Disaster Financialization: Earthquakes,Cashflows and Shifting Household Economies in Nepal

The political economy literature on post-disaster reconstruction tends to contrast ‘disaster capitalism’ narratives denouncing the predatory character of neoliberal rebuilding, and ‘building back better’ policies supporting market-driven reconstruction. This article seeks to provide a more nuanced account, developing the concept of ‘disaster financialization’ through a case study of household-level changes experienced through processes of post-earthquake reconstruction in Nepal. The concept of disaster financialization describes not only the integration of disaster-affected households into the cash-based logic of reconstruction instituted by donors and government authorities, but also the financialization of their lives, social relations and subjectivities. It is a transitive process involving a shift into financialized mechanisms of disaster prevention, adaptation and recovery. Analysing contrasting experiences across three earthquake-affected districts in Nepal, this study proposes disaster financialization as an integrative term through which to understand the simultaneous acceleration of monetization, the leveraging of cash incentives by donors and government to ‘build back better’, and the flurry of financial transactions associated with reconstruction processes. While some aspects of disaster financialization have had negative social impacts, such as debt-related anxieties and a breakdown of voluntary labour exchanges hurting the most vulnerable, the process has taken on variegated forms, with equally variegated effects, reflecting household characteristics and interactions with financial institutions.     

Dispossession and the Depletion of Social Reproduction

Gender is largely under‐theorized in the now well‐developed literature on dispossession; this paper contributes to the analysis of the gender dimensions of dispossession by bringing the literature on dispossession into conversation with the feminist literature on social reproduction, specifically, depletion of social reproduction. Drawing on qualitative field research, the paper provides a gendered analysis of the multiple vectors of dispossession affecting the Miyana, a Muslim community living in the Little Rann of Kutch, an estuarine zone in central Gujarat within which prawn harvesting and salt production are their symbiotic seasonal livelihood activities. Using the concept of depletion as a diagnostic tool, I argue that the assessment of depletion due to dispossession requires investigation of the levels of mitigation, replenishment or transformation available to individuals, households and communities within the circuits of production and social reproduction.     

Gender Justice and (In)security in Pakistan and Afghanistan†

ABSTRACT

This article argues that gender justice becomes a politicised issue in counterproductive ways in conflict zones. Despite claims of following democratic principles, cultural norms have often taken precedence over ensuring gender-sensitive security practices on the ground. The rightness of the ‘war on terror’ justified by evoking fear and enforced through colonial methods of surveillance, torture, and repression in counter-terrorism measures, reproduces colonial strategies of governance. In the current context, the postcolonial sovereign state with its colonial memories and structures of violence attempts to control women’s identities. This article analyses some of these debates within the context of Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s security dynamics. It begins with the premise that a deliberate focus on the exclusion and limitation of women in Muslim and traditional societies sustains and reinforces the stereotypes of women as silent and silenced actors only. However, while the control of women within and beyond the nexus of patriarchal family'society'state is central to extremist ideologies and institutionalisation practices, women’s vulnerabilities and insecurities increase in times of conflict not only because of the action of religious forces, but also because of ‘progressive’, ‘secular’, ‘humanitarian’ interventions.     

Reviews

Freezing Assets: The USA and the Most Effective Economic Sanction , Mahvash Alerassool, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993, xii + 238 pp., Bibliography, Index.

Islamic Economic Systems , Farhad Nomani and Ali Rahnema, London: Zed Books, 1994, 222 pp., $25.00 paperback.

Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith , Norman R. C. Cohn, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1993, x + 271 pp.

Indian Merchants and the Eurasian Trade ,1600–1750, Stephen Frederic Dale, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 162 pp.

Art of the Persian Courts: Selections from the Art and History Trust Collection , Abolala Soudavar, with a contribution by Milo Cleveland Beach, New York: Rizzoli, 1992, 423 pp. and 474 color illustrations, $85.

Sakhtarha‐ye ejtema'i‐ye ‘ashayer‐e Būyir‐Ahmad, 1300–1364 , H. Ghaffari, Tehran: Ney, 1368 Sh./1989, 287 pp., map, diagrams, illustrations.

In the Eye of the Storm: Women In Post‐Revolutionary Iran , Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl, eds., Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994, 227 pp., $17.95 paperback.

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Tribal Rugs: Nomadic and Village Weavings from the Near East and Central Asia , James Opie, Portland, Ore.: The Tolstoy Press, 1992, 328 pp., 356 illustrations, 291 in color and 12 maps, $ 75.00.

The Kitáb‐i‐Aqdas: The Most Holy Book , Baha’ Allah, Haifa: Baha'i World Center, 1992, pp. viii + 296.

Planning and Power in Iran: Ebtehaj and Economic Development under the Shah , Frances Bostock and Geoffrey Jones, London: Frank Cass and Co., 1989, 238 pp.

Autocracy, Modernization, and Revolution in Russia and Iran , Tim McDaniel, Princeton University Press, 1991, 239 pp.

Iran und die Reformbewegung im Osmanischen Reich: Persische Staatsmänner ,Reisende und Oppositionelle unter dent Einfluβ der Tanzimat, Anja Pistor‐Hatam, Berlin: Kl. Schwarz, 1992, 260 pp., Bibliography, Index.

Die revolutiondre Bewegung in Iran ,1905–1911: Sozialdemok‐ratie und russischer Einfluβ, Sabine Roschke‐Bugzel, Europäische Hoch‐schulschriften 3, Frankfurt, Bern, New York, Paris: Lang Verlag, 1991, x + 341 pp., Bibliography.

After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy , K. L. Afrasiabi, Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press, 1994, xii + 244 pp.

Poetry and Mysticism in Islam: The Heritage of Rūmi , Amin Ba‐nani, Richard Hovannisian, and Georges Sabagh, eds., Giorgio Levi Delia Vida Conference Proceedings 11, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, ix + 204 pp., Index.

Islam, Iran, and World Stability , Hamid Zanganeh, ed., New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, xii + 243 pp., Bibliography, Index, $49.95.     

Environmental Action,Gender Equity and Women's Participation

For poor households, and especially for the women who own little private land, forests and village commons have always been critical sources of basic necessities in rural India. However, the availability of these resources has been declining rapidly, due both to degradation and to shifts in property rights away from community control and management to State and individual control and management. More recently, though, we are seeing small but notable reversals in these processes toward a re-establishment of greater community control over forests and village commons. Numerous forest management groups have emerged, initiated variously by the State, by village communities, or by non-governmental organizations. However, unlike the old systems of communal property management which recognized the usufruct rights of all villagers, the new ones represent a more formalized system of rights based on membership. In other words, under the new initiatives, membership is replacing citizenship as the defining criterion for establishing rights in the commons. This raises critical questions about participation and equity, especially gender equity. Are the benefits and costs of the emergent institutional arrangements being shared equally by women and men? Or are they creating a system of property rights in communal land which, like existing rights in privatized land, are strongly male centred? What is women's participation in these initiatives? What constrains or facilitates their participation and exercise of agency? This article provides pointers. It also demonstrates the relevance of the feminist environmentalist perspective, as opposed to the ecofeminist perspective, in understanding gendered responses to the environmental crisis. 1 Abbreviations used in this article: FPC=Forest Protection Committee (under JFM); JFM=Joint Forest Management; NGO=Non-Governmental Organization; VCs=Village Commons; VP=Van Panchayat (forest council).