Abstract

Despite huge advances in science and technology, the UNDRR acknowledged in 2022 that current approaches to disaster risk are failing. This talk examines why. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the border between Chile and Argentina, the research centres on Copahue volcano and the transhumant Mapuche communities who live-with persistent volcanism in the context of complex colonial legacies, extreme inequalities of power and increasing environmental risk. Governance of this frontier space between nations, knowledges and worlds has always been negotiated. In this talk, I argue that an attempted evacuation of the area in 2013 brought longstanding frictions to light and examine how the risk imaginary has emerged as a key logic to justify state intervention. I suggest that an attention to rhythm offers a lens to not only understand the complexity of the Mapuche lifeworld in a way that makes sense to them, but the limitations of the risk paradigm and the violence that occurs when worlds are dismantled in its image. This talk addresses critical questions concerning pluriversal politics and the conflict of interest (between maintaining the status quo and addressing risk) that causes Disaster Risk Reduction to undermine its own agenda.