Doctoral thesis: Disasters reveal long-term inequalities – resilience unlikely to address them

In her doctoral thesis entitled ”Urban Disaster Governance: Resilience and Rights in the Unequal City” Eija Meriläinen studies how disasters taking place in cities are governed. Her focus is on how the buzzword and discourse of “resilience” is used by experts and researchers, and how it might influence the recovery from urban disasters. It appears that dominant notions of urban resilience do little to address the underlying vulnerabilities.

– Hazards – such as a virus – can be “natural” in that they are not a result of human activity. However, a disaster, the ways in which a virus or an earthquake adversely impacts the lives of people, are not natural nor sudden. Disasters are social, and they are political, says Meriläinen.

Meriläinen points out that who a disaster affects and how is very much a result of societal structures over time. People who are already marginalized are likelier than others to lose their lives, livelihoods and homes in a disaster. Also, the ways in which exceptional circumstances are governed, from limiting the rights of citizens to providing assistance, dictate how people experience the disaster.

Disaster governance involves various actors: states, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), corporations, agencies such as the United Nations – and the people affected. With the responsibility and power over disaster governance diffused and spread, dominant discourses and concepts – such as “resilience” – provide an entry point to understanding the patterns and justifications of disaster governance and influence.

- Resilience carries a hopeful idea, promising a ‘bounce back’ to some state of normalcy after a shock. However, it has been criticized for not addressing the root causes for why the marginalized people are the ones suffering most. According to my research, this becomes particularly visible in the case of urban resilience, where visions of a “robust” city and self-organized people are simultaneously deployed, concludes Meriläinen.

According to Meriläinen, the catch is, that the safe, robust, shock free city is often built with the economy and the powerful groups of people in mind – while the marginalized members of the society that are worst impacted are expected to figure recovery out on their own. In worst cases, those who lost most after a hazard, are displaced and moved aside as the city as an economic machine that is made safer, but not for them.

You can read the whole doctoral thesis here. 

More information:
Eija Meriläinen
E-mail: eija.merilainen@hanken.fi
Phone 050 560 1415

Eija Meriläinen defends her dissertation on Friday, May 8th, 2020 at 9 a.m. The subject is Supply Chain Management and Social Responsibility.
Opponent: Professor Anja Nygren, University of Helsinki
Custos: Professor Jaakko Aspara

The doctoral defence will be organised remotely.
Join the Teams-meeting here. The link opens on 8 May, at 9 a.m.