Paper details

Paper authors	Cordula Dittmer
In panel on	Disaster Diplomacy for Humanitarianism
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Recent studies (e.g., Kellet/Sparks 2012) showed that nearly 50% of countries receiving financial assistance for disaster risk reduction and/or recovery are situated in conflict affected areas. These relatively obvious linkages between disaster and conflict in international humanitarian and development aid, lead to the need to bring together the different research approaches of disaster research and peace and conflict studies. In the aftermath, a growing number of research and policy studies discussed the relationship between disaster and conflict (Harris/Keen/Mitchell 2013).
Relating to this debate we propose a social-constructivist approach based on Bourdieu’s theory of practice that conceptualizes disaster and social conflict in a common framework, which is called the Disaster-and-Conflict-Nexus-Approach (DCNA). This framework rejects both simplistic conceptualizations of disasters being natural events and the assumption that disaster and conflict are two independent phenomena supporting and reinforcing each other in various instances. Hence, the paper questions the binary opposition between disaster and conflict and rather shows the social production of disasters and their embeddedness in conflicting social relations. The paper’s arguments and the DCNA-Approach we will be exemplifies by using the case study of flash floods in Uttarakhand, India.

This is a joint paper by Daniel F. Lorenz and Cordula Dittmer

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