S10E6 - Latin America, the Caribbean, and Plural Worlds of Disaster Thinking

Episode overview Episode 6 marks a shift in Season 10 from thematic conversations to regional perspectives, focusing on Latin America (and the Caribbean) as rich sites of critical disaster thinking. The episode foregrounds intellectual traditions that challenge Eurocentric assumptions in disaster studies and emphasizes plurality, dialogue, and the politics of knowledge production.

Hosts

• Jason von Meding

• Ksenia Chmutina

Guests

• Giovanni Gugg — cultural anthropologist and lecturer in urban anthropology, working on risk cultures, disaster response, and activism in vulnerable urban territories

• Anna Süsina — Lecturer in Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University; scholar of communication, social change, participatory media, and power asymmetries

• Victor Marchezini — sociologist at the Brazilian Early Warning Center and professor at INPE; leading voice in the sociology of disasters in Brazil

Key themes

• Latin American and Indigenous intellectual traditions in disaster studies

• Reading beyond English-language and Eurocentric canons

• Development, coloniality, and the production of vulnerability

• Plural futures, pluriverses, and alternative ontologies

• Dialogue, pedagogy, and critical hope

• Translation, language, and epistemic justice

• Activism, civic responsibility, and scholarship

Core discussion highlights

• Guests reflect on their reading practices, emphasizing podcasts, oral traditions, hard-copy books, and texts emerging from social movements, Indigenous communities, and Latin American critical scholarship.

• Victor Marchezini discusses the influence of Paulo Freire, highlighting dialogue, pedagogy, oppression in everyday life, and the importance of critical hope in teaching, research, and disaster practice.

• Giovanni explores Arturo Escobar’s critique of development and his concept of the pluriverse, applying it to disaster risk and urbanization around Mount Vesuvius. Disaster planning is framed as a cultural and political process, not only a technical one.

• Anna Süsina reflects on Indigenous thinking through Ailton Krenak, emphasizing relational worldviews, the human–non-human relationship, and the idea that the dominant relationship with Earth is itself a disaster.

• The conversation challenges the asymmetry between “scientific” and Indigenous knowledge, arguing for equal legitimacy and meaningful translation rather than extraction or tokenism.

• Translation is discussed as both a political challenge and a creative possibility—across languages, disciplines, generations, and even between humans and non-humans.

• The guests collectively stress the dangers of time compression in disaster scholarship, where urgency crowds out long-term thinking, historical analysis, and ethical engagement.