Governing emergencies

The politics of delay and the logic of response

Bibliographic Data

ID8962376
AuthorsBen Anderson (0000-0002-9541-6142, Department of Geography Durham University Durham DH1 3LE, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume41
Issue1
Pages14-26
Publication date2015-10-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/tran.12100
OpenAlexW2127642356
LanguageEN
Citations received38
References cited34

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

Biopower · Declaration · Emergency response · Law and economics · Medical emergency · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Disaster Management and Resilience · Disaster Response and Management · Global Security and Public Health · Law · Medicine

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