Tyner provides a conceptual framework to bring
together geopolitics, biopolitics, and necropolitics in an effort
to expand our understanding of state-induced famines. Tyner argues
that state-induced famine constitutes a form of sovereign
violence-a form of power that both takes life and disallows life.
This book examines three consecutive famines in Cambodia during the
1970s, exploring both continuities and discontinuities of all
three. Cambodia experienced these consecutive famines against the
backdrop of four distinct governments: the Kingdom of Cambodia
(1953-1970), the U.S.-supported Khmer Republic (1970-1975), the
communist Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979), and the
Vietnamese-controlled People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979-1989).
Famine in Cambodia documents how state-induced famine constituted a
form of sovereign violence and operated against the backdrop of
sweeping historical transformations of Cambodian society. It also
highlights how state-induced famines should not be solely framed
from the vantage point in which famine occurs but should also focus
on the geopolitics of state-induced famines, as states other than
Cambodia conditioned the famine in Cambodia. Drawing on an array of
theorists, including Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Achille
Mbembe, James A. Tyner provides a conceptual framework to bring
together geopolitics, biopolitics, and necropolitics in an effort
to expand our understanding of state-induced famines. Tyner argues
that state-induced famine constitutes a form of sovereign
violence-a form of power that both takes life and disallows life.
From epidemics and earthquakes to tornados and tidal waves, the overwhelming power of nature never ceases to instill humankind with both terror and awe. As natural disasters continue to claim human lives and leave destruction in their wake, Perils of a Restless Planet examines our attempts to understand and anticipate such phenomena. Now available in paperback, this highly acclaimed book draws on actual events from ancient to present times. Coverage focuses on basic scientific inquiry, technological innovation and, ultimately, public policy to provide a lucid and riveting look at the natural events that have shaped our view of natural disasters. While shedding light on the elusive quality of nature's intermittent tantrums and the limits scientific study and laboratory replication impose on our understanding of its mercurial ways, the author extrapolates from the history of science to suggest how we may someday learn to warn and protect the vulnerable populations on our small, tempestuous planet. Compelling and informative, this book will find readers both in and outside of the scientific community.
At the current rate of increase, the world's population is likely to reach ten billion by the middle of the twenty-first century. What will be the challenges posed by feeding this population and how can they be addressed? Written to mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Malthus' seminal Essay on the Principle of Population, this fascinating book looks at the intimate links between population growth and agricultural innovation over the past 10,000 years, illustrating how the evolution of agriculture has both shaped and been shaped by the course of world population growth. This historical context serves to illuminate our present position and to aid understanding of possible future paths to food security for the planet. This volume is a unique and accessible account that will be of interest to a wide audience concerned with global population, food supply, agricultural development, environmental degradation and resource depletion.
A spellbinding new talent explores the dark side of creativity
through the stories of thirteen tragic architects 'Bold Ventures
resembles a pop version of Iain Sinclair's psychogeography or Out
of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer's anti-biography of DH Lawrence' Olivia
Laing, Guardian In thirteen chapters, Belgian poet Charlotte Van
den Broeck goes in search of buildings that were fatal for their
architects - architects who either killed themselves or are
rumoured to have done so. They range across time and space from a
church with a twisted spire built in seventeenth-century France to
a theatre that collapsed mid-performance in 1920s Washington, DC.,
and an eerily sinking swimming pool in her hometown of Turnhout.
Drawing on a vast range of material, from Hegel and Charles Darwin
to art history, stories from her own life and popular culture,
patterns gradually come into focus, as Van den Broeck asks: what is
that strange life-or-death connection between a creation and its
creator? Threaded through each story, and in prose of great
essayistic subtlety, Van den Broeck meditates on the question of
suicide - what Albert Camus called the 'one truly serious
philosophical problem' - in relation to creativity and public
disgrace. The result is a profoundly idiosyncratic book, breaking
new ground in literary non-fiction, as well as providing solace and
consolation - and a note of caution - to anyone who has ever risked
their hand at a creative act. 'What a sensible, intelligent and
beautiful book' Stefan Hertmans, author of War and Turpentine
The peaceful town of Holmfirth, now famous for its connection with
the BBC's comedy series 'Last of the Summer Wine', has had its
tranquility torn apart on two separate occasions. This book retells
the stories of two devastating floods which ripped apart the heart
of the town. The 1852 flood was caused, in part, by negligence of
the reservoir builders, and the 1944 flood was due partly to a
consequence of these lessons not being learnt. The Holmfirth Floods
provides a fascinating insight into everyday life in the town
before, during and after these disasterous events, accompanied
throughout by maps, sketches and photographs.
