Response, recovery and social dimensions of the disaster in Japan

Mayumi Sakamoto on left. Credit: FEMA. — Mayumi Sakamoto on left, New Orleans, La., March 3, 2011. Credit: FEMA.

Guest post by Mayumi Sakamoto

As of March 18, the situation is very serious in Fukushima prefecture due to the nuclear power plant problem. The complex after-effects of the tsunami are disturbing the entire S&R (search and rescue) efforts and related disaster response activities, as well as creating problems for economic activity, agriculture, the environment and people’s lives.

In Fukushima, many people are making amazing efforts, in spite of clear health risks to themselves, in order to prevent the situation from worsening.

The DRI dispatched our expert team on Monday to Miyagi prefecture to support the local government. We will continue our operation for the next several weeks.

So far, the recovery of infrastructures is just amazing. After one week, electricity, water-supply, roads and the banking system are recovering. In terms of resilience of infrastructure I would say we are very resilient.

On the other hand, the many evacuated people are in a severe condition, and these displaced people will face many long-term challenges.

The disaster-affected area in Japan is one of the most well prepared area for tsunami. But planning was based on reasonable estimates which, in this case, nature has exceeded. So how can one be prepared for such massive destruction?

The DRI believes we have to pay keen attention to social impact of the disaster and find a way to establish some framework to analyze it. I am collecting information regarding to this disaster in national level and also trying to establish archives for this disaster. I am also interested in learning about relevant experiences from other post-earthquake/disaster situations to learn about how to address the social impact including many displaced persons.

Mayumi Sakamoto, who holds a Ph.D. from Kyoto University, specializes in disaster recovery assistance (particularly in Aceh during the 2004 tsunami) and international cooperation at Japan’s Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution.

Anthropology and Japan’s triple disaster

Aerial of damage to Wakuya, Japan. Flickr/U.S. Navy.

The three-way hit from the major earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown has created a situation beyond what even the most prepared country could manage. Entire villages were swept into the massive wave. Hundreds of bodies are now washing back to the shore. Nuclear plants are melting down. People are evacauting their home areas by the thousands to avoid radiation exposure.

Three questions for anthropologists:

What do anthropologists have to say about the massive loss of lives from so-called natural disaster? The most obvious recent example is Haiti after the earthquake of January 2010. Readers, please share references and insights.
What do anthropologists know about life in a nuclear melt-down zone? Read this: Adriana Petryna‘s amazing study, Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl. Her study of the making of “biological citizens” has much relevance to northern Japan. Can readers please offer other sources of knowledge?
What do anthropologists know about people’s perceptions of risk and security around the world? Many anthropologists are addressing these important questions. The course syllabus for a graduate seminar I taught in spring 2009 on Culture, Risk and Security (embedded below) includes some ideas for reading and further thought.

This university-based blogger sends her heartfelt wishes to everyone in Japan and to those in any way related to people in the affected regions.

Anthropology 222 course syllabus http://www.scribd.com/embeds/50953048/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js?1300351301”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();

Upcoming panel to explore situation in Haiti one year after the quake

This event next week might be of interest to readers in DC:

Haiti, One Year On: Realizing Country Ownership in a Fragile State

Tuesday, January 11, 2011
3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
B-340 Rayburn House Office Building, 45 Independence Ave SW Washington, DC

Speakers will include:

Angela Bruce Raeburn, Senior Policy Advisor for Humanitarian Response, Oxfam America, Moderator
Robert Maguire, Chair, Haiti Working Group, U.S. Institute of Peace, Associate Professor of International Affairs, Trinity Washington University, Discussant
Thomas C. Adams, Special Coordinator to Haiti, U.S. State Department, Discussant
Russell Porter, Director, USAID Haiti Task Force, Discussant
Raymond C. Offenheiser, President, Oxfam America, Discussant

The distinguished panelists will discuss the reality of the situation in Haiti, examine lessons learned from the past year, and explore how to improve country ownership as we move forward towards a stable and productive Haiti. The discussion will focus on how U.S. foreign aid to Haiti is being delivered while seeking ways of strengthening the efficacy of future U.S. assistance.

The roundtable will include ample time for questions from the audience and will be followed by a reception.

To RSVP for the briefing, or for more information, please contact Gilda Charles or Maria Mahler-Haug.

Rethinking development impact: current issue of Development Policy in Practice

Deborah Eade, provides an overview of this special issue in her editorial:

It is particularly pleasing to end our twentieth-anniversary volume with an issue devoted to the theme ‘Rethinking Impact: Understanding the Complexity of Poverty and Change’, compiled by guest editors Nina Lilja, Patti Kristjanson, and Jamie Watts. Their call to legitimize what they describe as the ‘boundary-spanning work’ whereby researchers give first priority to linking the knowledge generation with practical action echoes precisely the aims and objectives of Development in Practice, summarized in our strapline ‘Stimulating Thought for Action’. They argue for a diversity of methods for the production and sharing of knowledge, to enhance capacity, and to evaluate the impact of such efforts. However, as they emphasize, such multidisciplinary and embedded ways of working need ‘to be recognized and rewarded, and sufficient resources dedicated to [them]’.

