This book explores the pervasive anticipation of catastrophe in contemporary society, examining how temporal expectations shape personal and collective experiences and influence our perspectives and responses.
A Time of Disastrous Anticipations highlights the role of anticipation in shaping societal narratives, exploring strategies for redefining responses to catastrophic imaginaries. Through a combination of theoretical insights with practical examples, it offers a comprehensive view of anticipation’s impact in contemporary society. The vista of disastrous anticipations reveals that catastrophe is not so much a matter out of place, but primarily a matter out of time.
Targeted at scholars, students, and professionals in sociology, disaster studies, and public policy, this book is also valuable for policymakers and practitioners interested in understanding the societal dimension of disaster anticipation.
This book explores the pervasive anticipation of catastrophe in contemporary society, examining how temporal expectations shape personal and collective experiences and influence our perspectives and responses.
Introduction: A Time of Disastrous Anticipations. 1.Situating Dread. 2.A
Phenomenology of Anticipation: Experience, Culture, Social Distribution, and
Collectivity. 3.We Are the Times: Temporal Agency of Utopian, Dystopian, and
(Post)Apocalyptic Futures. 4.Disasters as Time, Time as Disasters.
5.Surviving (in) Time: National History and Memory as Temporal Factors
Underlying Ontological and National Security. 6.The Changing Mood of the
World in Times of Polycrisis and its Influence on the Post-2015 Development
Spirit. 7.Misconstrued Anticipations? Disaster Politics in the Age of
Disinformation. 8.Entangled Disasters: Relations and Vulnerabilities in the
Transformation and Dissolution of Kiruna and Malmberget. 9.Cultural
Resilience in Polycrisis: A Pathway to Suicide Prevention. 10Understanding
Natural Hazard Phenomena and Risks from the Perspective of Instrumental
Realism: Examples from Geiranger and Lyngen, Norway. Epilogue: Some
After-Thoughts about Before-it-Happens.
Reidar Staupe is Associate Professor of Risk Management and Societal Safety at the University of Stavanger in Norway and at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. He is the author of the Routledge title Disasters and Life in Anticipation of Slow Calamity: Perspectives from the Colombian Andes. He has also published dozens of articles and chapters on disasters, global public health and development. From 2021 to 2023 he was a Marie Skodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellow (MSCA-IF) at Roskilde University, Denmark. His research interests revolve around disaster temporalities and ideas about future catastrophes and prognostications.
Monika Gabriela Bartoszewicz is Associate Professor in Societal Security and Safety at the UiT The Arctic University of Norway, where she leads the Secure Societies group. She specializes in non-linear and cross-sectoral threats to security, especially in the context of political violence and securitized migration. She holds a PhD from St Andrews University (UK), and her doctoral thesis explored the questions of identity and belonging considered from a security perspective, with a particular focus on the potential terrorist threat posed by European converts to Islam. She has carried out interdisciplinary research in Scotland, England, The Netherlands, Denmark, Kosovo, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Taiwan. She is a European Commission Expert, Rapporteur & Evaluator of Horizon Europe projects, and an associate member of the Centre for Security Research in Edinburgh. Recently appointed as the Arctic Six Chair in Terrorism Studies, and the Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, she focuses now on dystopias and societal collapses.
