Anthropology Of Disaster: What Can Catastrophes Tell Us About Human Societies?

Disasters disrupt human societies and the environment. Different countries choose to prepare for various calamities in very diverse ways ranging from community-based and professional institutions to material infrastructures. The framing of state-led disaster preparedness thus tells us a lot about the relationship between the state and the citizen. In her talk, Czech anthropologist Zuzana Hrdličková will show this diversity of citizen-state relationships using the examples of India, Switzerland and the UK, which she has been studying as part of the ERC-funded research project ‘Organizing Disaster: Civil Protection and the Population’.

Zuzana Hrdličková is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology of Goldsmiths, University of London. She is an anthropologist with a background in South Asian Studies, currently working on the ERC-funded project ‘Organizing Disaster: Civil Protection and Population’.

Besides anthropology of disaster, her interests include conflict, gender and science and technology studies. She has worked for humanitarian organizations in disaster relief and war contexts.