Deconstructing the concept of camp governance toward practice-based theory building on post-disaster relocation

Bibliographic Data

ID6429238
AuthorsCamilla Gibbs (0000-0001-5342-5350, University of Ottawa), Kaira Zoe Alburo‐cañete (0000-0002-1302-2220, Erasmus University Rotterdam), Kaira Zoe Alburo-Cañete (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands), Kanako Iuchi (0000-0002-2036-8609, Tohoku University)
Year2025
Volume66
Issue3
Pages459-495
Publication date2025-03-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Comparative Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7152 • E-ISSN: 1568-5187
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00207152251325224
OpenAlexW4408580850
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited54

This article posits a simple, yet provocative, argument: post-disaster relocation sites are camps characterized by “incompleteness” where multiple actors seek to govern. The discursive framing of relocation sites as long-term solutions where residents are safe from natural hazards and integrate into their new communities suggests that relocation sites are not camps. Within these camp spaces, diverse actors attempt sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, forms of governance. Conceptualizing post-disaster relocation sites as camps allows us to scrutinize the governing practices that shape socio-spatial relations and subjectivities of disaster-affected people long after a “solution” to their initial displacement has supposedly been attained. By privileging the notion of “incompleteness” over “finishedness,” we better understand the tangible and invisible forces that inflect disaster recovery efforts, on one hand, and the regulations, negotiations, and resistances that transpire within these post-disaster spaces, on the other. Drawing on empirical studies of relocation sites in the Philippines and Japan, we examine camp governance. We deploy three conceptual filters—politics of loss, spatial forms and practices, and resistance—to study the assemblages of rules that shape life in resettlement sites, the unrecognized modes of meaning-making, the affects entangled in socio-spatial practices and encounters with material forms, and the resistances to prescribed “ways to live.” Such analyses explain why relocation sites are camps, and what are the implications of obscuring this conceptualization

Business · Corporate governance · Political science · Public relations · Relocation · Sociology · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Computer Science · Disaster Management and Resilience · Finance · Hydropower, Displacement, Environmental Impact

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