People with disabilities are likely to experience difficulties overcoming the impact of natural disasters. Few scholars have focused on this population's ability to recover and handle stress following a natural disaster. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore and describe coping strategies and resilience factors that people with physical or mental disabilities used in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Resilience theory was used as the theoretical framework. Through face-to-face interviews, 10 persons with disabilities shared their experiences of coping and resilience. A lens of interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to identify emergent themes related to persons with disabilities' experiences of overcoming challenges and sustaining wellbeing in the aftermath of this natural disaster. According to study results, religion, recreation, and relaxation techniques were the main coping strategies used, and self-determination and independent skills were resilience factors that helped persons with disabilities remain positive and overcome challenges following the hurricane. Participants reported experiencing emotional reactions and identified the dislocation as the greatest stressor. The findings of this study have the potential to effect positive social change by informing stakeholders such as policymakers, community, and state agencies, and related professionals to help them recognize and address the health and psychological needs of persons with disabilities following a hurricane. Knowing which coping strategies and resilience factors persons with disabilities use to create awareness of the positive ways in which persons with disabilities manage the aftermath of this natural disaster.

Incorporating gender into disasters and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is important given women’s and men’s different needs, vulnerabilities, capacities and roles in the context of disasters. Male engagement or ‘men-streaming’ has gained increased attention in research on gender and development, yet it has been overlooked in the field of DRR. This thesis aims to transfer the discussion on male engagement from development to disasters by studying how ‘men-streaming’ is described in the context of DRR. The analysis will build upon a case-study of the Gender Equality Toolkit by The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB). A qualitative content analysis will be the main method for the thesis. The Toolkit will be analyzed using an open analytical framework, consisting of three themes: Men as Vulnerable, Men as Capable and Men as Allies. The results illustrate that all three themes of male engagement are described in gender policy for DRR, with a main focus on men’s vulnerabilities. The contribution of this thesis is the recognition that while men are increasingly seen as vulnerable rather than obstacles in the context of DRR, men’s capacities and allyship to women are not fully included in gender policy.

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[pt] Este artigo estuda as respostas de emigração da população semiárida brasileira após choques de seca. Migração age como uma estratégia de mitigação em locais pobres e rurais, pois os choques climáticos exacerbam a disponibilidade limitada de crédito e liquidez. Para encontrar evidências desses mecanismos, calculamos as taxas de migração ao nível do município entre 1975 e 2010 usando dados oficiais do Censo. Os resultados mostram que as taxas de migração do semiárido aumentam após uma seca, especialmente nas décadas de 70 e 80. Além disso, investigamos se as respostas de mobilidade são menos pronunciadas nos municípios onde: (i) uma parcela maior de seus cidadãos é elegível para receber benefícios rurais de seguridade social, (ii) possui uma rede mais extensa de agências bancárias ou (iii) constrói mais projetos de infraestrutura que visam mitigar o impacto da seca. / [en] This article studies out-migration responses from Brazilian semiarid population following drought shocks. Migration acts as a coping strategy in poor and rural places as weather shocks exacerbate limited credit and liquidity availability. To find evidence of those mechanisms we compute migration rates at the municipality level starting in 1975 until 2010 using official Census data. Results show that migration rates from the semiarid rise following a drought, especially in the 70s and 80s. Furthermore, we investigate if mobility responses are less pronounced in municipalities where: (i) a larger share of its citizens is eligible to receive rural social security benefits, (ii) have an extended network of bank branches or (iii) built more drought mitigation infrastructure projects.

“The Pastoral Field: Local Ecologies in Early Modern Literature” excavates the ways in which pastoral literature registers the role nature-human interaction played in shaping protracted struggles over land use and ownership, and in the degradation and improvement of natural landscapes. Revising a longstanding critical tradition that understands early modern pastoral as primarily allegorical, the project instead insists that the form can also accommodate topical thinking about regional ecologies. Shifting the emphasis away from the Elizabethan court towards local agricultural politics, it unearths the ways in which natural crises such as flooding, famine, sheep rot, and soil degradation hastened processes of agricultural improvement and enclosure—and how those processes were in turn mediated, counter-factually imagined, and actively promoted within the literary devices of pastoral. Each of my four chapters locates pastoral plays, poems, romances, and country-house entertainments in the particular landscapes that shaped their development— landscapes that were, in turn, reconfigured by the literary and political concerns of Elizabethan authors.

