Paper details

Paper authors	Nat O'Grady
In panel on	Rethinking Violence in Humanitarian Research
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

The paper develops critical conceptualisations of the governmental techniques used to recover places disrupted by emergencies. In turn, it elaborates on how recovery might be remade in the future. It does so through a review of existing geographical literature concerning recovery before turning to reflect on interviews undertaken with authorities across the world responsible for recovery from Covid-19. Read through its consolidation within the ubiquitous policy mantra of ‘build back better’, we first demonstrate recovery’s entrenchment within a broader resilience logic that emphasises adaptation as a means to attend to the effects of emergencies. Influenced by adaptation, recovery aims to combine sustaining in the long term adjustments made to cope with an event with engendering the restabilisation of a wider normal that has been disrupted by the emergency. But adaptation also sets parameters around the ontology that underpins recovery, shaping how those responsible for recovery understand the emergencies to which they attend. We turn to show that, owing to the ontological parameters it operates through, recovery fails to acknowledge and mitigate ‘conditional violence’. Conditional violence refers to obfuscated everyday processes that play a part in engendering emergencies and exacerbating their effects. Rather than stopping at critique, however, the paper then turns towards affirmation by engaging with literature on reparations to show how conditional violence might be accounted for and rendered actionable in reshaping recovery in the future. We then expand upon and evaluate how such reparative practices are emerging as recovery is being actively rethought by authorities amidst Covid-19.

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