246 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
113 b&w illustrations
Paperback
Release Date:14 Oct 2022
ISBN:9781978831568
Hardcover
Release Date:14 Oct 2022
ISBN:9781978831575
In the Shadow of Tungurahua
Disaster Politics in Highland Ecuador
By A.J. Faas
Rutgers University Press
In the Shadow of Tungurahua relates the stories of the people of Penipe, Ecuador living in and between several villages around the volcano Tungurahua and two resettlement communities built for people displaced by government operations following volcanic eruptions in 1999 and 2006. The stories take shape in ways that influence prevailing ideas about how disasters are produced and reproduced, in this case by shifting assemblages of the state first formed during Spanish colonialism attempting to settle (make “legible”) and govern Indigenous and campesino populations and places. The disasters unfolding around Tungurahua at the turn of the 21st century also provide lessons in the humanitarian politics of disaster—questions of deservingness, reproducing inequality, and the reproduction of bare life. But this is also a story of how people responded to confront hardships and craft new futures, about forms of cooperation to cope with and adapt to disaster, and the potential for locally derived disaster recovery projects and politics.
In the Shadow of Tungurahua is a powerful reminder of ethnography’s analytical and methodological value in the anthropological study of disasters. Weaving theoretical reflections with ethnographic storytelling, Faas examines the ways people work tirelessly to make meaningful lives in catastrophe’s aftermath and how disaster affected communities are often haunted by colonial and post-colonial political ecological processes that engender disasters. Books like this are few and far between.
This book demonstrates how deeply an anthropological eye can probe when guided by solid theory, methodology, and long and careful fieldwork. A.J. Faas makes a transformative contribution to the study of disasters and politics in Ecuador, Latin America, and the Global South. It’s a delightful read, rich in ethnographic detail and engaging prose, and a testament to the value of anthropological approaches to the study of disaster.
A. J. Faas masterfully presents the stories of residents who were affected by the 1999 and 2006 volcanic eruptions of Tungurahua in the Sierra of central Ecuador [and] provides valuable insight into the politics of disasters. The accounts and experiences of the people of Penipe following the eruption and during their resettlement are powerful, and readerswill quickly feel transported to the streets, porches, agricultural fields, and communal buildings where these events unfolded.
Tungurahua is a volcano that erupted ten years before Faas completed his fieldwork in Penipe...[L]ike the volcano, Faas’s In the Shadow of Tungurahua is similarly potent due to the scope of its scholarly interventions, for how it brings together the anthropologies of work, risk, and disaster. It is also potent for how it keeps the ethnographic encounter front and center, which breathes life into the text.'
In the Shadow of Tungurahua, by A.J. Faas, is a frame story, a structure that allows a rich tapestry of place-based stories to unfold...Faas understands the present situation of people responding to disaster not as an unexpected development but a manifestation of centuries of social and political activity in a place permanently plagued by conquest and resistance – but it is anything but simplistic.
In the Shadow of Tungurahua is a powerful reminder of ethnography’s analytical and methodological value in the anthropological study of disasters. Weaving theoretical reflections with ethnographic storytelling, Faas examines the ways people work tirelessly to make meaningful lives in catastrophe’s aftermath and how disaster affected communities are often haunted by colonial and post-colonial political ecological processes that engender disasters. Books like this are few and far between.
This book demonstrates how deeply an anthropological eye can probe when guided by solid theory, methodology, and long and careful fieldwork. A.J. Faas makes a transformative contribution to the study of disasters and politics in Ecuador, Latin America, and the Global South. It’s a delightful read, rich in ethnographic detail and engaging prose, and a testament to the value of anthropological approaches to the study of disaster.
A.J. FAAS is an associate professor of Anthropology at San José State University.
Preface
Prologue – Fire on The Mountain
Introduction – Reframing Disaster
Part I – Mobility and Legibility
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Mobilities & (Re)Settlements
Chapter 2 – Archipelagos and Bare Life
Chapter 3 – The Production of Space
Chapter 4 – The Four Walls of Bare Life
Part II – The Palimpsest of Minga
Introduction
Chapter 5 – Enduring Cooperation
Chapter 6 – Institutions
Chapter 7 – El Indigno, El Truco, El Chisme, Y El Adelanto
Part III – Recoveries
Introduction
Chapter 8 – “But We Did It”
Epilogue – Convivir
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
Prologue – Fire on The Mountain
Introduction – Reframing Disaster
Part I – Mobility and Legibility
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Mobilities & (Re)Settlements
Chapter 2 – Archipelagos and Bare Life
Chapter 3 – The Production of Space
Chapter 4 – The Four Walls of Bare Life
Part II – The Palimpsest of Minga
Introduction
Chapter 5 – Enduring Cooperation
Chapter 6 – Institutions
Chapter 7 – El Indigno, El Truco, El Chisme, Y El Adelanto
Part III – Recoveries
Introduction
Chapter 8 – “But We Did It”
Epilogue – Convivir
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
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