Hybrid Disasters—Hybrid Knowledge
Charlotte Mazel-Cabasse
Abstract Drawing from in-depth anthropological research in the San Francisco
Bay Area, looking at a community of scientists, experts, and other risk-conscious
residents who are preparing for the next large earthquake, this article argues for an
understanding of resilience as an overarching heuristic concept with the potential to
articulate multiple forms of knowledge into a collaborative approach, associating
scientists, experts, and residents. Building on the corpus of literature coming from
Science and Technology Studies (STS), Geography and risk Disaster Studies, this
article discusses the emergence of the concept of resilience and its articulation with
the existing literature. Following this exploration, I will look at the implication such
concept in the re-definition of knowledge and the categories of expertise as
observed during my field research in the Bay Area of San Francisco. I find that
resilience can be a useful concept only if the rigid definitions that have separated
academic disciplines, as well as the concepts of “science” and “experience,” are
recomposed in favor of a more integrated approach taking into account the multiple,
and emerging, dimensions of knowledge.
Keywords Disaster Á Knowledge Á Integration Á Expertise
1 Introduction
Each disaster is unique. To prepare for the worst and increase the resilience of space
“at risk,” researchers and experts have been documenting the multiples dimensions
of disaster, documenting the complex and interdependent systems that a disaster can
break down. These studies have focused both on the technico-socio-economic
preconditions that tend to worsen the effects of disasters; but also—as the contributions of this book have shown—the cultural, political, philosophical and even
C. Mazel-Cabasse (&)
Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Berkeley, UC, USA
e-mail: charlottecabasse@berkeley.edu
© The Author(s) 2017
J. Ahn et al. (eds.), Resilience: A New Paradigm of Nuclear Safety,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58768-4_30
337
Charlotte Mazel-Cabasse
Abstract Drawing from in-depth anthropological research in the San Francisco
Bay Area, looking at a community of scientists, experts, and other risk-conscious
residents who are preparing for the next large earthquake, this article argues for an
understanding of resilience as an overarching heuristic concept with the potential to
articulate multiple forms of knowledge into a collaborative approach, associating
scientists, experts, and residents. Building on the corpus of literature coming from
Science and Technology Studies (STS), Geography and risk Disaster Studies, this
article discusses the emergence of the concept of resilience and its articulation with
the existing literature. Following this exploration, I will look at the implication such
concept in the re-definition of knowledge and the categories of expertise as
observed during my field research in the Bay Area of San Francisco. I find that
resilience can be a useful concept only if the rigid definitions that have separated
academic disciplines, as well as the concepts of “science” and “experience,” are
recomposed in favor of a more integrated approach taking into account the multiple,
and emerging, dimensions of knowledge.
Keywords Disaster Á Knowledge Á Integration Á Expertise
1 Introduction
Each disaster is unique. To prepare for the worst and increase the resilience of space
“at risk,” researchers and experts have been documenting the multiples dimensions
of disaster, documenting the complex and interdependent systems that a disaster can
break down. These studies have focused both on the technico-socio-economic
preconditions that tend to worsen the effects of disasters; but also—as the contributions of this book have shown—the cultural, political, philosophical and even
C. Mazel-Cabasse (&)
Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Berkeley, UC, USA
e-mail: charlottecabasse@berkeley.edu
© The Author(s) 2017
J. Ahn et al. (eds.), Resilience: A New Paradigm of Nuclear Safety,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58768-4_30
337