Lecture
ISGA Research Seminar: 'The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security'
- Date
- Thursday 14 April 2022
- Time
- Serie
- ISGA Research Seminar Series 2022
- Address
-
Wijnhaven
Turfmarkt 99
2511 DP The Hague - Room
- Common room ISGA, and via Teams.
About this research seminar
From pandemic disease to the disasters associated with global warming, to cyberattacks, today we face an increasing array of catastrophic threats. It is striking that, despite the diversity of these threats, experts and officials approach them in common terms: as future events that threaten to disrupt the vital, vulnerable systems upon which modern life depends.
The Government of Emergency tells the story of how this now taken-for-granted way of understanding and managing emergencies arose. Amid the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, an array of experts and officials working in obscure government offices developed a new understanding of the nation as a complex of vital, vulnerable systems. They invented technical and administrative devices to mitigate the nation’s vulnerability, and organized a distinctive form of emergency government that would make it possible to prepare for and manage potentially catastrophic events.
Through these conceptual and technical inventions, Stephen Collier and Andrew Lakoff argue, vulnerability was defined as a particular kind of problem, one that continues to structure the approach of experts, officials, and policymakers to future emergencies.
About the speaker
Andrew Lakoff holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Sociology and Communication. He was trained as an anthropologist of science and medicine, and has conducted research in Argentina, France and the United States. His areas of interest include globalization processes, the history of the human sciences, contemporary social theory, and risk society.
For whom?
The research seminars are open to all levels of seniority - ranging from PhD candidates to senior professors in order to ensure a vibrant exchange and also feed-back opportunities for all.
More information
For further information and the teams link, please contact Dr Lydie Cabane.