What Does Transformation Look Like? Post-Disaster Politics and the Case for Progressive Rehabilitation
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
2.1. The Case for Transformation
2.2. Transformation in Practice
2.3. Transformations of, by, and for Whom?
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Data Collection
3.2. Post-Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation: the Andaman Islands
4. Results: Pathways of Emergent Local Agency in Little Andaman
4.1. A ‘Language of Rights’ Feeding Directed Consciousness
The NGOs taught about the rights, to speak about the rights; NGOs taught a lot, the kind of education given by the NGOs were to make a person self-dependent, to know what their right is. Even what is child rights, what is women’s rights—all these… earlier no one knew what the right was.(Local journalist, Port Blair)
The moment you become aware of your rights, the whole demeanour starts to change, right? … Like a person who is not aware of their rights, they are under my control. Like ‘can you just get up Sophie’ and you get up and sit down. But the moment you have this kind of awareness you’ll be like ‘why should I do what you’re saying? I should do what I want to do’.(NGO manager, Port Blair)
4.2. Sense of Political Self
4.3. Self-Confidence and Self-Efficacy
Interpreter: So after the tsunami, how did you get this idea of a strike?... how did this idea come to you?R2: This idea [to join a strike] must have come from saying … see the politicians keep saying, ‘it’s good to do this, good to do that...’ they will keep talking to the public… […] The public is after all chootiya [idiotic/dumbfucks] they don’t know anything. Like after the tsunami they at least got some brains about what is good or not. It’s good now… After the tsunami… we learnt how to talk to an officer who’s come from outside, how to be respectful and all that.[…] R3: …Before the tsunami, we would not have known how to talk to you. Like how to interact with people.(Interview with local residents, Little Andaman)
They [the panchayat and administration] are scared of us because we have a uniform. We wear a green saree and put on a badge… [shows us the badge] When we wear this and go, they respect us a lot.(Community leader, Little Andaman)
4.4. Collective Consciousness
4.5. Institutional Support
5. Discussion
5.1. Lessons for Transformations in Practice
5.2. Pragmatic Challenges: Transformation Pathways Are Spontaneous, Fragile, Fragmented, and Political
5.3. Ethical Challenges: Deliberate Transformation as a Normative Agenda
5.4. The Case for Progressive Rehabilitation
6. Conclusions: What Does Transformation Look Like, and What Next?
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Approaches to Transformation | Object of Change; Key Goals | Example References |
---|---|---|
Transformational adaptation | Going beyond incremental adaptations to climate change; managing pathways of change. | [14,15] |
Transformations to sustainability | Deep changes to the structure, function, and governance of energy, transport, agriculture and other systems; focus on social–ecological systems analysis. | [16,17,18] |
Transforming behaviours | Concerned with psychological and cognitive barriers; also the role of held values, self-efficacy and individual capacity to become an agent of change. | [19,20] |
Social transformations | “Transforming the political, economic, and social structures that maintain the systems associated with increasing risk and vulnerability intact” [12] (p. 4); political economy grounding. | [12,21,22,23] |
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Blackburn, S. What Does Transformation Look Like? Post-Disaster Politics and the Case for Progressive Rehabilitation. Sustainability 2018, 10, 2317. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072317
Blackburn S. What Does Transformation Look Like? Post-Disaster Politics and the Case for Progressive Rehabilitation. Sustainability. 2018; 10(7):2317. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072317
Chicago/Turabian StyleBlackburn, Sophie. 2018. "What Does Transformation Look Like? Post-Disaster Politics and the Case for Progressive Rehabilitation" Sustainability 10, no. 7: 2317. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072317