ABSTRACT
There are plenty of natural-and human-induced disasters these days. There are also plenty of organizations to respond to these; the powerful and well-funded disaster-response machine is made up of global, international, national, and local institutions and organizations. As the media develops its own stories, exaggerating and dramatizing selected views or events such as killer waves, huge piles of rubble, and/or mass graves, and reports these extensively and intensively, disasters take shape as high-profile events. The media has already made natural disasters more significant than the everyday slow violence seen in poverty, discrimination, and “development.” The discourse is so hegemonic, and the disaster response machine is so hefty, it is expensive to keep it idling (Klein 2007); disaster seems a necessity. The donor countries and agencies not only assume they have a responsibility and a right to help disaster victims, but they also expect the victims to receive their help and the governments to allow the flow of outside aid. This was highly evident when the US government threatened the government of Myanmar to forcefully deliver aid for the victims of a 2005 hurricane. Social and political power is, therefore, built into the disaster discourse, privileging some stories over others (ibid.). The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 was historically one of the most devastating disasters to strike the region, affecting many countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand. Responses to the disaster were quick and profound: Many global, foreign, and national agencies swiftly came to the help of victims. The story has been told many times from the donors’ and providers’ vantage points: The goals and achievements of their relief, response, and recovery work have been documented by the agencies themselves. This chapter concerns the survivors’ recovery process. Along with aid, the donor agencies and service providers imported their ideas and visions; most of the time these were imposed on the victims they undertook to
serve. The support agencies also connected the victims and their locales to faraway places from which the resources, personnel, and aid originated and to new global and national networks, flows, and processes, thus developing a space of disaster response. This chapter focuses on New Kalametiya, a post-tsunami settlement in Hambantota District, Sri Lanka (Figure 6.1).1
