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The Cultural Production of Flood Injustice: Learnings from Hull, UK and Calgary, Canada
No full textGlobal flood risk is intensifying due to climate change, rapid urbanisation, and population growth. Hull (UK) and Calgary (Canada) are flood-prone cities where these risks intersect with deep-rooted social inequalities. This comparative study examines how flood injustices are culturally produced by analysing the interplay between local authority policies and practices and the lived experiences of minoritised ethnic communities (MECs). This is because MECs are often disproportionately exposed to flood risks yet systematically excluded from decision-making processes that shape flood resilience. The study also advances serious games (games with an objective more than just enjoyment) as an inclusive, participatory method for engaging both institutional actors and MECs in flood resilience.The thesis argues that flood injustice is shaped by cultural assumptions, governance logics, and power relations embedded in flood resilience strategies. It employed a participatory methodology to link MECs’ lived experiences and everyday practices to local authority approaches to flood resilience. Data collection in Hull and Calgary (August 2022–August 2023) included twelve walking interviews, twelve key informant interviews, and a novel serious game—the ‘Just’ Flood Resilience Co-op (JFRC)—co-developed specifically for this study. Using a mixed-methods approach, the JFRC game generated qualitative and quantitative data from seven pilot sessions; 19 in-game discussions, logs, and debrief interviews; 73 post-game and 13 follow-up surveys. Participants included 25 MEC residents, 72 practitioners, academics, and policymakers, and 32 community group representatives across the two cities.Findings reveal that urban flood resilience for MECs is culturally produced through spatial, social, and political dynamics shaped by governance and cultural meaning-making. Both Hull and Calgary are exposed to recurrent, multi-source flooding; Hull primarily from tidal and surface water flooding driven by factors such as its low-lying topography and impermeable urban surfaces, while Calgary faces riverine flooding driven by factors such as snowmelt and extreme rainfall in the Bow and Elbow River basins. Despite these differing hydrological risks, both local authorities reproduce exclusion through dominant, universalising framings, market-oriented constraints, and siloed decision-making. While Hull’s approach to flood resilience is largely constrained by austerity and fragmented institutional responsibilities, Calgary adopts a more integrated yet technocratic approach. The JFRC game proved valuable for surfacing justice issues, though its transformative impact depended on how justice was embedded in practice.In developing and testing the game, this thesis contributes a novel framework for analysing the cultural production of justice in urban flood resilience, offers comparative insights from Hull and Calgary, and identifies key barriers to just resilience. It concludes that addressing the cultural production of flood injustices requires policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to rethink how resilience is conceptualised, operationalised, and governed. This reframing must move beyond technical and individualised framings to recognise resilience as a socially and culturally embedded process shaped by power and justice in place
The Cultural Production of Flood Injustice: Learnings from Hull, UK and Calgary, Canada
Get PDFGlobal flood risk is intensifying due to climate change, rapid urbanisation, and population growth. Hull (UK) and Calgary (Canada) are flood-prone cities where these risks intersect with deep-rooted social inequalities. This comparative study examines how flood injustices are culturally produced by analysing the interplay between local authority policies and practices and the lived experiences of minoritised ethnic communities (MECs). This is because MECs are often disproportionately exposed to flood risks yet systematically excluded from decision-making processes that shape flood resilience. The study also advances serious games (games with an objective more than just enjoyment) as an inclusive, participatory method for engaging both institutional actors and MECs in flood resilience.The thesis argues that flood injustice is shaped by cultural assumptions, governance logics, and power relations embedded in flood resilience strategies. It employed a participatory methodology to link MECs’ lived experiences and everyday practices to local authority approaches to flood resilience. Data collection in Hull and Calgary (August 2022–August 2023) included twelve walking interviews, twelve key informant interviews, and a novel serious game—the ‘Just’ Flood Resilience Co-op (JFRC)—co-developed specifically for this study. Using a mixed-methods approach, the JFRC game generated qualitative and quantitative data from seven pilot sessions; 19 in-game discussions, logs, and debrief interviews; 73 post-game and 13 follow-up surveys. Participants included 25 MEC residents, 72 practitioners, academics, and policymakers, and 32 community group representatives across the two cities.Findings reveal that urban flood resilience for MECs is culturally produced through spatial, social, and political dynamics shaped