Disasters and Politics ─ Materials, Experiments, Preparedness

Sociological Review Monograph Featured on THINKING ALLOWED (Radio 4) on 29th January and 5th February 2014

Contributions from the most recent Sociological Review Monograph, SOCIOLOGIES OF MODERATION (edited by Alex Smith and John Holmwood), will feature on Radio 4's Thinking Allowed on 29 January and 5 February. While 'moderation' was once a potent social idea and ideal grounded in compelling cultural, intellectual and religious traditions, it has in recent decades fallen out of fashion as political forms engage with mass consumerism, neoliberal economics and religious fundamentalisms.
Against this background, and in an age characterised by excess and extremism, SOCIOLOGIES OF MODERATION offers a sociological reappraisal of the intellectual foundations and contemporary salience of moderation. The importance and timeliness of its arguments will be discussed on Laurie Taylor's programme.

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Arguing that disasters configure the political in new ways, this collection provides a truly international insight into how they can help us to understand the materiality and the pragmatics of politics. As events of radical disruption, disasters can also lead to a re-evaluation of the very definition of the political itself. In exploring these issues, the collection brings together disaster studies, with political theory and science and technology studies, to stimulate a more robust conversation between disciplines and feed into broader sociological debates.

• Takes an innovative approach to the relationship between disasters and the nature, composition, and effects of the political
• Leading experts scrutinize how events of radical disruption enable a re-evaluation and redefinition of the political, and the tools and processes through which this happens
• Comparative case studies give an unrivalled geographic scope, covering Australia, Europe, South America, and the United Kingdom and United States
• Brings together disaster studies, political theory, and science and technology studies to stimulate broader sociological debate
• Combines empirical and theoretical approaches to provide an essential teaching resource for graduate and postgraduate students and to open up this dynamic field for mainstream sociology researchers and academics

Michael Guggenheim is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, researching how disaster experts conceive of the population. He has also worked with Bernd Kraftner and Judith Kroll of shared inc. on a qualitative laboratory for disaster and emergency provision forecasting, and an exhibition on science and the public. His previous research has focused on the change of use of buildings and how materiality and use interrelate and he studied environmental experts for his PhD. He is the author of Organisierte Umwelt. Umweltdienstleistungsfirmen Zwischen Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft Und Politik (2005) and co-editor of Re-Shaping Cities: How Global Mobility Transforms Architecture and Urban Form (2010).

Israel Rodriguez-Giralt is Lecturer in Social Psychology at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona. His research aims to connect the study of social movements with science and technology studies. For his PhD he studied the role that social movements played in politicizing Donana's Disaster, one of the most serious environmental controversies in the recent history of Spain. His current research focuses on the processes and practices mediating political participation and mobilization in public controversies around social care policies.

Manuel Tironi is Assistant Professor at the Instituto de Sociologia, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. His research focuses on public engagement, disasters, envirotech controversies and large technical systems. He is currently investigating the performative nature of participatory devices in catastrophic settings and the configuration of the GMO controversy in Chile. He is the author, with Fernando Perez, of SCL: Practicas, Espacios y Cultura Urbana (2009).