Géographies de la catastrophe. Ordre et désordres dans la gestion des catastrophes "naturelles"

Abstract

"Natural" disasters, their prevention and their management have been raised as an object of international attention since the 1970's. The international social world of disasters has elaborated dispositives in order to put in order the anticipated chaos generated by disasters. This ordering process notably consists in trying to match spaces, roles and identities. When a disaster strikes on a territory, inhabitants become "affected people" when they pass through the tent where there are given this status, and then "displaced people" when there are conveyed in the truck that drives them to their new places. These dispositives are elaborated on ways of thinking identities in situation of crisis strongly linked to spatial representations. The ethnographic inquiry realized on different sites where dispositives of disaster management are put in place in Latin America shows that the coincidence between spaces, roles and identities are far from systematic and that people often have the possibility to reintroduce a certain level of critique, taking their distance with the roles they were attributed and discussing the geography of order. The paper focuses on these moments when this critique is formulated, during disaster simulation exercises or real disasters.