Examining relational social ontologies of disaster resilience: lived experiences from India, Indonesia, Nepal, Chile and Andean territories

PurposeThe neoliberal resilience discourse and its critiques both contribute to its hegemony, obscuring alternative discourses in the context of risk and uncertainties. Drawing from the “ontology of potentiality”, the authors suggest reclaiming “resilience” through situated accounts of the connected and relational every day from the global south. To explore alternate possibilities, the authors draw attention to the social ontology of disaster resilience that foregrounds relationality, intersectionality and situated knowledge.Design/methodology/approachQuilting together the field work experiences in India, Indonesia, Nepal, Chile and Andean territories, the authors interrogate the social ontologies and politics of resilience in disaster studies in these contexts through six vignettes. Quilting, as a research methodology, weaves together various individual fragments involving their specific materialities, situated knowledge, layered temporalities, affects and memories. The authors’ six vignettes discuss the use, politicisation and resistance to resilience in the aftermath of disasters.FindingsWhile the pieces do not try to bring out a single “truth”, the authors argue that firstly, the vignettes provide non-Western conceptualisations of resilience, and attempts to provincialise externally imposed notions of resilience. Secondly, they draw attention to social ontology of resilience as the examples underscores the intersubjectivity of disaster experiences, the relational reaching out to communities and significant others.Originality/valueDrawing from in-depth research conducted in six disaster contexts by seven scholars from South Asia, South America and Northern Europe, the authors embrace pluralist situated knowledge, and cross-cultural/language co-authoring. Thus, the co-authored piece contributes to diversifying disaster studies scholarship methodologically.

Alternate Possibilities, Divine Omniscience and Critique of Judgement §76

A philosophically and historically influential section of the Critique of Judgement presents an ‘intuitive intellect’ as a mind whose representation is limited to what actually exists, and does not extend to mere possibilities. Kant’s paradigmatic instance of such an intellect is however also the divine mind. This combination threatens to rule out the reality of the mere possibilities presupposed by Kant’s theory of human freedom. Through an analysis of the relevant issues in metaphysical cosmology, modal metaphysics and philosophical theology, I show that Kant in fact possesses the resources to reconcile the philosophical claims of §76 of the Critique of Judgement with his keystone commitment to the reality of human freedom.

Fair Opportunity, Capacities, and Possibilities

Though some compatibilists deny that responsibility requires alternate possibilities, fair opportunity requires the ability of wrongdoers to do otherwise. However, these alternate possibilities are not the ones precluded by determinism. Different kinds of capacities are distinguished—actual and potential, specific and general. We should be interested in actual capacities that are relatively specific. The relevant capacities can be identified via counterfactuals. In this chapter, Pereboom’s influential incompatibilist manipulation argument is examined and rejected.

The Queerness of the Man-Child

The literary man-child character can function as a subversive agent within the text to expose traditional ideologies and suggest alternate possibilities. Much beloved in Sweden, Karlson from Astrid Lindgren’s Karlson on the Roof trilogy (1955–1968) represents this kind of man-child character in texts for children, particularly through his queerness. The trilogy illuminates Karlson’s queerness by contrasting him with the normative reality of 20th-century Stockholm through his trademark narcissism, primal desires, and illogical or fallacious rhetoric that often invokes silence from children and adults within the story. Through the lens of Jack Halberstam’s queer subcultures, Karlson can be appreciated as a specific kind of literary man-child character that necessitates a legitimated queer visibility. This visibility is cultivated by his non-normative belief system and buttressed by his resistance to being silenced or kept secret from this normative world. Furthermore, Karlson’s queerness fuels his charisma, making him popular because of his behaviour, not despite it. Ultimately, his queerness as a man-child character disrupts traditional boundaries and delineations of the child/adult binary and allows the child reader to witness the vulnerabilities of normative institutions while also appreciating diversity in non-normative family structures.