School-age children are at high risk of experiencing traumatic and stressful events that can negatively impact their academic, emotional, and behavior performance (Brock et al., 2016). Any stressful situation (i.e., natural disaster) or adverse childhood experience (ACE) can potentially become a traumatic event for a child or adolescent. The current literature indicates that 60% of children experience at least one ACE, putting them at high risk for a variety of health and social problems (Manyema et al., 2018). Natural disasters adversely impact children's life as they have the potential to destroy physical structures and injure the child or family members. According to Inoue and colleagues (2018) natural disasters can additionally be considered as an ACE. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between PTSD symptoms of students who have experienced a natural disaster (e.g., hurricane exposure) and students’ internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Participants included 75 students from elementary, middle, and high school in a school district in the Southeastern United States. Linear regression showed that PTSD symptoms are significantly correlated with internalizing and externalizing behaviors. However, moderation and interaction effects showed that he type of hurricane exposure did not significantly moderate the relationship between PTSD symptoms and students' internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Implications from these results suggest that trauma-informed strategies are needed for students that are exposed to a traumatic event.

[pt] A indústria de turismo foi fortemente afetada pela pandemia do Covid-19, que se alastrou rapidamente por todo o mundo, causando a interrupção mais severa da economia global no século XXI. Sem vacinas e com capacidade médica limitada para tratar a doença, as intervenções não farmacêuticas foram a principal estratégia adotada pelos países para conter a pandemia, resultando em restrições globais de viagens e reclusão domiciliar. Diante deste cenário, pesquisadores de turismo pediram uma resposta proativa em termos de planejamento de gestão em tempos de crise, visto que pandemias têm um impacto destrutivo devastador na indústria de viagens e turismo, principalmente para as pequenas empresas. Esta dissertação descreve os impactos sofridos por uma pequena empresa familiar brasileira de turismo durante a pandemia do Covid-19, as percepções dos empreendedores durante a crise, bem como as estratégias seguidas pela empresa e seu relacionamento com clientes, adotando o método do estudo de caso. A resposta à crise utilizada pela empresa é avaliada e comparada com a literatura. Com base nas descobertas, são extraídas as conclusões do estudo e feitas recomendações para futuras pesquisas. / [en] The tourism industry was strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which spread rapidly around the world, causing the most severe disruption of the global economy in the 21st century. Without vaccines and limited medical capacity to treat the disease, non-pharmaceutical interventions were the main strategy adopted by countries to contain the pandemic, resulting in global travel restrictions and home confinement. Faced with this scenario, tourism researchers asked for a proactive response in terms of management planning in times of crisis, as pandemics have a devastating destructive impact on the travel and tourism industry, especially for small businesses. This dissertation describes the impacts suffered by a small family-owned Brazilian tourism company during the Covid-19 pandemic, the perceptions of the entrepreneurs during the crisis, as well as the strategies followed by the firm and the relationship with customers, adopting the case study method. The response of the firm to the crisis is evaluated and compared with the literature. Based on the findings, the conclusions are presented, as well as suggestions for future research.

“Mining Interruption” tackles the question of how to make sense of disaster by exploring the Soma mine disaster. On May 13, 2014, an explosion in the Eynez underground lignite coal mine caused a fire that blocked the exit, sealing in 301 mineworkers who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the town of Soma, in the city of Manisa, in Aegean Turkey. While the European Union was becoming relatively greener next door, coal extraction had begun to increase in Turkey after the Justice and Development Party [Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi] came to power in early 2000s. The relative decline of coal in the Global North paved the way for increased amounts of internal coal extraction and consumption in the energy geographies of the Global South and other non-Western countries as well as of Indigenous lands. The shift created biopolitically, socially, and technologically renewed forms of exploitation of labor, bodies, and nature, which contextualize the Soma mine disaster. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 68 open-ended interviews conducted in the Soma Coal Basin, this dissertation presents one constellation of the disaster by exploring four figures—The Accidented, the Bride, the Deserving, and the Striker—both as effects and as ongoing temporalities of the disaster. It contributes to critical disaster studies by defining and studying disaster not as a category of event, but as a concept through which multiple temporalities, lived experiences, and knowledges hang together. This loose definition of disaster is complemented by a reinterpretation of Walter Benjamin’s take on one of Bertolt Brecht’s most important dramaturgical techniques: interruption. In the dissertation, interruption is re-conceptualized as an experiential (hence temporal) concept that captures out-of-the-ordinary moments or flashes that interrupt everyday life in a way that permits a reevaluation of historical-material conditions. Interruptions are openings through which people may or may not follow an accidental course of action in order to overcome, better deal with, or politically respond to their conditions. The multiplicity of interruptions that are integral to the ongoing Soma mine disaster intersect with labor, fossil fuel production and its toxic effects, disability/debility, gendered oppression, disaster management, and social assistance. Some of these interruptions are experienced as rupturing events while others are perceived below the threshold of the event as such—as noneventful or not-so-eventful sensibilities, intensities and material changes. Each figure in question is a constellation in itself, a web of interdependencies, ruptures and materialities formed among human beings, state actors, coal, land, tobacco and other plants, limbs, organs, and names. In “The Accidented,” by examining mineworkers’ experiences and the terminology of becoming accidented (a direct translation of the term kazalanmak [in infinitive form]) through work accidents, the dissertation presents a critique both of existing disability assessment techniques and processes, and of understandings of disability as identity, which peripheralize labor-related and other experiences of (dis)ability and debility. In “The Bride,” by surveying the pervasive rumors about the widows of the 301 mineworkers, and their naming by the townspeople as “the brides,” the dissertation studies the differential treatment of the families of the 301 and the rest of the mining community through the state’s twofold disaster management strategy, and the ways in which people deal with this treatment through gossip, resentment, and kinship ties. In so doing, the dissertation also explores how affinal kinship relations have been transformed in the region due to the rise of coal mining, which coincides with the heightened neoliberalization of agriculture. In “The Deserving,” by investigating the materiality and movement of the lignite coal that is known as “Soma coal,” the dissertation articulates the ways in which the lives and desires of working-class and peasant communities have been reshaped through coercion, patronage, ideological interpellation, and the subjectivizing effects of Soma coal. It presents Soma coal as a pedagogical infrastructure that has emerged through the materiality of coal, and the regimes and networks of labor and welfare provision in contemporary Turkey. Finally, through the figure of “The Striker,” the dissertation examines the three-year long compensation struggle and protests of Soma and Ermenek mineworkers (2019–2021) as a set of emergency strikes that interrupted various processes, technologies, social networks, and modes of life that are formally and/or really subsumed within capital. The concept of “emergency strike” is used in order to encapsulate a form of strike that emerges with whatever means available in a given context, and as a collective act of seizing perceived last chances. This discussion builds on a recent wave of theorization concerning forms of unconventional strike that aim to disarticulate mechanisms and processes of real subsumption and/or state sovereignty. The dissertation shows how mineworkers organized against the backdrop of the Soma mine disaster. In doing so, it demonstrates how mineworkers re-exceptionalized their living and working conditions under a state of exception that has become the rule in Turkey since the 2016 coup attempt while it had already become the rule in the Soma Basin after May 13, 2014.

