In 2007, a three-story-high tsunami slammed the small island of Simbo in the western Solomon Islands. Drawing on over ten years of research, Matthew Lauer provides a vivid and intimate account of this calamitous event and the tumultuous recovery process. His stimulating analysis surveys the unpredictable entanglements of the powerful waves with colonization, capitalism, human-animal communication, spirit beings, ancestral territory, and technoscientific expertise that shaped the disaster’s outcomes.
Although the Simbo people had never experienced another tsunami in their lifetimes, nearly everyone fled to safety before the destructive waves hit. To understand their astonishing response, Lauer argues that we need to rethink popular and scholarly portrayals of Indigenous knowledge to avert epistemic imperialism and improve disaster preparedness strategies. In an increasingly disaster-prone era of ecological crises, this provocative book brings new possibilities into view for understanding the causes and consequences of calamity, the unintended effects of humanitarian recovery and mitigation efforts, and the nature of local knowledge.
ISBN-13: 9780520392076
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication Date: 03-07-2023
Pages: 292
Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)
Matthew Lauer is Professor of Anthropology at San Diego State University.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes on the Simbo Language and Solomon Islands Pijin
Glossary
Prologue: “Something Was Not Right”
Introduction
1. The Rise of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge
2. Ocean Knowing
3. Ancestors, Steel, and Inland Living
4. New Villages, a New God, New Vulnerabilities
5. Assembling Reconstruction
6. Vulnerable Isles?
7. Sensing Disaster Compositions
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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