Contenu du sommaire : Catastrophes

Acts of God or natural catastrophes? Earth quakes in France in the modern period Historians of natural catastrophes have not escaped the success of the idea of social risk in spite of their research in France being more focused on the secularization of the concept of nature and the growth of the modern state. The paper reexamines the use made by historians of the terms “catastrophe” and “risk” as it relates to earthquakes. In the 18 th century we find, on the one hand, on the part of local populations, routine local strategies to cope with catastrophes and, on the other hand, a theoretical discussion of the problem without reference to particular places. From 1740 on these two practices connect as a result of better communication networks and because local communities make themselves heard as they call for tax reductions and scientific research by scholars that would explain the high frequency of quakes occurring in the kingdom. This coming together, hastened by the Lisbon earthquake, brings about a new concept which is called here “risk”.

A sanitary look out post on the frontier of life Bird flu experts in Hong Kong The paper concerns a group of experts who sent out a warning of a flu pandemic based on their observation of birds and humans in Hong Kong. It shows why this place has served as a look out post for a new pandemic caused by a catastrophic mutation of the flu virus in an avian population. It traces the different crises which alerted the local population and which led to global mobilisation involving ever higher levels of medical authorities. The conclusion deals with the issue of the frontiers of biosecurity, a frontier that is at once biological, social, natural and political which reveals the appearance of catastrophes and where a temporal dynamic leads to collective action.

The sense of disaster The multiple interpretations of a “natural” catastrophe in Venezuela In 1999 mud slides devastated the Venezuelan coast line. Subsequently many operations attempt to explain the event and to give it meaning. This collective enterprise of signification enabled not only the victims but the whole country to define what could be done in order that such a tragedy should not reoccur. These tools produced to deal with the catastrophe involve different frameworks of thought and action. The paper reveals how religious symbolism, naturalist reason and risk discourses coexist and are each in turn appealed to by different involved actors such as state institutions, the church, locals, journalists and politicians.

Photograph the catastrophe This essay considers some of the problems posed by the photographic representation of catastrophe. These are to a considerable extent based on the limitations of the medium itself, which can only register a discrete moment in time. Other problems are raised by the “spectacle” of others' suffering for the viewer, who is safely detached in time and space. Finally, there are ethical questions raised by the “simulation” of catastrophe, a recent phenomenon in art practices using photography.

The Nargis election The 2008 cyclone in Burma On the second of May 2008, the Nargis cyclone devastates the Burmese delta. In a tense political context the natural catastrophe takes on a highly political turn as different actors – ngos, the regime and public opinion – situate themselves in relation to the question of the place of humanitarian aid. In particular the Rangoon middle classes, much involved in aiding the victims, use the opportunity to voice their condemnation of the military men in power and of government action in dealing with the crisis. Popular opinion interprets Nargis as nature denouncing an unacceptable political system.

Disaster as pretext for action Diet reform following Katrina The paper is based on an ethnographic study carried out in New Orleans. It concerns a grouping of actors and institutions dedicated to the common cause of improving the access to fresh products by poor people. This campaign was supported by the local authorities. It shows how reformers used the Katrina disaster to further their aims. The rebuilding of the city was used by these people as an opportunity to change eating habits and transform bodies. By contrasting the story of this reform of the diet with the experience of locals having to face subsistence problems we aim to reveal the contemporary transformations of public action. This reform thus expresses dietary problems in medical and spatial language thus operating a double denegation of the social.

An invisible catastrophe Shoah of the Gypsies Surveying the catalogue of 20 th century mass crimes, from the Turkish killings of the Armenians in 1915, through the massacres in Bali in 1965, the thirty six year long campaign against the Mayans in Guatemala, to the horrors of Darfur today, we can discern a clear enough pattern: every genocide at the moment it takes place appears to outsiders to be ambiguous and inherently implausible. This article examines the disctinctively “disorderly” and “uncoordinated” persecution and genocide of the Romany peoples and links the ad hoc, locally driven nature of their persecution to the post-war failure to acknowledge this catastrophe.

Is cognition a problem solving mechanism? The way we understand how animals understand the world, which is called here animal cognition, is largely determined by the way we look at them and also by the physical and biological environment in which they live. Thus if we consider the environment, which is by definition external, as a fore ordained given, it follows that each organism is faced by a context with which it must cope. Viewed in this way its survival appears to depend on the ability of the organism to “solve the problems” that the environment presents. However, seen in the light of the different point of view proposed here by two researchers in cognitive ethology, the environment is not conceptualised as existing independently of the organism; then the so-called problems as such disappear and are understood as mere practical approximations created a posteriori by the observer. Furthermore, it follows that, in terms of its own characteristics, each species is able, not only to interact with the milieu, but also to give it a particular meaning, in other words, to specify it.

Rumour in Guadeloupe Of certain suppose practices of the Haitians There is a rumour in Guadeloupe that Haitians sprinkle the vegetable products they sell with urine. As a result many Guadeloupian buyers avoid their stalls. This rumour increases confusion about which vegetables can be eaten at a time when the country is suffering from a health crisis caused by chlordecone contamination. Anti-Haitian feeling is strong and widespread. However, Haitians familiarity with Woodou means that they are feared as it is believed this makes them experts in sorcery and, as a result, conflict with them is avoided. The author bases herself on linguistic anthropology and the sociology of rumour and she shows how speech is the most economic act that can be used to stigmatise a feared group.

Listening, looking and staying quiet: dialogue in an enclosed community This is an analysis of the reality of enclosed life on the basis of an ethnographic study in two French Carmelite nunneries. The paper examines an extreme case of language use: the language of silence and the construction of familiarity which it creates. We propose a phenomenological reading of enclosed silence as it relates to actions, hearing and speaking. The ultimate aim is to reduce everything to the essential by eliminating the superfluous whether it be material, emotional orlinguistic.