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Anderson, B. (2010). Preemption, precaution, preparedness: Anticipatory action and future geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(6), 777-798.

Abstract:

The paper focuses on how futures are anticipated and acted on in relation to a set of events that are taken to threaten liberal democracies. Across different domains of life the future is now problematized as a disruption, a surprise. This problematization of the future as indeterminate or uncertain has been met with an extraordinary proliferation of anticipatory action. The paper argues that anticipatory action works through the assembling of: styles through which the form of the future is disclosed and related to; practices that render specific futures present; and logics through which anticipatory action is legitimized, guided and enacted.

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Anderson, B. (2010). Security and the future: Anticipating the event of terror. Geoforum, 41(2), 227-235.

Abstract:

This paper explores the relation between processes of security and futurity in the context of efforts to govern the complexity and contingency of events of terror. It argues that processes of securing function by generating a dangerous or promissory supplement to the present that thereafter propels the extension of forms of security. The paper develops this argument through an example of how an event of terror was anticipated: a RAND exercise into the aftermath of a ‘ground burst’ nuclear explosion in Long Beach, California on March 14th 2005. It argues that exercises (in)secure through three quasi-causal operations, each of which render events of terror actionable and result in specific relations between the present and future. First, ‘hypothetically possible’ generic events are named. The future takes place as a threatening horizon. Second, the defined phases of an event’s happening are staged (an advent, its multiplication into a crisis in the context of a milieu, and a response/recovery phase). The here and now is suspended between an ‘as if’ future and the present. Third, the consequences of the event are played. The future is both an intensified ‘practical’ presence embodied by exercise participants and an outside that exceeds attempts to definitively know it. The conclusion summarizes the implications of the paper for work on futurity, security and the event.

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Anderson, B., & Adey, P. (2011). Affect and security: Exercising emergency in ‘UK civil contingencies’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(6), 1092-1109.

Abstract:

In this paper we explore the relation between affect and security through a case study of one technique for making futures present and actionable: The use of exercises in UK emergency planning after the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act. Based on observation of exercises and interviews with emergency planners, we show how exercises function by making present an ‘interval’ of emergency in between the occurrence of a threatening event and its becoming a disaster. This ‘interval’ is made present through a set of partially connected affective atmospheres and sensibilities. By making futures present at the level of affect, exercises function as techniques of equivalence that enable future disruptive events to be governed. Through this case study we argue against epochal accounts that frame the relation between affect and security in terms of an ‘age of anxiety’ or a ‘culture of fear’. Instead, we understand security affects to be both a means through which futures are made present in apparatuses of security and a part of the relational dynamics, through which apparatuses emerge, endure, change, and function strategically.

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Beenstock, M., Felsenstein, D., Frank, E., & Reingewertz, Y. (2015). Tide gauge location and the measurement of global sea level rise. Environmental and ecological statistics, 22(1), 179-206.

Abstract:

The discourse on climate change is in part divided between a sense of alarm and a sense of alarmism in assessments of the magnitude and urgency of the problem. The divide in the discourse among climatologists relates to tensions in the use of key phrases to describe climate change. This article reviews evidence to support claims that climate change can be viewed as ‘catastrophic’, ‘rapid’, ‘urgent’, ‘irreversible’, ‘chaotic’, and ‘worse than previously thought’. Each of these terms are imprecise and may convey a range of meaning. The method used here is to assess whether the conventional understandings of these terms are broadly consistent or inconsistent with the science, or else ambiguous. On balance, these terms are judged to be consistent with the science. Factors which divide climatologists on this discourse are also reviewed. The divide over a sense of urgency relates to disagreement on the manner and rate at which ice sheets breakdown in response to sustained warming. Whether this rate is fast or slow, the amount of time available to reduce emissions sufficient to prevent ice sheet breakdown is relatively short, given the moderate levels of warming required and the inertia of the climate and energy systems. A new discourse is emerging which underscores the scope of the problem and the scope and feasibility of solutions. This discourse differentiates itself from existing discourses which view the magnitudes of the problem or of solutions as prohibitive.

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Caduff, C. (2015). The pandemic perhaps: dramatic events in a public culture of danger. Univ of California Press.

Abstract:

In 2005, American experts sent out urgent warnings throughout the country: a devastating flu pandemic was fast approaching. Influenza was a serious disease, not a seasonal nuisance; it could kill millions of people. If urgent steps were not taken immediately, the pandemic could shut down the economy and “trigger a reaction that will change the world overnight.”

The Pandemic Perhaps explores how American experts framed a catastrophe that never occurred. The urgent threat that was presented to the public produced a profound sense of insecurity, prompting a systematic effort to prepare the population for the coming plague. But when that plague did not arrive, the race to avert it carried on. Paradoxically, it was the absence of disease that made preparedness a permanent project.

