Extreme Events, Catastrophes and the Racialisation of the Exploited: The Real Nature of the State

The project analyses how extreme events reveal the political work involved in positioning disposable groups and individuals outside nation-States imaginaries. Having as case studies the Barh Mukti Abhiyaan grassroots movement and the National Dalit Watch in India, the objective is to propose an analytic approach, based on an ecology of knowledges and counter-hegemonic human rights struggles, that consolidates civic epistemologies pertaining to disasters and catastrophes. These civic epistemologies emerge from the accumulated experiences of local and excluded populations that support their actions in mutual help, solidarity and the construction of disaster communities that develop the ability to resist, to recover and to re-establish bonds, livings and their inhabited places.

The analysis is proposed having as background the changing role of States in disaster management promoted by international agencies that consolidate disaster capitalism, of which India is a case after the enactment of the Disaster Management Act of 2005.