[pt] A presente dissertação tem como objeto o estudo sobre a contribuição do plano de contingência para minimizar os impactos e vulnerabilidades nos desastres causados por chuvas intensas. O objetivo deste estudo é contribuir para a compreensão dos mecanismos e instrumentos utilizados para o enfrentamento de desastres nas fases de preparação e resposta de emergência relativo a eventos de chuvas intensas. Para tanto foram analisados os planos de contingência do município de Petrópolis/RJ para chuvas intensas, referentes aos períodos de 2021/2022 e 2022/2023 (PLANCON). As principais conclusões indicam que, no período observado, foi necessária a incorporação e o amadurecimento da gestão de riscos de desastres (GRD), considerando a necessidade de orientação no que se refere a ações para resposta a emergências e para tomada de decisão frente a ocorrência de um evento extremo. Em síntese, os resultados demostram que os planos de contingência são ferramentas primordiais frente aos desastres em busca da resiliência. Ao final, apresentam-se conclusões e sugestões que têm em vista acelerar e ampliar a realização de ações mais assertivas na resposta a eventos de chuvas intensas. / [en] This dissertation aims to study the contribution of the contingency plan to minimize the impacts and vulnerabilities in disasters caused by heavy rains. The objective of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms and instruments used to address disasters during the emergency preparation and response phases, particularly related to heavy rainfall events. Therefore, the contingency plans of Petrópolis/RJ municipality for heavy rains, referring to the periods of 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 (PLANCON), were analyzed. The main conclusionsindicate that during the observed period, it was necessary to incorporate and mature disaster risk management (DRM), considering the need for guidance regarding emergency response actions and decision-making in the face of an extreme event. In summary, the results demonstrate that contingency plans are essential tools in managing disasters and seeking resilience. Finally, conclusions and suggestions are presented with the aim of accelerating and expanding the implementation of more assertive actions in response to heavy rainfall events.

Flooding is and remains to be a serious hazard to human society, with about one in five people globally living within 1 in 100 year flood risk areas. Previous research shows that there are social and economic inequalities in flood exposure, with deprived groups often being more at risk. Exposure studies investi- gated a variety of socioeconomic characteristics over the years by overlaying social data with modelled flood hazard areas. New studies reveal, however, that there can be significant socioeconomic differences between populations in theoretical hazard zones, as predicted by flood models, and flooded areas during extreme events. Despite this, case studies are still rare and are mainly limited to the United States. This thesis explores how material deprivation differs between modelled and flooded areas during the 2007 floods in Gloucester and Kingston upon Hull in the United Kingdom. During this extreme event, more advantaged areas experienced more flooding, both inside and outside the modelled flood hazard zones. In Gloucester, more deprived areas were covered by the modelled hazard map but were not flooded during this event. This work sheds light on the importance of using both hazard models and maps of real events when studying flood exposure. Without considering how social and economic factors can interplay with exposure to natural hazards, disaster management strategies will not be able to protect all vulnerable groups.