Governing Disaster

New York University, Department of Environmental STudies

Fall 2023                             

How do governments and markets maintain their power and legitimacy in a world of accelerating disasters, from floods and droughts to heat waves and pandemics? To answer this question, the course examines the mutual constitution of modern government, markets, and disasters: how governments and markets produce ostensibly “natural” disasters and how such disasters, in turn, legitimate the powers of government and deepen market rule. It traces the governmental, technological, and scientific techniques through which environmental hazards are not only reconfigured to protect certain populations over others, but also how certain hazards become knowable and visible as a “disaster,” while others are made unknowable, invisible, or routine in the interests of maintaining ruling class power.

Syllabus available here.