Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast

About Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast

Reflecting on human society from diverse disciplinary and ideological perspectives to understand the root causes of disasters.

Publisher

DisastersDecon

Category

government · science · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

3 Feb 2020

Latest episode

15 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

113 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Aug 2026

   S10E11 - Interdisciplinary Approaches and Hope for Disaster Studies

   Episode overview The Season 10 finale welcomes disaster anthropologist Susanna Hoffman, who wrote the preface to the hosts' forthcoming edited volume, Contemplating Catastrophe. Drawing on a career spanning cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and literature, the episode reflects on the depth of culture in disaster studies, the limits of narrow disciplinary silos, and what the field needs to move from fragmented case studies toward broader theoretical and policy impact. Hosts Jason von Meding Ksenia Chmutina Guest Susanna Hoffman — disaster anthropologist; author, co-author, and editor of 13 books and over 40 articles and chapters; founder of the Risk and Disaster Thematic Interest Group, Society for Applied Anthropology; chair, Commission on Risk and Disasters, International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences Key themes Cultural anthropology as a broad, integrative discipline The depth of culture: perception, place attachment, and "topoculture" Isolation, displacement, and the study of disrupted communities The limits of induction without deduction in disaster scholarship Interdisciplinarity versus disciplinary silos Getting disaster scholarship into policy Storytelling and teaching beyond the academy Hope through broader teaching and generational change Core discussion highlights Susanna Hoffman traces her intellectual formation across cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology and archaeology, arguing that understanding disaster requires the full depth of a culture's history, perception, and meaning-making — not just its visible customs. Hoffman discusses her forthcoming books, including In Placement (on cultural isolation during COVID-19) and Nostalgia, Ecologia, Topoculture (on the deep, sensory, and emotional dimensions of place attachment that make resettlement after displacement so difficult). Reflecting on decades of writing across cookbooks, relationship guides, and academic ethnography, Hoffman argues that storytelling is essential to reaching audiences outside the academy, and that community knowledge — especially from "local voices" like grandmothers and farmers — matters as much as expert authority. Hoffman critiques the field's overreliance on induction and case-specific studies, calling for a return to overarching, generalizable concepts (citing Kenneth Hewitt's concept of vulnerability) that can connect individual disasters into a shared theoretical and political framework. The conversation names the "reinvention of the wheel" as a recurring failure in disaster and climate scholarship, where fields ignore decades of existing literature by refusing to read across disciplines. Hoffman argues that disaster scholarship must move further into policy — engaging figures in government and international institutions — while retaining the interdisciplinary, culturally grounded depth that anthropology provides. The episode closes the season on a note of hope grounded in broader teaching across disciplines and generations, with Hoffman pointing to younger audiences as a key lever for cultural and political change.

2. 

   15 Aug 2026

   S10E10 - India, Climate Fiction & Disasters

   Episode overview Episode 10 continues the season's regional focus with a conversation grounded in India and the wider Global South, bringing together a scholar of gender, trauma, and displacement and a development researcher working across climate change, migration, and disasters. The episode explores how literature, capability theory, and self-reflective practice reshape how disaster scholars understand resistance, complicity, and care. Hosts Jason von Meding Ksenia Chmutina Guests Sneha Krishnan — Professor, O.P. Jindal Global University; interdisciplinary scholar of environment, humanitarian response, and public health, with a focus on gender-sensitive, trauma-informed approaches to displacement Claudia Santos — researcher and practitioner working across climate change, migration, development, and disasters; co-founder of The Upstand, a social impact agency built on relational, community-centered methods Key themes Fiction, dissent, and the politics of storytelling Capabilities, freedom, and the construction of vulnerability Resistance as a condition for justice Complicity, power, and the "double agent" researcher Care, sensitivity, and knowing when (not) to act Institutional incentives versus community needs Creative and participatory research methods Hope, courage, and collective responsibility Core discussion highlights Sneha Krishnan discusses Arundhati Roy and Amitav Ghosh, arguing that fiction and dissent are central to disaster scholarship — Roy's prosecution for her activism and Ghosh's framing of the climate crisis as a "crisis of imagination" both push the field to reckon with who gets to tell stories about disaster and its long aftermath. Krishnan reflects on reading and creative expression — including poetry and counter-mapping — as forms of solidarity and self-care that resist the narrow evidentiary standards imposed on disaster research. Claudia Santos discusses Amartya Sen's capability approach, drawing on her PhD research in Guinea-Bissau to argue that deprivation of basic freedoms, not climate hazards alone, shapes who is able to move, stay, or survive a disaster. Santos argues that justice in disaster scholarship depends on resistance, describing researcher self-reflection, "double agent" institutional work, and small acts like reframing language in official reports as legitimate forms of activism. The conversation surfaces a recurring tension: institutional funding structures reward quantifiable, depoliticized research, while researchers themselves remain complicit in extractive practices that produce little benefit for the communities they study. Both guests close by expressing hope grounded in creative and participatory methods, courage in the face of institutional pressure, and collective — rather than individual — responsibility for structural change.

3. 

   15 Aug 2026

   S10E9 - Discourse and Domination: Examining Gender and Vulnerability

   Episode overview Episode 9 turns to South and Southeast Asia, bringing together an early-career gender and disaster risk scholar and a senior interdisciplinary disaster governance scientist. Drawing on postcolonial theory, hybridity, and the politics of knowledge production, the episode examines how colonial legacies continue to structure vulnerability, gender exclusion, and state power in the region — and how discourse itself becomes a tool of both domination and resistance. Hosts Jason von Meding Ksenia Chmutina Guests Aditya Sharan — Lecturer in Risk Management and Development, Auckland University of Technology; scholar of disaster risk reduction, gender, social exclusion, and participatory governance Jonatan Lassa — Senior Disaster Risk Scientist, Earth Sciences New Zealand; Senior Fellow, Charles Darwin University; interdisciplinary scholar of disaster governance, political will, and postcolonial critique Key themes Postcolonial theory and hybridity in disaster studies Gender beyond the binary in disaster risk reduction Colonial legacies in state and institutional discourse Political will, authoritarianism, and the "business" of disaster Collaborative governance as a tool of democratic decline Resistance, agency, and small acts of negotiation Hope amid backlash and institutional inertia Core discussion highlights Aditya Sharan discusses Homi Bhabha's concepts of hybridity and mimicry, applying them to her research with India's Hijra community to show how marginalized groups negotiate power and access resources under conditions shaped by colonial-era criminalization. Sharan argues that Bhabha's framework helps move disaster studies beyond binary understandings of gender and vulnerability, situating it alongside contemporaries like Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, and Chandra Mohanty. Jonatan Lassa discusses Edward Said, connecting Said's work on discourse and imperialism to his own research on the "path dependency" of disaster policy in Indonesia and Myanmar, and to his activism during the anti-authoritarian movements in West Timor. Lassa argues that Western paternalism continues to dominate disaster and humanitarian research, and that framing disaster as "everybody's business" can quietly normalize it as a market opportunity for the resilience and climate finance industries. The conversation critiques "collaborative governance" as a hegemonic discourse used by donors and multilateral institutions to sideline critical civil society actors, linking this shift to democratic decline in Indonesia and elsewhere. Both guests reflect on resistance as something that can appear as mimicry or small, unnoticed acts rather than only large-scale activism. The episode closes with a discussion of hope: both guests point to the persistence of critical dialogue and scholarship — despite repeated setbacks — as itself a source of hope for the field.

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Apple Podcasts (US)

4.8 / 5

18 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

10 ratings

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Guest appearances

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