Event overview
with Adom Philogene Heron. Part of Department of Anthropology Autumn Term Seminar Series
On 18th September 2017 Hurricane Maria devastated the Eastern Caribbean island of Dominica. This paper refracts questions of human climatic “resilience” through the prism of social relations. Herein, it asks how Caribbean people utilise interpersonal networks, patterns of sociality and kinship relations to mitigate the exigencies of increasingly violent hurricanes.
The paper draws on the narratives of three Dominicans: a librarian who recollects moments of familial support during hurricane David (1979); the post-Maria dislocation of a young woman who ventures through an extended kin network, finding herself adrift in East London, far from loved ones; and a teacher and mother, who finally gets her “papers” for America—reunited with her husband after years of waiting, yet, forced to leave her parents at home.
These narratives chart the social debris of Maria, while illustrating the ambivalent routes people take to reassemble their lives. They present kinship togetherness amidst chaos, an uprooted life in waiting, and the sudden acceleration of a long-anticipated familial migration.
Here, “resilience” is revealed to be ethnographically fraught: not something one simply posses or lacks, but a quality of social relations and narratives of hope that is ever incomplete and bittersweet.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 21 Nov 2018 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm |
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