The authors illuminate the power relations between state actors and the local people in accessing fuelwood in Zimbabwe, and how discourses of scarcity enhance these power dynamics.
This book packs into one slender volume a sweeping tale of fire, and humanity’s interactions with fire, from prehistory to the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Christine Hansen uses the concept of deep time to challenge the idea that never-before-witnessed events are unprecedented. Using the case of a massive firestorm in 2009 in southeast Australia, she calls into question the shallow temporal frames through which deep time environmental phenomena are understood in Australian settler culture and offers an insight into often unnoticed ways in which contemporary society struggles with the colonial legacy.
Baez Ullberg presents examples of disaster recovery scenarios from Argentina and Sweden.
Sutherland explores the practice of controlled burning in Canadian national parks.
Der gezähmte Prometheus traces large fire catastrophes and the rise of the insurance business from its beginnings in fifteenth century Europe to its boom in nineteenth century globalized metropoles across the world.
A supertanker suffers an explosion while offloading oil near Genoa, Italy, triggering a huge oil spill; quick action by Italian authorities limits the extent of the disaster.