Planning emergency: Rony Brauman interviewed by Eyal Weizman
"Planning Emergency: Urbanism for the Displaced?" is the video recording of a debate at Columbia University hosted by Laura Kurgan and Peter Marcuse. Refugee camps are accelerated socio-economic change. After the emergency is over, most of the displaced will remain in the 'cities'. The new forms of political authority will not hand back their power to the old chiefs. Land will not become subject to allocation by non-monetary norms. And the forms of administration that penetrated the population during the height of the crisis will not withdraw. Humanitarian engagement is a handmaiden to this process, fuel to this locomotive of history. By providing rations that keep people alive, and temporary residence rights within a camp plus materials for shelter, relief agencies reduce the suffering and thereby reduce the friction associated with transformation. When IDP camps are established in rural areas, the residents typically become agricultural laborers, their wages subsidized by food aid. Emergency relief and its apparatus—including labels such as ‘IDP’—allow for all concerned to pretend that what is happening is something other than accelerated socio-economic change. The denial of reality may be adaptive or not. It may ease the traumas of urbanization, or it may sustain a myth of return to a pristine pre-crisis life, thereby freezing a conflict. (Alex de Waal)
send to friend
"Planning Emergency: Urbanism for the Displaced?" is the video recording of a debate at Columbia University hosted by Laura Kurgan and Peter Marcuse. Refugee camps are accelerated socio-economic change. After the emergency is over, most of the displaced will remain in the 'cities'. The new forms of political authority will not hand back their power to the old chiefs. Land will not become subject to allocation by non-monetary norms. And the forms of administration that penetrated the population during the height of the crisis will not withdraw. Humanitarian engagement is a handmaiden to this process, fuel to this locomotive of history. By providing rations that keep people alive, and temporary residence rights within a camp plus materials for shelter, relief agencies reduce the suffering and thereby reduce the friction associated with transformation. When IDP camps are established in rural areas, the residents typically become agricultural laborers, their wages subsidized by food aid. Emergency relief and its apparatus—including labels such as ‘IDP’—allow for all concerned to pretend that what is happening is something other than accelerated socio-economic change. The denial of reality may be adaptive or not. It may ease the traumas of urbanization, or it may sustain a myth of return to a pristine pre-crisis life, thereby freezing a conflict. (Alex de Waal)