Neusner argues that the Judaism that emerged in late antiquity experimented with solutions to a critical and enduring issue of culture that continues to engage humanity - the crisis provoked by calamity. Exemplified in our time by the German war against the Jews from 1933-1945, in antiquity calamity took the form of the destruction in 70 C.E. of the Temple of Jerusalem and the cessation of its sacrifices, putting an end to the cultic calendar by which people had measured the passage of time in the heavens and maintained their relationship with God on earth. Resolution of this crisis required a radical solution, the reversion to prophecy, which had as a consequence restoration of world order Judaism as we know it responded then and continues to respond now to the paramount problem of that day and ours - the end of the old order and the advent of the new.

This book investigates how nature and history intertwined during the violent aftermath of the Latin American Wars of Independence. Synthesizing intellectual history and readings of textual production, The Literature of Catastrophe reimagines the emergence of the modern Latin American nation-states beyond the scope of the harmonious “foundational fictions” that marked the emergence of the nation as an organic community. Through a study of philosophical, literary and artistic representations of three catastrophic figures – earthquakes, volcanoes and epidemics – this book provides a critical model through which to refute these state-sponsored “happy narratives,” proposing instead that the emergence of the modern state in Latin America was indeed a violent event whose aftershocks are still felt today. Engaging a variety of sources and protagonists, from Simón Bolívar's manifestoes to Cesar Aira's use of landscape in his novels, from the revolutionary role mosquitoes had within the Haitian Revolution to the role AIDS played in the writing of Reinaldo Arenas' posthumous novel, Carlos Fonseca offers an original retelling of this foundational moment, recounting how history has become a site where the modern division between nature and culture collapses.

Abstract: Economic theory suggests that countries should ignore uncertainty for public investment and behave as if indifferent to risk because they can pool risks to a much greater extent than private investors can. This paper discusses the general economic theory in the case of developing countries. The analysis identifies several cases where the government's risk-neutral assumption does not hold, thus making rational the use of ex ante risk financing instruments, including sovereign insurance. The paper discusses the optimal level of sovereign insurance. It argues that, because sovereign insurance is usually more expensive than post-disaster financing, it should mainly cover immediate needs, while long-term expenditures should be financed through post-disaster financing (including ex post borrowing and tax increases). In other words, sovereign insurance should not aim at financing the long-term resource gap, but only the short-term liquidity need.

Federal disaster policy is an important but overlooked aspect of federal action that has provided a rich arena for pursuing our more general research interests concerning federal program implementation and management. May brought to the research task both a familiarity with the broad issues of federal disaster policy-having recently completed a book (May, 1985) about disaster relief policy and politics-and an understanding of the day-to-day workings of emergency management at the federal level. Williams provided the "imple mentation perspective" that undergirds the book, having previously devel oped and applied the perspective in two books (Williams, 1980a, b) about social programs. The study focuses upon the intergovernmental implementation of selected emergency management programs, primarily as played out at the federal and state levels. Our fieldwork and resultant description of disaster policy implementation allow us: (I) to analyze the implementation of selected aspects of disaster policy and to discuss federal management choices in this area; (2) to gain a greater understanding of federal program implementation under "shared governance"-a term we develop more fully in the book in referring to programs under which the federal and subnational governments share responsibility for program funding and management; and (3) to con sider the relevance of the lessons of earlier social program implementation research to a very different policy setting. Many individuals assisted us with this research. Our greatest debt is to those federal and state officials who took time from their busy schedules to offer their implementation perspectives about emergency management.

The 2008 economic and financial crisis marked the beginning of a period of social transformation and uncertainty that continues to characterise present and future social development in unplanned and unexpected ways, with frequently harmful effects. It has highlighted the need for a deeper understanding of crises phenomena and how these affect the overall course of human development. On the one hand, the social sciences constitute a means for acquiring a better understanding of the character of the rapid and complex social transformations associated with crises. On the other hand, they can orientate people and social practices on how a greater degree of collective and democratic control can be acquired over the manner and direction of social processes in crises contexts. This book brings together a team of international scholars to address the notion of crises. Two main strains of inquiry orientate this study. First, it questions how different sociological and theoretical approaches might contribute to explain crises phenomena, analyse their effects, and identify their potential future paths of development. Secondly, it considers how crises processes and their effects on human social existence demand a re-thinking of the role of the social sciences in society, and what such a role might be. This volume not only opens up future lines of research by providing a comprehensive approach to crises phenomena, but also fills an important gap in the literature about crises which is frequently focused on only one of these dimensions and on particular historical contexts, rather than producing more comprehensive frameworks regarding the study of crises processes as a whole.

Drawing a transdisciplinary perspective, this book investigates the ways in which gender intersect with rebuilding and post-disaster recovery process. It shows how climate-induced disasters as well as the recent COVID-19 pandemic have impacted human lives and livelihoods across various global socioeconomic conditions, sociopolitical conditions, and the gendered relationships from the Global South perspective. From the real experiences of the people vulnerable to disasters, this book identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the post-disaster management in different contexts. The varied roles and responsibilities of men and women in different countries are also examined. It is often hard to understand how local and global politics are involved in humanitarian aid. This book also shows how lower-income and under-privileged communities are deprived of their right to access relief and rehabilitation due to political involvement. This text also highlights effective methods of policy implementation for achieving sustainable recovery from these humanitarian crises. It will assist strategy planners and policymakers to focus on gender-based barriers and political hindrances as well as geological and socioeconomic factors in planning inclusive post-disaster activities. The book will be of interest to researchers, postgraduate students and scholars in the fields of Sociology, Social Anthropology, Development Studies, Gender and Cultural Studies, Area Studies, Human Geography, Disaster Management, Forestry and Environmental Science.