Anderson, B. (2016) 'Governing emergencies : the politics of delay and the logic of response.', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers., 41 (1). pp. 14-26.
Abstract
The paper focuses on the problematisation of delay in state response to the event of 7/7 in the UK in 2005 as a way of understanding how emergencies are governed. It argues that the widespread political, public and organisational concern in the UK with the delayed state is one expression of a distinct logic of governing emergencies: response. Focusing on the declaration of a ‘major incident’ by the UK emergency services, the paper argues that the logic of response is expressed in the tension between acting in an ‘interval’ as a space-time of emergence and the generation of ‘intervals’ for action. As well as following how the logic of response operates in UK emergency management, the paper offers a conceptual vocabulary designed to understand the multiplicity of ways in which emergencies are governed. Emergency is conceptualised as a ‘mode of eventfulness’ (Berlant L 2011 Cruel optimism Duke University Press, London) characterised by the hope that action will make a difference as harms, damages or losses emerge. The government of emergency involves situations ‘becoming-emergency’ through particular combinations of apparatuses of emergency and logics. The concern in the UK with delay in response to 7/7 is one example of the intersection of the logic of response with a particular apparatus based on a biopolitics of survival and the promise that lives can be saved by treating emergencies as logistical challenges.
Item Type: | Article |
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Keywords: | Emergency, Events, Response, Government, 7/7. |
Full text: | (AM) Accepted Manuscript Download PDF (302Kb) |
Status: | Peer-reviewed |
Publisher Web site: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/tran.12100 |
Publisher statement: | This is the accepted version of the following article: Anderson, B. (2015), Governing emergencies: the politics of delay and the logic of response. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41(1): 14-26, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/tran.12100. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving. |
Date accepted: | 14 August 2015 |
Date deposited: | 05 October 2015 |
Date of first online publication: | 08 October 2015 |
Date first made open access: | 08 October 2017 |
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