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Cultivating Communities after Disaster: A Whirlwind of Generosity on the Coasts of Sri Lanka

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Governing Disasters

Abstract

A common idea in many studies of catastrophe is that the experience of disaster ruptures the worldly order, causing the obliteration of every means of making sense of human existence. According to this approach, the traumatic fracture of catastrophe cannot be easily repaired, because it threatens to leave people unanchored from their prospects for planning, sharing values, acting, and making history as agents present in the world. The well-known Italian folklorist Ernesto De Martino uses the concept of “crisis of presence” to describe this condition of displacement and alarming uncertainty that human beings experience under certain circumstances (disease, death, conflict, and calamity in general) when facing the potential loss of the familiar reference points that give meaning to daily life.

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Authors
  1. Mara Benadusi
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Sandrine Revet Julien Langumier

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© 2015 Sandrine Revet and Julien Langumier

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Benadusi, M. (2015). Cultivating Communities after Disaster: A Whirlwind of Generosity on the Coasts of Sri Lanka. In: Revet, S., Langumier, J. (eds) Governing Disasters. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137435460_4

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