Disasters are Everyday Like the Weather

Reflections on Violence in the ‘Philippine Anthropocene’

Authors

  • C. O. Go York University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2020.999

Keywords:

Philippines, Anthropocene, critical disaster studies

Abstract

This essay offers an urgent intervention from the global South in contribution to this special issue on the Anthropocene. Drawing from Rob Nixon's work on slow violence, the author offers sobering reflections on the everyday realities of what she writes as the “Philippine Anthropocene”: not only is this defined by spectacular freak weather conditions, but also shaped by normalized and state-sanctioned forms of abandonment and terror. Written in the present political context of intensifying state attacks on civil society in the country, the author recasts the light on anthropogenic forces of violence which endanger lives at the front lines of daily disasters, more lethal than the strongest storm in recorded history.

Author Biography

C. O. Go, York University

Chaya Ocampo Go is a transnational Filipina scholar of critical disaster studies at York University. She served as an emergency relief worker at the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan. Through her research and activism, Chaya continues to work with civil society organizations in the Philippines for social and climate justice.

References

Bankoff, Greg. 2003. Cultures of Disaster: Society and Natural Hazards in the Philippines. London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Bello, Walden, Marissa de Guzman, Mary Lou Malig, and Herbert Docena. 2005. The Anti-Development State: The Political Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines. New York: Zed Books.

Caluya, Gilbert. 2014. “Fragments for a Postcolonial Critique of the Anthropocene.” Pp. 31-44 in Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities, edited by J. Frawley and I. McCalman. New York: Routledge.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2012. “Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change.” New Literary History 43(1):1-18.

Christensen, Miyase. 2018. “Slow Violence in the Anthropocene: An Interview with Rob Nixon on Communication, Media, and the Environmental Humanities.” Environmental Communication 12(1):7-14.

Global Witness. 2019. “Defending the Philippines”. Retrieved April 1, 2020 (https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/defending-philippines/).

Ghosh, Amitav. 2016. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Guha, Ramachandra and Juan Martinez-Alier. 2013. Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South. UK: Earthscan.

Human Rights Watch. 2020. “Philippines: World Report 2020.” Retrieved April 1, 2020 (https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/philippines)

IBON. 2015. Disaster Upon Disaster: Lessons Beyond Yolanda. Quezon City: IBON Foundation, Inc.

Martinez-Alier, Juan. 2014. “The Environmentalism of the Poor.” Geoforum 54: 239-241.

Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Simpson, Leanne, Elina Helander and Tero Mustonen. 2004. “The Colonial Context for the Indigenous Experience of Climate Change.” Pp. 25-29 in Snowscapes, Dreamscapes: Snowchange Book on Community Voices of Change, edited by E. Helander and T. Mustonen. Tampere, Finland: Tampere Polytechnic Publications.

Smith, Neil. 2006. “There’s No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster.” Retrieved April 1, 2020

(http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Smith/)

Todd, Zoe. (2016). “An Indigenous Feminist's Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ is Just Another Word for Colonialism.” Journal of Historical Sociology 29(1): 4-22.

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Published

2020-06-19

How to Cite

Go, C. (2020). Disasters are Everyday Like the Weather: Reflections on Violence in the ‘Philippine Anthropocene’. Journal of World-Systems Research, 26(2), 416–423. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2020.999

Issue

Vol. 26 No. 2 (2020): Special Issue: World-Systems Analysis in the Anthropocene

Section

Special Issue: World-Systems Analysis in the Anthropocene

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