Paper details
| Paper authors | Hyeonggeun Ji |
| In panel on | Reimagining Humanitarian Response in the Face of Compounding Global Risks |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
In Bangladesh, three salient challenges to anticipatory action have been identified by the national humanitarian community: funding shortfalls, technological inaccuracies, and institutional centralisation. While these issues are corroborated by affected communities and frontline local humanitarians, the structural exclusivity embedded in dominant models of anticipatory action remains largely unproblematised. Drawing on insights from fieldwork in the country, this presentation foregrounds a critical yet often unasked question: whose anticipation is excluded?
In disaster-prone areas of Bangladesh, communities are not merely victims but active agents in conducting situated assessments of disaster risk. They are often capable of anticipating the likely impacts of forthcoming monsoon and cyclone seasons with striking accuracy. Their lived experiences and local knowledge constitute a form of anticipation from below. However, when these anticipatory capacities are mobilised to seek public support or access risk-reduction resources, they are systematically disregarded. Instead, institutional mechanisms legitimise only the anticipatory judgements of technical experts, relegating local populations to the passive role of aid recipients.
In this context, anticipation functions as a technique of both subjectification and objectification, reinforcing entrenched binaries such as elite versus marginalised and provider versus recipient. Problematizing the exclusivity of anticipatory action is therefore not a peripheral critique, but a necessary starting point for advancing accountable and transformative early humanitarian interventions—ones that recognise and respect the anticipatory capacities of at-risk communities.