Excuses and Alternatives

A version of the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) claims that one is only blameworthy for actions which one was able to avoid. Much of the discussion about PAP concerns Frankfurt’s counterexamples to it. After fifty years of refined debates, progress might seem hopeless. Yet, we can make headway by asking: “what’s our reason for believing PAP?” The best answer is this: lacking eligible alternatives—alternatives whose cost is not too high to reasonably opt for—is a good excuse. Yet, this principle is subject to straightforward counterexamples, unless it is given an epistemicised reading. And in this latter case, it does not support PAP. So, PAP is unsupported, at least for now.

Must Knowers Be Agents?

This chapter explores agency as it applies to epistemic evaluation, using epistemic analogues of the well-known Frankfurt cases against the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. It argues that the satisfaction of manipulable counterfactual conditions is neither necessary nor sufficient for either moral or epistemic responsibility, nor is it necessary for knowledge. But what a person does in counterfactual circumstances is a sign of the presence of agency, and the argument here is that agency is necessary for epistemic responsibility and for knowledge. The chapter argues that agency is operative in getting epistemic credit and knowledge. The scope of agency includes those evaluative aspects of belief investigated by epistemology. In other work the author has argued that it is artificial to separate epistemology from ethics. The role of agency in beliefs as well as in acts further supports this position.

Settled

Jason R. Rudy, “Settled: Dorrit Down Under” (pp. 184–206) Although the conclusion to Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit (1855–57) finds the protagonists Arthur Clennam and Amy Dorrit comfortably situated in London, the novel’s long and meandering narrative entertains alternate possibilities. This essay considers the relation of emigration to British middle-class identity, both in the historical context of the 1850s and in the fictional world of Dickens’s novel. Australian free emigration, which saw a significant rise in the 1850s, serves as a limit case against which to test the significance of remaining at home in England. Little Dorrit is a novel that “settles” on a domestic life of bourgeois stability, but it arrives at this conclusion only after contemplating less-predictable futures abroad. Dickens himself considered emigrating to Australia while writing Little Dorrit, and the novel’s quiet conclusion reflects the author’s own conflicted resolution to forego life beyond British shores. Dickens’s novel ultimately suggests that Victorian middle-class stability depended at least in part on the rejection of economic possibilities abroad.

Contextualizing Free Will

Hawthorne (2001) toys with the view that ascriptions of free will are context-sensitive. But the way he formulates the view makes freedom contextualism look like a non-starter. I step into the breach for freedom contextualism. My aim is twofold. On the one hand, I argue that freedom contextualism can be motivated on the basis of our ordinary practice of freedom attribution is not ad hoc. The view explains data which cannot be accounted for by an ambiguity hypothesis. On the other hand, I suggest a more plausible freedom contextualist analysis, which emerges naturally once we pair the assumption that freedom requires that the agent could have acted otherwise with a plausible semantics of "can" statements. I'll dub the resulting view Alternate Possibilities Contextualism, or APC, for short. In contrast to Hawthorne's view, APC is well-motivated in its own right, does not beg the question against the incompatibilist and delivers a context parameter which allows for a wide range of context shifts. I conclude that, far from being a non-starter, freedom contextualism sets an agenda worth pursuing.

The Relevance of Alternate Possibilities for Moral Responsibility for Actions and Omissions

Many philosophers have argued that alternative possibilities are required for an agent’s moral responsibility for the consequences of omitting an action. In contrast, it is argued that alternative possibilities are not required for moral responsibility for the consequences of performing an action. Thus, while an agent can be morally responsible for an action she could not have avoided, an agent is never morally responsible for omitting an action she could not have performed. Call this the Action/Omission Asymmetry Thesis. This chapter describes various strategies to challenge the Action/Omission Asymmetry Thesis and identifies the predictions those strategies make about the conditions under which an agent will be held morally responsible for an unavoidable action or omission. Studies reported in the chapter indicate that whether there is an Action/Omission Asymmetry strongly depends, first, on the type of moral judgment considered relevant for the Action/Omission Asymmetry Thesis, and, second, the scale used to test the folk’s intuition.