Waiting for the Big One - Mazel-Cabasse, Charlotte

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Résumé :
This book helps understand how the future Big One (a large-scale and often-predicted earthquake) is understood, defined, and mitigated by experts, scientists, and residents in the San Francisco Bay Area. Following the idea that earthquake risk is multiple and hard to grasp, the book explores the earthquake?s ?mode of existence,? guiding the reader through different epistemic moments of the earthquake-risk definition. Through in-depth interviews, the book provides a rarely seen anthropology of risk from the perspective of experts, scientists, and concerned residents for whom the possibility of partial or complete destruction of their living environment is a constant companion of their everyday lives. It argues that the characterization of the threats and the measures taken to limit its impacts constitute an integrated part of both their residential experiences and their professional practices.

Biographie:
Charlotte Mazel-Cabasse, PhD, is the Executive Director of the Center for Digital Humanities, jointly developed by the University and the Polytechnic School of Lausanne, Switzerland. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography and Science and Technologies Studies from the University of Paris-Est, an MA in Cultural Geography from Universit? de Reims, France, and an MA and BA in Information and Communications Sciences from the ?cole des Hautes ?tudes en Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication (CELSA) at Universit? Paris Sorbonne. ...

Sommaire:
Chapter 1. Introduction?1.1 A Questioning Situation1.1 The Uncertain Space of Risk1.1.1 The Multiple Existences of the Earthquake in the Bay Area1.1.2 About the Actant, Agency and Assemblages1.2 Paying Attention to the Process of Insturation1.2.1 Defining Souriau's Concept of Insturation1.2.2 About the Following ChaptersChapter 2. The Multiples Existences of the Earthquake Risk2.1 Thinking With Disaster2.1.1 The Apparent Paradox of the Bay Area2.1.2 Situated Knowledge and Multiple Perspectives2.1.3 Making the Risk Visible2.1.4 Waiting for the Big One2.2 The Denial of Topography and the Exploitation of Nature2.2.1 Nature as a Resource2.2.2 The Multiple Ecologies of the Bay Area2.2.3 Entangled Inscriptions of Risk2.2.3.1 Visible Trace 1: Mapping the Faults2.2.3.2 Visible Trace 2: The California Memorial Stadium2.2.3.3 Visible Trace 3: The BridgesChapter 3. Traumatic Legacies: Shaping the Space of Risk3.1 The Oakland Fire Controversies3.1.1 Inquiring About the Traces of the Fire3.1.2 A Surprising Field Research3.1.3 Delimiting the Fire3.1.3.1 The Fire: A Recollection Attempt3.1.3.2 Living Through the Fire: The Emotional Measure of Space3.2 Transformation of Space After the Disaster3.2.1 A Science and Technology Tale from 19063.2.1.1 The Complex Legacy of the Big One3.2.2 Hybrid Science, Hybrid Scientists3.2.2.1 Movement and Science3.2.2.2 Science and Dependence3.2.2.3 Distance and Attention3.2.2.4 Distance and Attachment3.2.2.5 The Expert as Amateur3.3 A Network of Attention to the RiskChapter 4. Living with Risks4.1 Seizing the Earthquake as a Phenomenon4.1.1 Did you Feel It?4.1.2 Seeing the Quake: The Indirect Experience from Elsewhere4.2 Emotions that Connect4.2.1 Joking About the End of the World4.2.2 Dealing with Fear, Defining and Identity4.2.3 Habit, Denial and the Un-extroardinary Existence of the Earthquake Risk4.3 Hybrid Knowledge4.3.1 Knowing th eRisk4.3.2 Attending Uncertainty: About Fate, Chance, and the Metaphysical Dimension of the Risk4.4 Transformative Aspects of an EarthquakeChapter 5. The Case for Not Letting San Francisco Collapse5.2.1 Translation 1: From Event to Knowledge5.2.2 Translation 2: Monitoring the Earth's Crust5.2.2.1 Tool Box5.2.2.2 Failures of Translation: The Parkfield Experiment5.2.2.3 New Developments, Old Patterns5.2.3 Translation 3: A Step Towards Safety5.2.3.1 Creation of a Legislative Body5.2.3.2 Cities' Resilience5.2.3.3 The Regional Level: An Example of Infrastructure5.2.3.4 The Local Level: The Example of Soft-Story Buildings5.3 A Transition Still to be Built: Between Science, Expertise, and Public MobilizationChapter 6. What (Sociotechnical) Resilience is Made of: Personal Trajectories and Earthquake Risk Mitigation in the San Francisco Bay Area6.1.1 Genealogy of Sociotechnical Resilience as a Process6.1.1.1 Laying the Foundations: The First Steps Toward Resilient Infrastructures6.1.1.2 The Materialization of Resilience6.1.2 Never Again: The Trauma That Comes First6.1.2.1 Emotional Bonding and Politics: The Co-Construction of Resilience6.1.3 Fragile Infrastructure, Fragile ResilienceChapter 7. ConclusionPostfaceAppendix A - Some Definitions