Behind the Slow Disaster Lab

Master’s student at KAIST Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy

Anastasiia Kulikova

anastasiia862@kaist.ac.kr

The Slow Disaster Lab

Disasters have often been perceived as something uncontrollable and unexpected. However, this notion is not that simple, as it involves social history, public policy, emerging technologies, and governance. It may seem to be hard to grasp, that is why you need to take it slow…Slow Disaster Lab is aimed at revealing the whole truth about disasters that you have never heard about. Fasten your seatbelts, we are about to explore the “slow disaster” concept together!

Slow Disaster Lab was founded in February 2021 by its head, Professor Scott Gabriel Knowles, a historian of disaster worldwide and a faculty member of the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy. The initial idea of the establishment of this project was to create a community of young researchers, who are interested in working on the concept of “slow disaster”. Be prepared to take a deep dive into the concept and explore the perspectives on this notion from Professor Knowles and his team!

“Slow Disaster”: In the words of Professor Knowles

“The “slow disaster” concept is a direct refutation of the idea of disaster as an event. Conceptually speaking, disasters have over the last 200 years been conceived of by governments as events (something unexpected that causes damage, and that public officials can do very little about). That is the way government officials often portray disaster. However, the “slow disaster” concept is meant to be a correction of that idea, which is initially wrong, as disasters are deep historically. Governments, trying to frame disasters as events, think of them as something that can be managed with legal tools. However, when it is mismanaged, the blame is placed upon nature, or upon technology, or upon citizens without putting the correct emphasis of the blame and responsibility on government itself. Nonetheless, not only governments carry responsibility for disasters, but also private sector and firms that create wealth bring about the risk. This concept closely correlates with the ideas of the German risk sociologist Ulrich Beck. He perceives “risk society” as a notion, in which with the development of capitalism, wealth and risk are created simultaneously, but risk is not apportioned equally. Risk and disaster fall heavier on the heads and the shoulders of people, who live in unsafe places and who do not have the wealth and political power to protect themselves from dangers. For example, forest fires or plant explosions or the slow, grinding, everyday destruction of infrastructures. So, we must perceive risk and disaster as inseparable features of capitalism and modern governance. The “slow disaster” concept in a broader sense is a way to critique modern techno-science, modern government, and the modern political economy in the late capitalist society.

According to this approach, Slow Disaster Lab is a close reading of public policy, where we try to intervene in it usefully when we can. It is also about paying attention to what happens in high-tech firms that build new technologies, which may be helpful to protect property and lives, but at the same time might be contributing to risk overall in the broader context of the Anthropocene. We also pay a lot of attention to disasters themselves, which are the part of much longer, slower, more dangerous social processes, such as poverty, or infrastructure degradation, or environmental destruction. We should portray disaster as a process, not as a single event. We pay a lot of attention in Slow Disaster Lab to the fires, and the floods, and to climate change: to all of these different kinds of agents. In our studies we also put emphasis on the state violence as well as deeper, longer injustices, such as bad labor practices or even enslavement, which are all part of processes of harm production. So, we pay closer attention to public policy, social history, cultural history, ethnography and even immerse ourselves as co-producers of knowledge with bereaved families and disaster survivors.”

“Slow disaster”: In the words of Lab members

Seulgi Lee: ““Slow disaster” is an umbrella concept that allows us to look at the long-term processes that lead to disasters, rather than perceiving them as single, fragmented events. When we think of disasters, we often remember dramatic events that happen suddenly and can be pinpointed to a time or place. Especially in a world where we live in a technological complex that is intertwined with various substances, it is difficult to define and draw a simple line for disasters. Environmental pollution or climate change are good examples. The “slow disaster” concept helps me to develop critical analysis on a temporal scale when I observe a phenomenon. More specifically, I began to think in a way that “it may not be called a disaster in the government’s disaster management standards right now, but it is moving towards a form of disaster in some way.”

Jerry Kim: “The concept of “slow disaster” is a new paradigm that changes the approach to disasters, which were previously only instantaneous events, by adding the dimension of continuous time and space to a one-dimensional event and expanding it to three dimensions. This allows for a multidimensional analysis of the three-dimensional influences and interrelationships before, during, and after a disaster. It is a useful tool. I am studying the forced servitude of modern people by capital and the resulting deprivation of self-actualization opportunities, which would have been unrelated to the traditional concept of disaster, but by reinterpreting it from the perspective of a slow disaster and diagnosing it as a crisis, I can begin to solve the problem.”

Cheolhoon Moon: “A slow disaster is a process that happens gradually over a wide time scale, has a wide range of manifestations, and is not a one-time event, but rather an ongoing process. It is also a very broad concept that encompasses the subsequent impacts of a particular disaster after it has occurred. Thus, by analyzing not only the disaster event itself, but also the social, environmental, political, and policy factors that led to its occurrence, as well as the various and complex impacts and interrelationships after the disaster, “slow disaster” notion contributes to disaster preparedness, the need for follow-up actions expressed in various aspects, and the strengthening of disaster resilience.”