Questioning economic growth

An essay in Nature raises the heretical question of why economic growth should be every “developed” country’s goal. Such heresy is of course welcome to cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, and others who have ground-level data and experience on why “growth” is a dangerous and destructive idea.

And it will prompt Bhutanese readers to smile knowingly as they continue to support the growth of happiness.

Let’s start with Haiti

Imagine that you live in a region that comprises Washington, DC, and Maryland (roughly the size of Haiti). Then imagine that you are one of many experiencing extreme poverty, lack of education, and other forms of deprivation. If that’s not bad enough, then imagine an earthquake of the magnitude that struck Haiti in January. Then picture 1.3 million people living in tents in the DC area.

With this thought exercise, Ray Offenheiser, President and CEO of Oxfam America, opened his talk on October 20 at the Elliott School of International Affairs of George Washington University. His presentation was titled “Let’s Start with Haiti: Making President Obama’s New Vision for Development Work.” It was sponsored by the Elliott School’s Culture in Global Affairs (CIGA) Program. Robert E. Maguire was moderator. Maguire is associate professor of international affairs at Trinity Washington University in DC; Chair of the Haiti Working Group of the United States Institute of Peace; and a Visiting Fellow with CIGA. To watch a video of this talk, click here.

Ray Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America; Photo credit: Oxfam America

After that stark opening, Offenheiser turned to considering President Obama’s new approach to international development in the context of Haiti. Speaking at the United Nations in September, President Obama argued that the United States needs to change the way it handles development aid. This speech proposed the first ever global development policy of the United States and offered the only major rethinking of the approach established in 1961 by President Kennedy to shape development during the Cold War.

In this new approach, Offenheiser explained, America is redefining development. Instead of controlling development through a focus on aid, it will take a comprehensive approach to sustainable development. America is now poised to focus on results, especially long-term results that support institutions rather than providing assistance in perpetuity. Broad-based economic growth is a goal through support to market infrastructure. Mutual accountability between the US government and partner countries is the new goal for bilateral aid relationships.

Offenheiser hailed Obama’s vision as breathtaking and most welcome in its emphasis on country ownership: countries must own the process of development, the investments, and the partnerships. The rationale is that poverty can only be solved by poor people and their governments, in partnership with other countries. In the past, too little attention was given to the hopes, dreams, and plans of people in developing countries. Aid projects were likely to be driven by earmarking in the US. From now on, aid will go toward investing more in country-designed ideas.

Continue reading “Let’s start with Haiti” →

Let’s Start with Haiti

Making President Obama’s New Vision for Development Work
A Presentation by Ray Offenheiser, President, Oxfam America

This talk will consider President Obama’s new approach to development and explore its impact on how international agencies, governments, and NGOs seek to assist Haiti. Drawing on experience in other countries, the speaker will also present Oxfam’s view on good development practice.

Continue reading “Let’s Start with Haiti” →

Roma: Not all alike

*Roma beggar in Paris. Credit: Seb Ruiz, Creative Commons licensed on Flickr*

Guest post by Sam Beck

The European Union must be held accountable if European states continue to expel Roma from member countries. The expulsions are taking place because Roma have created settlements not only in designated campgrounds but also within urban boundaries. This is not new. However, the scale and density of such settlements disturbs the sensibilities of Europeans. This is not only a West European phenomenon. Events of intolerable discrimination are also taking place in East Central Europe and the Balkans from which many of these Roma originate. The history of anti-Roma sentiments in both East and West Europe is torturous and long-standing.

A rather unusual situation emerged in Romania where Roma have lived for hundreds of years, where to this day they appear in abundant variation, from people who have resumed migratory lives to people who have been settled at the margins of villages, towns, and cities for as long as anyone can remember. In Romania, Roma were enslaved and indentured for centuries. They played important roles as musicians, miners, and in producing objects necessary for an agrarian society, crafting metals and wood objects. Today, those that we call Roma, were involved in all sorts of labor, agricultural workers and house servants.

Some may no longer speak their Sanskrit based language, or if they do they speak it with lexical-items borrowed from Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, and so on. In Romania, many no longer speak Romani. In Romania, Roma may identify themselves with this “national” identity, or they may identify as “tsigani,” how others have named them. This is a term of derision. Some Roma have integrated themselves into the mainstream of Romanian society and melted into the Romanian ethnic identity. Some Roma sustain their identity and have experienced upward mobility in many different fields.

