1,721,052 research outputs found
Why Vulnerability Still Matters
Full text linkWe think vulnerability still matters when considering how people are put at risk from hazards and this book shows why in a series of thematic chapters and case studies written by eminent disaster studies scholars that deal with the politics of disaster risk creation: precarity, conflict, and climate change.
The chapters highlight different aspects of vulnerability and disaster risk creation, placing the stress rightly on what causes disasters and explaining the politics of how they are created through a combination of human interference with natural processes, the social production of vulnerability, and the neglect of response capacities. Importantly, too, the book provides a platform for many of those most prominently involved in launching disaster studies as a social discipline to reflect on developments over the past 50 years and to comment on current trends.
The interdisciplinary and historical perspective that this book provides will appeal to scholars and practitioners at both the national and international level seeking to study, develop, and support effective social protection strategies to prevent or mitigate the effects of hazards on vulnerable populations. It will also prove an invaluable reference work for students and all those interested in the future safety of the world we live in.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) 4.0 International license
Demographic Growth, Agricultural Expansion, and Livestock in the Lower Chindwin in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
No full textIn one way or another, an ecological approach to premodern Burmese history is not new. Indeed, the two main American historians of premodern Burma, Victor B. Lieberman and Michael A. Aung-Thwin, have made ecology central to their arguments of dynastic rise and collapse. Aung-Thwin, for example, has argued that the fall of the Kingdom of Pagan (ca. 1300) was due to imbalances between royal and monastic reserves of human and agricultural resources in a society that had reached the limits of possible agricultural expansion. Lieberman likewise demonstrated that the fall of the First Taung-ngu Dynasty (sixteenth century) and the subsequent political hegemony of Ava were due to the agricultural and demographic superiority of Upper Burma over its more ecologically challenged neighbor. Numerous other scholars working on premodern Burma have found ecological change impossible to ignore as a major factor in Burma’s political fate. Riggs, for example, has identified the loss of agricultural resources as a key factor in the slow death of Burma’s last dynasty.2 Certainly, there can be no suggestion that ecological factors have been ignored in assessing causality for premodern historical change in Burma
Southeast Asia and Southern Africa in the maritime horse trade of the Indian Ocean, c. 1800-1914
No full text
Solidarity and crisis-derived identities in Samar and Leyte, Philippines, 1565 to present
Full text linkThe study sheds light on local responses to 2013’s Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, then the strongest storm to make landfall, by examining the local history and culture of the people of Samar and Leyte, Philippines, the area worst affected by the storm’s strong winds and storm surges. It linked contemporary responses to the typhoon with the ways people in the region had historically coped with frequent adversity in one of the most environmentally-hazardous countries in the world and one that had also experienced centuries of foreign occupations and internal social conflict.Through a historical and cultural analysis of various written and oral sources, the study identifies local concepts and practices that helped to generate what has been called “community resilience” against various forms of crises across several generations. Previous studies in Philippine history have mainly focused on the emergence of Filipino nationalism from centuries of colonial rule while ethnographic studies on the Philippines have mainly concentrated on local practices and beliefs without establishing their historicity. As a result, little headway has been gained in understanding the cultural tenacity of various Philippine ethnolinguistic groups in the face of frequent crises. This study sought to bridge this gap by linking the two fields to explore people’s responses to social and environmental adversity.The study argues that people in Samar and Leyte coped with frequent hardship in part by appropriating the colonial (Bisaya-Christiano ), national (Filipino ) and migrant (Waray ) identities imposed on them by outsiders. These labels evoked local solidarities that, although transformed by factors such as colonialism and outmigration, gave them several rallying points for collective action. The study ultimately suggests that understanding resilience cannot be achieved through quantitative methods alone but should be complemented with qualitative approaches that take into account the local history, culture, and environment of the study area/s under consideration
Part-time defenders of the Realm : is the history of the Territorial Army a likely indicator of Future Reserves 2020 success?
Full text linkThis research investigates whether the Army Reserve (AR), the new name for the Territorial Army, can become a more integrated, more efficient, better trained, and more deployable force, as intimated by the government, than their previous incarnations. The hoped-for better-trained AR is expected to take a far greater role, taking over some Regular Army roles, providing better trained part-time soldiers for overseas operations and filling capability gaps left by the retrenchment of 20,000 Regular soldiers by !he year 2020. To investigate whether these aspirations are achievable, and whether it is possible to train volunteer soldiers better than they have been in the past, this research completes an historical analysis of the history of the AR's antecedents, the Territorial Force and the Territorial Army, their training, kit and equipment, and overseas deployment record. The thesis also explores historical social. economic and cultured issues ·which have had an impact upon Territorials, such as civilian employers' attitudes towards the volunteers and their organisation (and a sense of what wider society thought about the Territorials). Furthermore. research into the Territorial's family issues, support or otherwise also sheds light upon the influence the family unit has upon the volunteer's decision to join and how long he/she stays in service. Coupled with family support is research into the support the family received from the government when their Territorial was deployed and what happens when the part-timer returns from war, from 1908 to 2012. This historical comparison ·will help highlight past struggles and.failures inherent in the framework for training and making ready the volunteers of the past with today's AR, which uses the same structure for training, filling in civilian commitments and family life
Part-time defenders of the Realm : is the history of the Territorial Army a likely indicator of Future Reserves 2020 success?
Full text linkThis research investigates whether the Army Reserve (AR), the new name for the Territorial Army, can become a more integrated, more efficient, better trained, and more deployable force, as intimated by the government, than their previous incarnations. The hoped-for better-trained AR is expected to take a far greater role, taking over some Regular Army roles, providing better trained part-time soldiers for overseas operations and filling capability gaps left by the retrenchment of 20,000 Regular soldiers by !he year 2020. To investigate whether these aspirations are achievable, and whether it is possible to train volunteer soldiers better than they have been in the past, this research completes an historical analysis of the history of the AR's antecedents, the Territorial Force and the Territorial Army, their training, kit and equipment, and overseas deployment record. The thesis also explores historical social. economic and cultured issues ·which have had an impact upon Territorials, such as civilian employers' attitudes towards the volunteers and their organisation (and a sense of what wider society thought about the Territorials). Furthermore. research into the Territorial's family issues, support or otherwise also sheds light upon the influence the family unit has upon the volunteer's decision to join and how long he/she stays in service. Coupled with family support is research into the support the family received from the government when their Territorial was deployed and what happens when the part-timer returns from war, from 1908 to 2012. This historical comparison ·will help highlight past struggles and.failures inherent in the framework for training and making ready the volunteers of the past with today's AR, which uses the same structure for training, filling in civilian commitments and family life
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