Hyuna Keum: “The concept of “slow disaster” requires people to think about certain risks, harms, injustice, and violence in a longer stretch of time and a broader span of space. Slow disaster occurs invisibly often due to structural and systematic forces accumulated over time. It requires social, political, and economic processes to unpack slow disasters, which cannot be resolved with one-size-fit-all policy solutions. Rather, alternative and thick narratives are required to fully contextualize slow disaster and therefore layers of sociopolitical support are needed to move away from slow disaster”.

Hyeonbin Park: “”Slow disaster” is a historical and structural process of the disaster. A disaster event, any type of harm and risk, is a snapshot of the longer version shaped by sociocultural, and political contexts producing vulnerability and injustice associated with the disaster. The concept of “slow disaster” leads to the investigation and analysis of broader temporal and spatial dimensions of disasters in doing research as well as drawing policy implications. This process is not limited to helping the operation of the so-called disaster management cycle (response, recovery, prevention, preparedness). Slow disaster asks more reflexive and critical questions about the trajectories of disasters, societies, and futures. Personally, various disasters in Korea and the global, for example the Sewol Ferry disaster, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic, became a kind of opportunity for political enlightenment, the notion of slow disaster shed light on engaging in those issues as a researcher.”

Joelle Champalet: ““Slow disaster” is a concept that invites us to rethink the traditional understanding of disaster as an event fixed in one-point in time, accidental and often unpredictable, out of human’s ability to control. Instead, disasters should be thought of as the result of an accumulation of social, political and economic factors over the long-term. Disasters and damages concurrent to so-called disasters could be avoided or reduced if those accumulating factors are properly understood and recognized, advocating for a transformation of the unequal relationships from which disasters often arise. Recognizing these various factors also allows us to broaden our vision of what disasters are and who is concerned by disasters.”

Anastasiia Kulikova: ““Slow disaster” is a complex, multifaceted concept that allows society to break the myths about disastrous events. It stretches the social history in time, having deep roots and highlighting consequences that the researchers and governments deal with. A huge and crucial part of this notion is memorialization and commemoration of such events to remind people of great losses in the bereaved families and setting a wake up call for action to change the current laws, legal norms and, most important, the attitude to and perception of such events. Disaster studies go beyond the event that has occurred in the society, it is a hole that should be filled with better governments, better decision-making process, better mindsets.”

Disaster Haggyo as a prime source for disaster research

The wide variety and impact of disasters globally demands new approaches to research, collaboration, and disaster justice. The Disaster Haggyo is a disaster studies school aimed at accelerating the implementation of cutting-edge disaster research for maximum benefit to communities. The Disaster Haggyo draws social scientists, engineers, artists, and scientists together for collaborative research. The Disaster Haggyo facilitates deep learning in the ways that disaster history shapes the present vulnerabilities and strengths of a community. Disaster-impacted communities need a greater voice in disaster research and policy formation if there is to be measurable progress against the slow disasters of industrial pollution, climate change, and the threat of new disease outbreaks.

Disaster Haggyo Timeline

Professor Knowles: “Disaster Haggyo was founded as a way to put the principles of the Slow disaster Lab into practice. It is a disaster school, which is co-created by Slow disaster Lab participants as well as bereaved families, advocates for disaster justice, artists, students and public officials. We situate the Disaster Haggyo activities in a number of different sites: at universities, at disaster sites themselves, as well as at sites, where bereaved families and disaster survivors do their work to try to appeal for deeper understanding to what happened and where they appeal for justice.

Our first Disaster Haggyo in 2022 focused on disaster justice in South Korea. The emphasis was put on the Sewol Ferry disaster (April 16, 2014) and the Jeju 4.3 massacre (April 3, 1948 – May 13, 1949). These are different types of disasters in completely different time frames, albeit sharing the emphasis on telling the story, understanding the stories of survivors and bereaved families as well as the political processes that they are engaged in in pursuit of justice.

In 2023 our Disaster Haggyo turned out to be comparative, as we conducted it both in South Korea, continuing our focus on Sewol Ferry incident, and Japan, where we expanded our focus to include Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures in relation to the triple disaster that involved a severe earthquake, tsunami as well as Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (March 11, 2011). We also went to Hiroshima to focus on the United States atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945. It is important to look across different types of disasters, to focus on the commonalities between them and what makes them similar is the experience of survivors and bereaved families and the experience of researchers, who are seeking to understand and to try to build a more just society by understanding disasters in a deeper way.

The third Disaster Haggyo will take place in April, around the 10th anniversary of the Sewol Ferry disaster. We are going to bring the same methods, have an international cast of experts and researchers, artists as well as disaster justice advocates, bereaved family members and survivors all working together in mutual aid to try to raise awareness, deepen our knowledge and push for disaster justice. The term “disaster justice” is used several times in order to emphasize that it means reducing harms, reducing the condition that causes harm (a disaster itself) and also seeking justice for those people who have suffered unfairly and to make sure that they do not suffer silently. The academy and university have deep responsibilities in a democracy to understand the forces that cause disaster, to bring relief to people and to teach the next generation of researchers how to do this work. That is what the Slow Disaster Lab is dedicated to, that is what my life is dedicated to (Professor Knowles) and that is what Disaster Haggyo 2024 will be dedicated to.”