Vivian Y. Chois portrayal and analysis of how disasters are endured by people, portrayed by the media and strategized by governments as well as her descriptions of the different kinds of sensing that disasters provoke-from scientists and people living in disaster zones to the governments disaster warning systems-are exemplary and important. With this analysis, she draws disaster studies into an important stream of work in the history and anthropology of science that examines forms of knowledge and knowledge representation that secure legitimacy in different historical and cultural settings. - Kim Fortun, author of Advocacy after Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders
For ordinary people in Sri Lanka, disasters come in multiple fronts and layers. Vivian Y. Chois beautiful, rich, and deeply original ethnography teaches us how to address complex lives within the global South, forcing us to think about disasters and disaster management as political projects and to prioritize how ordinary people in Sri Lanka inhabit lives informed by a constant sense of danger. This book is a gift to us all. - Sharika Thiranagama, author of In My Mother's House: Civil War in Sri Lanka
As fires, floods, pandemics, and warfare increasingly compete for collective attention, what happens to ideas about futurity and governance? Vivian Y. Choi not only unpacks the when of disaster in Sri Lanka; she provides a vital new grammar for understanding how national security is remade as amplifying precarity. An indispensable contribution to understanding our troubled times. - Joseph Masco, author of The Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive World-Making