The Pandemic Perhaps tells the story of what happened when nothing really happened. Drawing on fieldwork among scientists and public health professionals in New York City, the book is an investigation of how actors and institutions produced a scene of extreme expectation through the circulation of dramatic plague visions. It argues that experts deployed these visions to draw attention to the possibility of a pandemic, frame the disease as a catastrophic event, and make it meaningful to the nation. Today, when we talk about pandemic influenza, we must always say “perhaps.” What, then, does it mean to engage a disease in the modality of the maybe?

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Collier, S. J. (2008). Enacting catastrophe: preparedness, insurance, budgetary rationalization. Economy and society, 37(2), 224-250

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This article examines ‘enactment’ as a significant new form of knowledge about collective life that differs fundamentally from familiar forms of ‘social’ knowledge. The emergence of enactment is traced through a series of domains where the problem of estimating the likelihood and consequence of potentially catastrophic future events has been made an explicit object of expert reflection: response to a possible nuclear attack in US civil defense planning in the late 1940s; the emergence of natural hazard modelling in the 1960s and 1970s; and the emergence today of terrorism risk assessment and its proposed application to federal budgetary distributions. The article engages with central questions in debates around ‘risk society’ and insurance, holding that new approaches to understanding and assessing risk are not merely idiosyncratic or subjective. Rather, they should be treated as coherent new forms of knowledge and practice whose genealogy and present assemblies must be traced.

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Collier, S. J., & Lakoff, A. (2008). Distributed preparedness: the spatial logic of domestic security in the United States. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(1), 7-28

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This paper examines the genealogy of domestic security in the United States through an analysis of post-World War II civil defense. Specifically, we describe the development of an organizational framework and set of techniques for approaching security threats that we call ‘distributed preparedness’. Distributed preparedness was initially articulated in civil defense programs in the early stages of the Cold War, when US government planners began to conceptualize the nation as a possible target of nuclear attack. These planners assumed that the enemy would focus its attacks on urban and industrial centers that were essential to US war-fighting capability. Distributed preparedness provided techniques for mapping national space as a field of potential targets, and grafted this map of vulnerabilities onto the structure of territorial administration in the United States. It presented a new model of coordinated planning for catastrophic threats, one that sought to limit federal intervention in local life and to preserve the characteristic features of American federalism. Over the course of the Cold War, distributed preparedness extended to new domains, and following 9/11 it has moved to the center of security discussions in the US.

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Cooper, M. (2006). Pre-empting emergence: the biological turn in the war on terror. Theory, Culture & Society, 23(4), 113-135

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This article looks at the increasing prominence of bioterrorist threat scenarios in recent US foreign policy. Germ warfare, it argues, is being depicted as the paradigmatic threat of the post-Cold War era, not only because of its affinity for cross-border movement but also because it blurs the lines between deliberate attack and spontaneous natural catastrophe. The article looks at the possible implications of this move for understandings of war, strategy and public health. It also seeks to contextualize the US’s growing military interest in biodefence research within the commercial strategies of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. In its methodology, the article weaves together elements from defense literature, scientific perspectives on infectious disease, catastrophe theory and political economy. The conceptual underpinnings of the strategy of pre-emptive warfare, it argues, lie as much in the theory of biological emergence as in official US defense strategy.

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Egbelakin, T., Wilkinson, S., Potangaroa, R., & Ingham, J. (2013). Improving regulatory frameworks for earthquake risk mitigation. Building Research & Information, 41(6), 677-689

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New Zealand's devastating Canterbury earthquakes provided an opportunity to examine the efficacy of existing regulations and policies relevant to seismic strengthening of vulnerable buildings. The mixed-methods approach adopted, comprising both qualitative and quantitative approaches, revealed that some of the provisions in these regulations pose as constraints to appropriate strengthening of earthquake-prone buildings. Those provisions include the current seismic design philosophy, lack of mandatory disclosure of seismic risks and ineffective timeframes for strengthening vulnerable buildings. Recommendations arising from these research findings and implications for pre-disaster mitigation for future earthquake and Canterbury's post-disaster reconstruction suggest: (1) a reappraisal of the requirements for earthquake engineering design and construction, (2) a review and realignment of all regulatory frameworks relevant to earthquake risk mitigation, and (3) the need to develop a national programme necessary to achieve consistent mitigation efforts across the country. These recommendations are important in order to present a robust framework where New Zealand communities such as Christchurch can gradually recover after a major earthquake disaster, while planning for pre-disaster mitigation against future earthquakes.

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Felsenstein, D., & Lichter, M. (2014). Land use change and management of coastal areas: Retrospect and prospect. Ocean & coastal management, 101, 123-125.

Abstract:

The main features of the contributions to this special issue on Simulating Land Use Change in Coastal Areas are synthesized. Three key themes for coastal zone research and management are identified. These relate to the need for (1) making new analytic techniques relevant to coastal zone management, (2) communicating results to the public without inhibiting civic participation through technological over-kill and (3) designing public policy cognizant of the special conditions under which land use change operates in coastal areas.

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