Solidarity in disaster scholarship

Disaster scholarship purportedly promotes disaster risk reduction and resist disaster risk creation, thus deeply engaging with transboundary existential risks, justice, and political power. Disaster scholarship is thus a commitment to humanity, and for it to become truly equitable and just, solidarity must lie at its heart.

In this paper we connect solidarity with knowledge production, and the implications of disaster scholarship as well as the relationships on which it is built. We offer a critique of the kind of research produced by neoliberal academic institutions and provocations for resistance through solidarity. We call on disaster scholars to use these prompts to reflect on their practice, research ethics and their commitment to other human beings, inside and outside of the academy.

Solidarity can help scholars avoid the saviourism, self-congratulation, and paternalism that are common in academia. Solidarity in disaster scholarship is a worthy endeavour precisely because it brings a concrete alternative vision of what resisting disaster risk creation through knowledge production could be, revealing in the process what needs to bend and what needs to break in order to make room for scholarship that is not yet here.