The Cultural Meaning of Disaster: Remarks on Gregory Button's Work

After the two major nuclear disasters I have witnessed in my life, Chernobyl and Fukushima, I experienced uncertainty that seemed stronger than fear, anger or panic. In George Button's excellent work I found my personal experience of uncertainty explained as a cultural phenomenon that indeed prevails after all natural and manmade disasters. He has been studying disasters for over 30 years as an academic and a reporter. He covered and reported on, for example, the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, the Exxon Valdes oil spill, and Hurricane Katrina. His book tells a powerful story about US disasters and their cultural aspects. However, I think that Button's research methodology and his findings can be applied to the Japanese situation as well. On the one hand, his book can serve as a warning on how not to act in the face of calamity if we want our culture to survive the suffering, and, on the other, it can serve as inspiration for domestic research on the most recent Japanese calamity. Button is interested in the way a disaster becomes a cultural, social and political phenomenon where uncertainty prevails and his focus on uncertainty as a main category seems to be a pioneering attempt that his book extends from previous studies. He focuses on uncertainty as an experience of affected people as well as the politics of uncertainty inflected in a time of calamity and finds that the two aspects are correlative.     

Challenges in Counter‐disaster Measures for People with Functional Needs in Times of Disaster Following the Great East Japan Earthquake

This article describes the three major challenges that were identified and their possible solutions are proposed in counter‐disaster measures for “people with functional needs in times of disaster (PFND)” following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. First, recent developments in preparedness measures for PFND in Japan have been uncritically relying on the assumption that hazard maps represent “correct” estimates of future hazardous events, which are based on the maximum probable event (MP_rE) framework. In reality, however, a maximum possible event (MP_oE) has occurred in the Tōhoku regions. This has tremendous implications for fundamentally re‐thinking the entire hazard estimation process from a MP_rE to MP_oE framework. Second, counter‐disaster measures for PFND have focused mainly on warning and neighborhood‐based evacuation assistance activities. Needs for shelters and temporary housing units that were specially designated for PFND arose following the earthquake. However, their provisions were neither systematic nor universal due to the lack of pre‐planning. More detailed guidelines for specially designated shelter and temporary housing operations need to be developed in order to address this issue. Third, people with disabilities (PWD) became invisible in shelters and communities or in the eyes of local government administrators. This was due to the fact that a majority of PWD did not ask for help in evacuation shelters because they felt general shelters were not “barrier free” and were unresponsive to their functional needs. Furthermore, many local government administrators felt hesitant to release their PFND registry to non‐governmental and self‐help organizations that were eager to check the whereabouts and current situations of PWD. This was due to the fear of breaking the Personal Information Protection Bylaw despite the fact that the bylaw provided exceptional conditions, where the onset of disaster was clearly one of these exceptional conditions. Further elaboration and education on the use of personal information of PFND during a disaster period is needed among public and local government administrators.     

Is the subaltern resilient? Notes on agency and neoliberal subjects

ABSTRACT

This essay engages the question of where Gayatri Spivak’s understanding of subalternity is to be located today, and it does so by first establishing a brief genealogy of thinking the outside of modern, capitalist economic and cultural modes of production. This genealogy reaches back to the classic Marxist figure of the lumpenproletariat, moves through its postcolonial reappropriation by Fanon as well as Gramsci’s original articulation of the subaltern, and arrives at Subaltern Studies’ re-articulation of Gramsci’s notion of the subaltern as well as Spivak’s critical dialogue with Subaltern Studies. This first part of the essay lays the ground for an argument that pertains to the relation between subalternity, agency, resistance, and resilience, within a context of neoliberalism in which agency is particularly salient as a way of accounting for the world. The discussion on subalternity and agency builds on Spivak’s critical engagement with the task of ‘giving voice’, as well as on Saba Mahmood’s work on the conceptual entanglement of agency and resistance. This leads me to the central argument that we may be witnessing a shift in the conceptualization of agency, which is particularly salient to a contemporary understanding of subalternity and the shift that the ‘new subaltern’ [Spivak, G., 2012. The new subaltern: a silent interview. In: V. Chaturvedi, ed. Mapping subaltern studies and the postcolonial. London: Verso] indicates: in current neoliberal times, it is perhaps less agency-as-resistance that informs an understanding of the subaltern’s agency, but rather agency-as-resilience. The essay concludes with a critique of resilience.     

元代北方桑树灾害及国家对策

元代以重农桑而著名,丝料及五户丝是国家赋税及诸王赏赐中的大宗,桑树生长中遇到虫灾、霜冻、风雨雹等自然灾害,影响国家及诸王的收入。元朝政府重视组织指导农民预防桑树霜冻、消灭各种虫害,充分发挥其指导生产的社会职能,而这一职能是通过农书的传播实现的。     

Process Tracing Analysis of Hurricane Information Displays

To study people's processing of hurricane forecast advisories, we conducted a computer‐based experiment that examined 11 research questions about the information seeking patterns of students assuming the role of a county emergency manager in a sequence of six hurricane forecast advisories for each of four different hurricanes. The results show that participants considered a variety of different sources of information—textual, graphic, and numeric—when tracking hurricanes. Click counts and click durations generally gave the same results but there were some significant differences. Moreover, participants’ information search strategies became more efficient over forecast advisories and with increased experience tracking the four hurricanes. These changes in the search patterns from the first to the fourth hurricane suggest that the presentation of abstract principles in a training manual was not sufficient for them to learn how to track hurricanes efficiently but they were able to significantly improve their search efficiency with a modest amount (roughly an hour) of practice. Overall, these data indicate that information search patterns are complex and deserve greater attention in studies of dynamic decision tasks.     

清季湖南救灾赈务研究

清季湖南救灾赈务措施基本上继承了古代的传统方式.赈务主要有急赈、蠲缓、平粜、工赈等措施;救灾措施主要有抗洪救灾、治理和防疫治理等.     

地震灾害对社会机体破坏与整合的指标体系

通过对 1976年唐山地震对唐社会机体破坏与整合研究 ,建构地震灾害对唐山社会机体破环与整合的指标体系 ,从而为评估地震对社会机体破坏程度以及整合被地震破坏的社会 ,最大限度地减轻地震灾害提供了理论依据。     

教学档案与教学管理互动功能初探

教学档案是高校的宝贵信息资源,对推动高校的事业发展具有重要的作用。而作为教学档案本身,是伴随着教学管理过程而产生、发展和完善的,并在教学管理中体现其价值。这里围绕教学档案与教学管理的互动关系进行了阐述,在充分肯定其价值利用的基础上,指出了随着高等教育事业的发展及教学管理工作的不断进步,教学档案的价值功能将会得到进一步的有效发挥。     

从高校评估谈高校档案

从高校评估谈起 ,阐述了高校档案工作的重要性。高校档案是高校评估的基础和依据 ;高校的评估也促进了档案管理工作 ;高校档案工作评估是高校评估的重要组成部分 ;又进一步阐述了做好档案工作必须做好的几个关键问题     

高校教师业务档案管理工作浅议

教师档案涉及教学、科研、技术开发等方方面面,是国家档案中一宗宝贵财富。随着教育改革进一步深入,建立教师业务档案不仅十分必要,而且迫在眉睫。文章就如何犒好高校教师业务档案工作展开了讨论,并提出了对策。