Sensing Disaster: Local Knowledge and Vulnerability in Oceania

by Matthew Lauer

0 ratings • 0 reviews • 0 shelved
Book cover for Sensing Disaster

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

In 2007, a three-story-high tsunami slammed the small island of Simbo in the western Solomon Islands. Drawing on over ten years of research, Matthew Lauer provides a vivid and intimate account of this calamitous event and the tumultuous recovery process. His stimulating analysis surveys the unpredictable entanglements of the powerful waves with colonization, capitalism, human-animal communication, spirit beings, ancestral territory, and technoscientific expertise that shaped the disaster’s outcomes.

Although the Simbo people had never experienced another tsunami in their lifetimes, nearly everyone fled to safety before the destructive waves hit. To understand their astonishing response, Lauer argues that we need to rethink popular and scholarly portrayals of Indigenous knowledge to avert epistemic imperialism and improve disaster preparedness strategies. In an increasingly disaster-prone era of ecological crises, this provocative book brings new possibilities into view for understanding the causes and consequences of calamity, the unintended effects of humanitarian recovery and mitigation efforts, and the nature of local knowledge.
  • ISBN10 0520392078
  • ISBN13 9780520392076
  • Publish Date 7 March 2023
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint University of California Press
  • Format Paperback (US Trade)
  • Pages 292
  • Language English