ABSTRACT
It is widely assumed that humanity should be able to learn from calamities (e.g., emergencies, disasters, catastrophes) and that the affected individuals, groups, and enterprises, as well as the concerned (disaster-) management organizations and institutions for prevention and mitigation, will be able to be better prepared or more efficient next time. Furthermore, it is often assumed that the results of these learning processes are preserved as "knowledge" in the collective memory of a society, and that patterns of practices were adopted on this base. Within history, there is more evidence for the opposite: Analyzing past calamities reveals that there is hardly any learning and, if so, that it rarely lasts more than one or two generations. This book explores whether learning in the context of calamities happens at all, and if learning takes place, under which conditions it can be achieved and what would be required to ensure that learned cognitive and practical knowledge will endure on a societal level. The contributions of this book include various fields of scientific research: history, sociology, geography, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, development studies and political studies, as well as disaster research and disaster risk reduction research.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|49 pages
Opening the Fields of Learning and Calamities
chapter 2|15 pages
Learning from Disasters in an Unsafe World
part II|48 pages
Learning from History?
chapter 5|17 pages
“The Monster Swallows You”
chapter 7|11 pages
Historia Magistra Vitae, as the Saying Goes
part III|56 pages
Educational Concepts for Disaster Preparedness
chapter 9|16 pages
Communicating Actionable Risk
part IV|54 pages
Organizational Patterns of Interpretation and Practices of Learning
part V|55 pages
Societal Patterns of Interpretation and Practices of Learning
chapter 15|19 pages
Reduced Learning Processes Due to Biopolitical Patterns of Interpretation
chapter 16|16 pages
Science versus Metaphysics
part VI|14 pages
Closing