Roma were persecuted in the Nazi era, large numbers of whom lost their lives; their population decimated in great proportions to their total numbers, referred to as Prajmos. Oddly enough, when mentioned at all as a persecuted population in Germany’s ethnic cleansing effort they are lumped in with Jews, rather than being mentioned outright as a population. No museums exist for them and if there are memorials for them, I do not know of them. They have no homeland with which they can identify. There is no Israel that was created for them as it was for Jews. Their identities are claimed as citizens of their countries of origin.

Continue reading “Roma: Not all alike” →

The floods in Pakistan

An interview by Maggie Ronkin with Fayyaz Baqir, Director of the Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Center, Islamabad, Pakistan

MR: What regions of Pakistan and sectors of the population are affected most by the tragic flooding?

FB: Vast swathes of land in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (previously the Northwest Frontier Province), Southern Punjab (the Siraiki region of the Punjab), Sindh, and Balochistan have been devastated by the recent floods. These floods are considered to be the worst in the entire world during the past hundred years. It is not an exaggeration that fifteen million families have been rendered homeless, and hundreds of thousands of homes have been wiped off the face of the earth. Hundreds of villages are no more. Standing crops over thousands of acres, cattle, infrastructure, and productive assets of millions of families have been lost due to flooding. A woman from a very well off and respected family of a rural district contacted by phone said “Everything is gone. We are beggars”. Scores of women from small farm and landless families burst into tears when asked about their plight. “There is no food, no water, no medicine, no help” most of them narrated. If they do not receive assistance soon, they may reach the point where they think that there is “no hope”. Such a situation will add another dimension to the crisis because desperate minds are fertile ground for militants. This is a great humanitarian crisis to which the world’s conscience needs to respond. The scale of this tragedy is so enormous that the country’s entire population is reeling in shock.

MR: What does the devastation in Pakistan look like to you on the ground?

FB: Thousands of human settlements are under ten or fifteen-foot deep water. Dead cattle can be found everywhere. Innumerable people are stranded in areas surrounded by water. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, children, and elderly people who managed to move out of their houses leaving behind their assets accumulated over a life time have squatted along the roads. Tents are in extremely short supply, so the homeless sit under the burning sun without any shade to cover their heads. They often seem overwhelmed and unable to decide what to do. There are shortages of food, safe drinking water, and medicine. Whenever food arrives, scrambling for it leads to scuffles, and inevitably, the poor, weak, and households headed by women are hurt the most. There is no organized, visible, and dependable government assistance available.

Continue reading “The floods in Pakistan” →

Paul Farmer in the news

Blogger’s note: I depend largely on my Google reader system to feed me the anthropology news every week for my weekly round-up of “Anthro in the news.” But a lot that is anthropological goes on under the covers, so to speak: it is just not named “anthropology.”

Out of curiosity, I went to Google news yesterday and typed in “Paul Farmer.” Farmer is probably the most famous living anthropologist who is not known primarily as an anthropologist. That’s why news items about him don’t pop up in my Google reader.

Here’s the catch of the past few days from Google news about Paul Farmer, cultural anthropologist, doctor, and humanitarian activist.

• Book review in JAMA
Partners in Health: The Paul Farmer Reader has been published by the University of California Press. It is what it says it is: a collection of Farmer’s writings. It was just reviewed in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Not many anthropology books get reviewed in JAMA.

• On cancer
The Times of India carried an article about a recent pronouncement by medical specialists in the United States that cancer is a global health issue of high priority. The article quotes Paul Farmer, via the Lancet, as saying “There are clearly effective interventions that can prevent or ease suffering due to many malignancies, and that is surely our duty as physicians or policy makers or health advocates.”

• On why care about Pakistan
An essay in the Huffington Post salutes Paul Farmer in a paragraph pointing to “troubling contrasts” between the amount of aid pledged and given to Haiti after the January earthquake compared to the “averting of eyes” from Pakistan’s tragedy. The author says: “Dr. Paul Farmer sums it up pithily in the title of his book, The Uses of Haiti. The uses of Pakistan are different. We need to move beyond the uses of both our countries and toward understanding them accurately and respectfully in their own terms. Our understanding of Haiti should be more political and of Pakistan less so, or differently so.”

• Pay back time
An open letter to French president Nicolas Sarkozy from 90 academics, authors, journalists, and human rights activists around the world urged the French government to repay the 90 million gold francs that Haiti was forced to pay for its independence. Paul Farmer says “there are powerful arguments in favour of the restitution of the French debt.”

• Staying alive is more than medical
Fonkoze, an NGO that provides micro-credit loans in Haiti, realized that its programs miss the most needy. Fonkoze talked with Paul Farmer who said that his organization, Partners in Health, would create Fonkoze branches at all their hospitals. This partnership sounds promising and could help with the following comment from Farmer: “I’m really tired of taking these people who are close to death and making them better again, and then I have to watch them starve to death because they have no way to make a living.”

Image: “Paul Farmer speaks at IDEO,” from flickr user GlobalX, licensed with Creative Commons.