A Decade of Disaster Experiences in Ōtautahi Christchurch: Critical Disaster Studies Perspectives

This book critically surveys a decade of disasters in Ōtautahi Christchurch. It brings together a diverse range of authors, disciplinary approaches and topics, to reckon with the events that commenced with the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence. Each contribution tackles its subject matter through the frame of Critical Disaster Studies (CDS). The events and the subsequent recovery provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from a series of concatenating urban disasters in order to prepare us for our future on an urban planet facing unprecedented environmental pressures. The book focuses on the production of vulnerability, the human dimensions of disaster, the Indigenous response to disasters and the practical lessons that can be drawn from them.


Author: Shinya Uekusa
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 02/16/2023
Pages: 405
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.13lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.83w x 0.88d
ISBN13: 9789811668654
ISBN10: 9811668655
BISAC Categories:
- Political Science | Public Policy | General
- Social Science | Human Geography
- Law | Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice

About the Author

Shinya Uekusa is a disaster sociologist and most recently works as an Assistant Professor in the School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University in Denmark. He has returned to Aotearoa and joined Massey University's Health and Ageing Research Team (HART) to work on the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) funded research project on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on older people in Aotearoa. His main research interests are in (im)migration, the sociology of language, and disaster sociology, particularly focusing on how the socially disadvantaged groups such as (im)migrants, refugees and linguistic minorities experience and cope with cultural, economic, environmental, political and social challenges.

Steve Matthewman is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Auckland. His last book on disasters was Disasters, Risks and Revelation: Making Sense of Our Times (2015). He also co-edited Exploring Society: Sociology for New Zealand Students (Auckland University Press, 2019) with Ruth McManus, and the third edition of Being Sociological (Red Globe Press) with Bruce Curtis and David Mayeda. His current research project is a three-year Royal Society of New Zealand-funded work "Power Politics: Electricity and Sustainability in Post-Disaster Ōtautahi (Christchurch)". The broad focus of this research is on how we build sustainability into the city. The narrow focus is on the place of renewable energy in this process.

Bruce C. Glavovic is a Professor at Massey University. For much of the last decade his research has focused on the role of governance and natural hazards planning in addressing vulnerability and risk in a changing climate. He is Senior Editor for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science and co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ocean & Coastal Management. He was a Coordinating Lead Author for the chapter on sea level rise in a 2019 IPCC Special Report and is a Lead Author and Cross Chapter Paper co-lead in the IPCC's forthcoming Working Group II Sixth Assessment Report.