Normalising community-led, empowered, disaster planning: Reshaping norms of power and knowledge
Keywords:
Disasters, Australia, normalisation, shared responsibility, desastres, normalización, responsabilidad compartidaAbstract
Disasters (and the dynamics that proceed and follow them) are inherently disruptive of customary routines and taken for granted ordinariness. Many fear that in the context of climate change disasters will become “the new norm”. How we prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters provide a rich terrain for exploring “normality” and interrogating normalising processes. In this article we draw on insights from empirical research on policy efforts in disaster preparedness in New South Wales, Australia. This research suggests that understandings of “the norm” is a site of contestation. This discursive debate is most evident in policy and practice prescriptions for “shared responsibility”. International and national policy is shifting responsibility for disaster preparedness away from institutions of the State to the individual within the local community. In practice, we see this shift simultaneously resisted and embraced with “norms” in disasters reshaped in multiple sites and in multiple directions. The paper concludes that engagement in complex debates offers the possibility to disrupt traditional pattens and normalise community-led, empowered, responses to disasters.
Los desastres (y las dinámicas que los siguen) son intrínsecamente disruptivos de las rutinas habituales y se da por hecho su carácter ordinario. Se teme que, en el contexto del cambio climático, los desastres se conviertan en “la nueva norma”. La forma en que nos preparamos, respondemos y nos recuperamos de los desastres proporciona un rico terreno para explorar la “normalidad” y preguntarnos por los procesos de normalización. En este artículo nos basamos en las ideas resultantes de una investigación empírica sobre los esfuerzos políticos para la preparación para desastres en Nueva Gales del Sur, Australia. Se sugiere que la comprensión de “la norma” es un lugar de contestación. Ese debate discursivo es evidente, sobre todo, en las prescripciones de políticas y prácticas para la “responsabilidad compartida”. La política internacional y nacional están transfiriendo la responsabilidad de la preparación para desastres de las instituciones del Estado al individuo de la sociedad local. En la práctica, vemos este cambio simultáneamente resistido y adoptado con “normas” en desastres remodelados en múltiples sitios y en múltiples direcciones. El artículo concluye que la participación en debates complejos ofrece la posibilidad de interrumpir los patrones tradicionales y normalizar las respuestas a los desastres, lideradas por una sociedad empoderada.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1258
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Copyright (c) 2022 Margot Rawsthorne, Amanda Howard, Pam Joseph
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