ABSTRACT
In 1966 Abney and Hill published a paper that showed Hurricane Betsy, a disaster responsible for the deaths of seventy-five people in New Orleans to have been “a thoroughly political event”.1 Since that publication there is now a general consensus that natural disasters do not just occur in a physical space, they occur in a social and political context as well.2 This body of work illustrates that climatic disasters impact political space and identify a need to understand the way in which these political changes occur
and how mobilisation takes place. Despite this recognition, Pelling and Dill point out that “few studies step back from technical dilemmas to question the political implications of disaster and response”. They emphasise the missed opportunity in allowing a number of post-disaster political movements to go under-theorised due to lack of serious academic engagement.3
