Disaster Making in the Capitalocene

O’Lear, Shannon; Masse, Francis; Dickinson, Hannah; Duffy, Rosaleen

Abstract

We live in a new normal of increasing, crosscutting, and shifting patterns of disasters fueled by large-scale environmental change, from floods to wildfires to pandemics. Our intervention in this forum piece makes the case that disasters, and responses to disasters, must be understood within the context of the global political-economic system of capitalism. We situate disasters, their making, and their politics within the Capitalocene and argue that disasters and the physical processes that underpin them are not natural: they are unevenly produced through, and exacerbated by, processes inherent in the capitalist system, with uneven consequences. We suggest that the predominantly technomanagerial approaches to disasters pursued within the neoliberal state and multilateral governance institution system reveal the tensions in addressing the causes of environmental change and the new normal of disasters under capitalism. We argue that through an engagement with the Capitalocene, environmental politics could further contribute to nuanced, critical understandings of disasters and their making in ways that foreground their in/justice implications.

Citation

O’Lear, S., Masse, F., Dickinson, H., & Duffy, R. (2022). Disaster Making in the Capitalocene. Global Environmental Politics, 22(3), 2-11. https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00655

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Aug 1, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-08
• Deposit Date: Sep 8, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 1, 2023
• Journal: Global Environmental Politics
• Print ISSN: 1526-3800
• Electronic ISSN: 1536-0091
• Publisher: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 2-11
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00655
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1192388