The time of emergencies. Theoretical perspectives and research fields for anthropology between disasters and climate change

Abstract

The present contribution is grounded on three ethnographic researches and three disaster scenarios articulated on different times, fields of research, and scientific and social evidence, and proposes a multifocal and multivocal reflection around the concepts of emergency, risk and crisis. Considering them as processual and interconnected events, the work proposes a vision of the disasters inscribed in the current climate, ecological and environmental crisis scenarios, recognising their common anthropocene trait, and proposing a reflection on the strongly social and cultural “nature” of the rationality that orients responses to risk. The three cases proposed here are paradigmatic of the declination in “time” and “long duration” of disasters and crises, as well as of the socio-cultural and environmental vulnerability of the communities that experience them, perceive them or, on the contrary, are “blinded” by them. The contribution will make it possible to enhance the role of anthropology in questioning and bringing into dialogue different scales and scenarios of action, inserting these “local” cases into a broader debate of global scope.