When a perfect storm of personal, professional, and natural
disaster threw Mike Mantel into a dark night of the soul, he
embarked on a journey through his own life and around the world to
rediscover God's presence through the diverse body of Christ. In
Thirsting for Living Water, Mantel invites readers to join him on
this adventure and open their eyes to their own stories of God's
faithfulness. It's an invitation to see where God is already at
work: at home, among neighbors, and to the ends of the earth. Here
is a story of the holistic gospel, driven by compassion, justice,
and mercy, with Jesus at the center. Here is an inspiring vision of
a unified, global church-in which each of us has a vital role to
play.
Politicians, economists, and the media have put forth no shortage
of explanations for the mounting problem of wealth inequality - a
loss of working class jobs, a rise in finance-driven speculative
capitalism, and a surge of tax policy decisions that benefit the
ultra-rich, among others. While these arguments focus on the macro
problems that contribute to growing inequality, they overlook one
innocuous but substantial contributor to the widening divide: the
explosion of fees accompanying virtually every transaction that
people make. As Devin Fergus shows in Land of the Fee, these
perfectly legal fees are buried deep within the verbose agreements
between vendors and consumers - agreements that few people fully
read or comprehend. The end effect, Fergus argues, is a massive
transfer of wealth from the many to the few: large banking
corporations, airlines, corporate hotel chains, and other entities
of vast wealth. Fergus traces the fee system from its origins in
the deregulatory wave of the late 1970s to the present, placing the
development within the larger context of escalating income
inequality. He organizes the book around four of the basics of
existence: housing, work, transportation, and schooling. In each
category, industry lobbyists successfully influenced legislatures
into transforming the law until surreptitious fees became the norm.
The average consumer is now subject to a dizzying array of charges
in areas like mortgage contracts, banking transactions, auto
insurance rates, college payments, and payday loans. The fees that
accompany these transactions are not subject to usury laws and have
effectively redistributed wealth from the lower and middle classes
to ultra-wealthy corporations and the individuals at their
pinnacles. By exposing this predatory and nearly invisible system
of fees, Land of the Fee will reshape our understanding of wealth
inequality in America.
Why was the UK so unprepared for the pandemic, suffering one of the
highest death rates and worst economic contractions of the major
world economies in 2020? Hilary Cooper and Simon Szreter reveal the
deep roots of our vulnerability and set out a powerful manifesto
for change post-Covid-19. They argue that our commitment to a
flawed neoliberal model and the associated disinvestment in our
social fabric left the UK dangerously exposed and unable to mount
an effective response. This is not at all what made Britain great.
The long history of the highly innovative universal welfare system
established by Elizabeth I facilitated both the industrial
revolution and, when revived after 1945, the postwar Golden Age of
rising prosperity. Only by learning from that past can we create
the fairer, nurturing and empowering society necessary to tackle
the global challenges that lie ahead - climate change, biodiversity
collapse and global inequality.
In the late 1840s, more than one million Irish men and women died
of starvation and disease, and a further two million emigrated in
one of the worst European sustenance crises of modern times. Yet a
general feeling persists that the Irish Famine eluded satisfactory
representation. Writing the Famine examines literary texts by
writers such as William Carleton. Anthony Trollope, James Clarence
Mangan, John Mitchel, and Samuel Ferguson, and reveals how they
interact with histories, sermons, economic treatises to construct a
narrative of the most important and elusive events in Irish
history. In this strikingly original and compelling contribution to
Irish culture studies, Christopher Moras explores the concept of
the Famine as a moment of absence. He argues the event constitutes
an unspeakable moment in attempts to write the past - a point at
which the great Victorian metanarratives of historical change
collapse. Aligning itself with new historical literary criticism,
Writing the Famine examines the attempts of a wide range of
nineteenth-century writing to ensure the memorialization of an
event which seems to resist representation.
The length of Aegean arc in south-west Turkey has been deter mined
by the use of intermediate focal depth earthquakes which occurred
between 1900-1985 in the south-west of Turkey (34.00- 38.00 Nand
27.00-32.00 E). Intermediate focal depth earthqua kes in south-west
Turkey revealed the presence of a seismic Benioff zone caused by
underthrusting of the African litho spheric plate by the Aegean
arc. In order to determine the geometry of underthrustin%detailed
epicenter maps of the in termediate depth earthquakes in south-west
of Turkey were pre pared. It is known that these earthquakes
brought great harm in the past. Investigation of time distribution
of them will help to predict the occurrence of them in the future.
These intermediate focal depth earthquakes can be differenti ated
from deep ones by their micro- and macroseismic proper ties.
Papazachos (1969) and Comninakis (1970) found that the foci of
these earthquakes are in a zone underthrusting exten ding from the
East Mediterranean to the Aegean arc. Morgan (1968) and Le pichori
(1968) defined three plates which are important in East
Mediterranean tectonics. These are the Afri ca, Arabic and Eurasian
plates. They define wide earthquake belt on the boundaries between
the African and Eurasian plate."
