The Ohio State University Department of Anthropology hosts Raja Swamy, an Associate Professor at the University of Knoxville, for his lecture: "Building back better, for whom? NGOs and artisanal fishers after the 2004 tsunami"
Building Back Better urges a critical approach to the study of disasters that goes beyond identifying the ways in which long-term social inequalities shape impacts and outcomes. If, as scholars insist, disasters reveal society’s disparate and maladaptive arrangements, this work explores the complexities, constraints and possibilities at play in the process of reconstruction, which in its incompleteness, reveals ongoing struggles over land and conditions for material well-being. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam District, I show how and why the state-led, multilaterally financed, and NGO-mediated reconstruction process following the devastating tsunami of December 2004 prioritized the displacement of coastal fisher populations. Exploring the substantive differences shaping NGO action, specifically in response to core political questions affecting the well-being of their ostensible beneficiaries, Building Back Better also centers the political agency of disaster survivors and their allies among NGOs in contesting the meanings of recovery while navigating the process of reconstruction.
If you require an accommodation such as live captioning to participate in this event, contact Wayne Miller at miller.1044@osu.edu. Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access but the University will make every effort to meet requests after this date.
