Disasterland

Drawing on a long period of fieldwork among the people who work in disaster response, the author examines how an international community of specialists comes together around a single subject. The book follows how these practitioners develop a shared outlook, a common vocabulary, and routines that can be repeated across borders, and it shows that each of these elements has to be built rather than handed down.

At the center of the study are the two main ways these specialists position themselves in relation to preparedness and resilience. Instead of treating the field as unified, the author argues that its coherence rests on a mix of components that do not always align, some of which pull against each other, and that the field's shape emerges from how these uneasy pieces are joined.