Monday 28 October 2024,  2.00-4.00pm GMT

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Fun as Detour: An Anthropology of Play in Disaster Preparedness

Dr Chika Watanabe (University of Manchester)

Chaired by Dr Jamie Coates (University of Sheffield)

In preparing for the possibility of mass disasters, preparedness educators often use fun and playful methods to help people be ready and survive potentially catastrophic events. Based on ethnographic research among preparedness educators in Japan and Chile, in this paper, I examine the cultural logic and mechanism of fun in orienting people toward a fearful future. While scholarly analyses tend to frame preparedness and disaster management as techniques of governance and discipline, preparedness educators in two of the most seismic countries in the world indicate that a more light-touch approach is needed to coax people to become prepared citizens. Ultimately, this paper shows that an anthropology of play is critical in understanding processes of subject-making in an age of disasters and climate breakdown.

Bio

Chika Watanabe is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. Her current book project examines how playful methods of preparedness such as the use of games orient people toward the future based on what she calls a logic of fragility, a commitment to make survival possible for as many people as possible while accepting that life can fall apart at any moment, despite all efforts. She also continues to work on the project Voces de Resiliencia, a collaboration with researchers and practitioners in Chile to transform life histories and intergenerational relations into resources for disaster education. She is also co-lead of the project Patchwork Ethnography.