The magnitude of refugees movements in the Third World, widely
perceived as an unprecedented crisis, has generated widespread
concern in the West. This concern reveals itself as an ambiguous
mixture of heartfelt compassion for the plight of the unfortunates
cast adrift and a diffuse fear that they will come "pouring in." In
this comprehensive study, the authors examine the refugee flows
originating in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and suggest how a
better understanding of this phenomenon can be used by the
international community to assist those in greatest need. Reviewing
the history of refugee movements in the West, they show how their
formation and the fate of endangered populations have also been
shaped by the partisan objectives of receiving countries. They
survey the kinds of social conflicts characteristic of different
regions of the Third World and the ways refugees and refugee policy
are made to serve broader political purposes.
South-west Donegal, Ireland, June 1856. From the time that the
blight first came on the potatoes in 1845, armed and masked men
dubbed Molly Maguires had been raiding the houses of people deemed
to be taking advantage of the rural poor. On some occasions, they
represented themselves as 'Molly's Sons', sent by their mother, to
carry out justice; on others, a man attired as a woman, introducing
'herself' as Molly Maguire, demanding redress for wrongs inflicted
on her children. The raiders might stipulate the maximum price at
which provisions were to be sold, warn against the eviction of
tenants, or demand that an evicted family be reinstated to their
holding. People who refused to meet their demands were often
viciously beaten and, in some instances, killed - offences that the
Constabulary classified as 'outrages'. Catholic clergymen regularly
denounced the Mollies and in 1853, the district was proclaimed
under the Crime and Outrage (Ireland) Act. Yet the 'outrages'
continued. Then, in 1856, Patrick McGlynn, a young schoolmaster,
suddenly turned informer on the Mollies, precipitating dozens of
arrests. Here, a history of McGlynn's informing, backlit by
episodes over the previous two decades, sheds light on that wave of
outrage, its origins and outcomes, the meaning and the memory of
it. More specifically, it illuminates the end of 'outrage' - the
shifting objectives of those who engaged in it, and also how, after
hunger faded and disease abated, tensions emerged in the Molly
Maguires, when one element sought to curtail such activity, while
another sought, unsuccessfully, to expand it. And in that
contention, when the opportunities of post-Famine society were
coming into view, one glimpses the end, or at least an ebbing, of
outrage - in the everyday sense of moral indignation - at the fate
of the rural poor. But, at heart, The End of Outrage is about
contention among neighbours - a family that rose from the ashes of
a mode of living, those consumed in the conflagration, and those
who lost much but not all. Ultimately, the concern is how the poor
themselves came to terms with their loss: how their own outrage at
what had been done unto them and their forbears lost malignancy,
and eventually ended. The author being a native of the small
community that is the focus of The End of Outrage makes it an
extraordinarily intimate and absorbing history.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita made landfall less than four weeks
apart in 2005. Months later, much of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast
remained in tatters. As the region faded from national headlines,
its residents faced a dire future. Emmanuel David chronicles how
one activist group confronted the crisis. Founded by a few elite
white women in New Orleans, Women of the Storm quickly formed a
broad coalition that sought to represent Louisiana's diverse
population. From its early lobbying of Congress through its
response to the 2010 BP oil spill, David shows how members' actions
were shaped by gender, race, class, and geography. Drawing on
in-depth interviews, ethnographic observation, and archival
research, David tells a compelling story of collective action and
personal transformation that expands our understanding of the
aftermath of an historic American catastrophe.
Storms, landslides, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami -- all New
Zealanders will encounter at least one of these hazards in their
lives. Informative, generously illustrated, and written by some of
New Zealand's leading scientists, this massively revised and
updated edition of Te Papa Press's bestselling title is now more
relevant than ever. With all-new information on climate change and
the social and emotional impact of disasters, this book is a
fascinating encounter and valuable resource on one of the most raw,
volatile landscapes in the world.
Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful
introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and
law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to
be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of
the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject
areas. With disasters increasing in both frequency and intensity,
this timely Advanced Introduction provides a fresh perspective on
how the concepts established in the Sendai Framework can be put
into practice to reduce disaster risk, improve preparedness in
cost-effective ways, and develop whole-of-society approaches to
increasing resilience. Key Features: Provides evidence-informed
coverage of the core areas of disaster risk reduction Identifies
the implementation issues and challenges to anticipation,
preparedness, evaluation and governance and the strategies that can
be used to facilitate it Discusses individual and collective ways
to manage recovery and to learn from disaster experiences and
programmes such as Build Back Better to prepare people to deal with
disasters more effectively in the future Incorporating research on
preparedness modelling, evaluation strategies, adaptive governance,
and transformative learning, this Advanced Introduction will be
invaluable to students and scholars of environmental management,
governance and regulation interested in disaster risk reduction. It
will also be a vital resource to policymakers looking to strengthen
their disaster preparedness and recovery measures.
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