Political afterlife of rubble
This project examines the (in)visibilities of rubble in geographical scholarships on disasters
Project description
This project stems from the collaboration between Dr. Gioli (BSU) and Dr. Amitangshu Acharya (IHE Delft).
Our project addresses the (in)visibilities of rubble in geographical scholarship on Disasters.
Despite its bulky materiality, rubble is an under-investigated topic. Disaster anthropology has focused on rubble as an afterlife of destruction (Gordillo 2014; Simpson 2014) and discussed their temporalities and affects (Simpson 2020).
Yet, there has been scant engagement in geography with how rubble generated in the wake of a disaster produces its own politics. We propose a new research agenda accounting for the vibrant political afterlife of rubble.
We situate our argument in the context of post-earthquake Gujarat, India (2001), where Dr Acharya has conducted his doctoral work.
This project will allow us to translate the archives of Gujarati language dailies based out of Bhuj to complement the empirical dataset on one of the most important disasters in postcolonial India, which will illuminate how rubble continues to animate Bhuj’s urbanisation decades after the disaster.
Funding
We are grateful to the following organisations for providing funding for this project.
- Bath Spa University, HEQR Seed Funding – 2023/24
Project team
Dr Giovanna Gioli, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, School of Sciences, Bath Spa University, U.K
Dr Amitangshu Acharya, Lecturer, Water Governance, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, the Netherlands
Research outputs (to date)
Conference Papers | Talks
Acharya, A and G. Gioli. (2023). “The political afterlife of rubble in disaster geographies: A research agenda”. RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, August 2023, University College, London, U.K
Gioli, G. (2020). “The Semiotics of Rubble.” Invited Talk: Research Centre for Environmental Humanities. February 2020, Bath Spa University.
Publication (in process)
Acharya, A and G. Gioli. (2024). ‘The Political Afterlife of Rubble’. In Disaster Geographies: Places, Processes, Events and the Human Geographical Imagination (eds. Nat O Grady and Gemma Sou). Rowman and Littlefield, USA