The Challenges of Mobilizing after Emergency Events: Linking Debates on Moral Shocks and Man-Made Disasters

For over four decades social movement scholars have investigated the connection between violence and protest, focusing chiefly on the policing of contention. From this work, we know that “moral shocks”, and the protests they spark are not exclusive to repressive violence. On the contrary, empirical evidence shows that a variety of violent events are able to mobilize opposition if responsibility can be attributed to authorities acting disproportionately, illegitimately, or irresponsibly with regard to common expectations of how they should have behaved. One category of events that has remained conspicuously underexplored, however, are emergency events. These events can range from natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes to a broader spectrum of unforeseen human-induced crises, such as wildfires or dam collapses. Zooming in on the aftermath of these events, this paper explores the dynamics by which moral shocks in response to mass casualty events can become opportunities for social mobilization. In contrast to previous research on the conditions of backlash events, we focus on instants of non-repressive and unintentional, yet state-facilitated violence that resulted in a massive loss of life and sparked attempts at social mobilization. With the 2023 Derna dam collapse in Eastern Libya, the 2023 Earthquake in Turkey, and the 2020 Beirut Port explosion, we compare three cases of deadly catastrophes where state neglect and absent accountability were directly responsible in creating the conditions for loss of life on a mass scale and aim to understand how natural disasters act as a precipice for social change, examining the conditions under which mobilization efforts are initiated, the challenges they face, and the outcomes they achieve.