by governance and cultural meaning-making. Both Hull and Calgary are exposed to recurrent, multi-source flooding; Hull primarily from tidal and surface water flooding driven by factors such as its low-lying topography and impermeable urban surfaces, while Calgary faces riverine flooding driven by factors such as snowmelt and extreme rainfall in the Bow and Elbow River basins. Despite these differing hydrological risks, both local authorities reproduce exclusion through dominant, universalising framings, market-oriented constraints, and siloed decision-making. While Hull’s approach to flood resilience is largely constrained by austerity and fragmented institutional responsibilities, Calgary adopts a more integrated yet technocratic approach. The JFRC game proved valuable for surfacing justice issues, though its transformative impact depended on how justice was embedded in practice.In developing and testing the game, this thesis contributes a novel framework for analysing the cultural production of justice in urban flood resilience, offers comparative insights from Hull and Calgary, and identifies key barriers to just resilience. It concludes that addressing the cultural production of flood injustices requires policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to rethink how resilience is conceptualised, operationalised, and governed. This reframing must move beyond technical and individualised framings to recognise resilience as a socially and culturally embedded process shaped by power and justice in place
Forced displacement: critical lessons in the protracted aftermath of a flood disaster
Get PDFForced displacement and resettlement is a pervasive challenge being contemplated across the social sciences. Scholarly literature, however, often fails to engage complexities of power in understanding socio-environmental interactions in resettlement processes. Addressing Zimbabwe’s Tokwe-Mukosi flood disaster resettlement, we explore hegemonic uses of state power during the pre- and post-flood induced resettlement processes. We examine how state power exercised through local government, financial, and security institutions impacts community vulnerabilities during forced resettlement processes, while furthering capitalist agendas, drawing insights from analysing narratives between 2010 and 2021. Concerns abound that multiple ministries, the police, and the army undermined displaced people’s resilience, including through inadequate compensation, with state institutions neglecting displaced communities during encampment by inadequately meeting physical security, health, educational, and livestock production needs. We explore how forcibly resettling encamped households to a disputed location is not only an ongoing perceived injustice regionally but also a continuing reference point in resettlement discussions countrywide, reflecting concerns that land use and economic reconfigurations in resettlement can undermine subsistence livelihoods while privileging certain values and interests over others. Policy lessons highlight the need for reviewing disaster management legislation, developing compensation guidelines and reviewing encampment practices. Analytically, lessons point to how state power may be studied in relation to perspectives on the destruction of flood survivors’ connections to place, people and livelihoods, underscoring the critical need for theorising the relationships between power dynamics and diverse experiences around displacement
Flood survivors’ perspectives on vulnerability reduction to floods in Mbire district, Zimbabwe
Get PDFDisasters result from the interactions of hazards and vulnerability conditions. Considering the perspectives of survivors of a disaster event is critical for reducing the progression of vulnerability conditions. The Mbire community in Zimbabwe is facing increasing threats from recurring high- and low-magnitude floods that manifest themselves in the disruption of livelihoods and destruction of crops and infrastructure. This study, therefore, explored the perspectives of flood survivors on vulnerability to floods and examined their
vulnerability-reduction measures. Using an interpretivist approach to knowledge generation, a sample of 51 research participants provided data through interviews, a focus group discussion and field observations. Results showed that shortage of land, flood-based farming practices, poverty and climate change, amongst others, are the key drivers of the smallholder farmers’ vulnerability to floods. The most affected groups of people include women, children and the elderly. To reduce their vulnerability, the smallholder farmers mainly rely on traditional flood-proofed structures built on stilts, dual home system and indigenous flood
forecasting. The study proposes six policy implications to reduce vulnerability to floods. These include diversifying rural livelihoods beyond the farming sector, investment in irrigation infrastructure, increasing access to financial resources, constructing human settlements away from floodplains, enforcing environmental laws regarding flood-based farming and community education on the long-term negative impacts of recession farming. The implementation of these policy recommendations can contribute to community resilience to flood disasters
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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