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Synthesizing critical perspectives on the impact of disasters with regard to social inequality, this book brings together key insights from political ecology and historical materialism. Querying assumptions about the “normal” conditions of life, it examines the exploitative structures and practices that shape everyday life using theoretical approaches such as rhythmanalysis, metabolic rift theory, and conjunctural analysis. While focusing on enduring historical processes that foster unequal social and ecological relationships in the present era, this book argues for a more expansive consideration of disasters, including within its scope catastrophes associated with structural violence, social conflict, war and destitution.
“Capitalism and Catastrophe teaches that a society dedicated to the accumulation of capital is by virtue of that very fact a society geared to the accumulation of catastrophe, rupturing the relation between human beings and the environment on an ever-increasing scale…This is not the first book to address these pressing issues, and it will not be last, but it is certainly one of the very best. • John Bellamy Foster, author of The Dialectics of Ecology
“This is a theoretically rich and well thought- through book. It is a welcome intervention in the small subfield of disaster studies in anthropology and sociology.” • Steve Matthewman, University of Auckland
“Capitalism and Catastrophe is required reading in a time of pandemic, extreme weather, refugee crises, ethnic cleansing and deepening anxiety. Raja Swamy builds on a broader critical literature to situate “natural” disasters firmly in the damage wrought by decades of unchecked capitalist class power, industrial deregulation, evermore extensive conquests of nature for profit, and global labor regimes rooted in violent dispossession, exploitation and mass misery. Capitalism and Catastrophe’s urgent call for a popular democratic left politics illuminates a path forward we so desperately need.” • Cedric Johnson, Professor, University of Illinois Chicago and editor of The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans
Raja Swamy is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, with a focus on disasters, political economy, development, social justice and climate change. He is the author of Building Back Better in India (University of Alabama, 2021).
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Wreckage upon Wreckage
Chapter 1. A Critical Disaster Studies Framework
Chapter 2. The Everyday and the Systemic
Chapter 3. Rhythm, Rift, and Conjuncture
Chapter 4. Time and Life in the Precarious Present
Chapter 5. Modernity, Development, and Underdevelopment
Chapter 6. Humanitarianism
Chapter 7. The Lāhainā Wildfires of 2023: A Case Study
Conclusion: Disasters, Imperialism and the Climate Emergency
References
Index