and practitioners from various disciplinary background. Since then, the concept has
been largely adopted, “as much with scientists as with the administrators and
international authorities in charge of preventing disasters” [73]. But, as pointed by
Reghezza-Zitt, for social scientists working on risk and disasters, resilience is the
latest iteration—and maybe not the least problematic—of a long list of overarching
concepts.
4 Knowledge, Risk, and Building Resilience
in the Bay Area
In the next section I will explore how experts, scientists and concerned residents of
the Bay Area of San Francisco have collectively—and for decades—patiently built
a awareness of risk that, they hope, will suffice to make the place they live and work
in, resilient. Looking at the history of earthquake science, historian Deborah Coen
[4] recalls that, in the nineteenth century, the “scientific description of an earthquake was built of stories—stories from as many people, in as many different
situations, as possible” (p. 3). To define earthquakes, physicists and seismologists
used their own perceptions of the event (e.g., “How did the earthquake feel?”) and
their senses of observation (e.g., “What did it produce?”). They also used as many
indirect sources as they could locate, including accounts from magazines and
newspapers, testimonies of other observers, and, when available, measurements
from scientific equipment. Yet, in seismology, like in many others scientific
domains, progress of research over the last century has favored the movement from
subjective accounts to instrument-produced data, allowing for the development of
predictive models and probabilistic conceptions of earthquake risk. In the process,
earthquakes have become more abstract objects of science, defined mainly by
complex mathematical operations and modeling. In such a context, it might be
expected that scientists and experts working on earthquake risk grow more and
more distant from residents’ experiences [26, 79]. In a “world at risk,” to borrow
one of Ulrich Beck’s book titles [80], earthquakes might finally have become like
any other ungrounded, immaterial threat. Yet, for the Bay Area community of
experts and scientists, dedicated to the understanding and mitigation of earthquake
risk, knowledge about the latter remained hybrid and grounded in experience. In
fact, this diversity of perspectives is precisely what makes this endeavor scientific.
The specialists of earthquakes who are also residents of the active seismic zone
of the San Francisco Bay Area frame earthquake risk both as an object of science
and an object of experience, pursuing a tradition of knowledge making now considered “hybrid.” Just as it was for seismologists of the area throughout the past
century, today seismologist, urban planers, disaster preparedness specialists consider earthquakes as phenomena that “cannot be comprehended exactly” [4] and
need to be understood from different perspectives [81]. Therefore, for these experts,
getting ready for “the Big One” is an active posture, encapsulating a large set of
Hybrid Disasters—Hybrid Knowledge
343
been largely adopted, “as much with scientists as with the administrators and
international authorities in charge of preventing disasters” [73]. But, as pointed by
Reghezza-Zitt, for social scientists working on risk and disasters, resilience is the
latest iteration—and maybe not the least problematic—of a long list of overarching
concepts.
4 Knowledge, Risk, and Building Resilience
in the Bay Area
In the next section I will explore how experts, scientists and concerned residents of
the Bay Area of San Francisco have collectively—and for decades—patiently built
a awareness of risk that, they hope, will suffice to make the place they live and work
in, resilient. Looking at the history of earthquake science, historian Deborah Coen
[4] recalls that, in the nineteenth century, the “scientific description of an earthquake was built of stories—stories from as many people, in as many different
situations, as possible” (p. 3). To define earthquakes, physicists and seismologists
used their own perceptions of the event (e.g., “How did the earthquake feel?”) and
their senses of observation (e.g., “What did it produce?”). They also used as many
indirect sources as they could locate, including accounts from magazines and
newspapers, testimonies of other observers, and, when available, measurements
from scientific equipment. Yet, in seismology, like in many others scientific
domains, progress of research over the last century has favored the movement from
subjective accounts to instrument-produced data, allowing for the development of
predictive models and probabilistic conceptions of earthquake risk. In the process,
earthquakes have become more abstract objects of science, defined mainly by
complex mathematical operations and modeling. In such a context, it might be
expected that scientists and experts working on earthquake risk grow more and
more distant from residents’ experiences [26, 79]. In a “world at risk,” to borrow
one of Ulrich Beck’s book titles [80], earthquakes might finally have become like
any other ungrounded, immaterial threat. Yet, for the Bay Area community of
experts and scientists, dedicated to the understanding and mitigation of earthquake
risk, knowledge about the latter remained hybrid and grounded in experience. In
fact, this diversity of perspectives is precisely what makes this endeavor scientific.
The specialists of earthquakes who are also residents of the active seismic zone
of the San Francisco Bay Area frame earthquake risk both as an object of science
and an object of experience, pursuing a tradition of knowledge making now considered “hybrid.” Just as it was for seismologists of the area throughout the past
century, today seismologist, urban planers, disaster preparedness specialists consider earthquakes as phenomena that “cannot be comprehended exactly” [4] and
need to be understood from different perspectives [81]. Therefore, for these experts,
getting ready for “the Big One” is an active posture, encapsulating a large set of
Hybrid Disasters—Hybrid Knowledge
343