Visual Methodologies : Theorizing Disasters and International Relations

There is an increase in extreme weather conditions due to human-induced climate change. Their impacts are most severely felt by the marginalized and the poor in the Global South. Increasingly, study of international relations focuses on the varied forms of disasters and the global politics that emerge around them. Disaster studies scholarship actively challenges the myth of existence of “natural disasters.” Instead of defining them as being “natural,” disasters are conceived as serious disruptions to the functioning of a community or a society with human, material, economic, or environmental losses. The disaster concept is thus separated, first, from hazards such as earthquakes, cyclones, and floods, and “disaters” are not limited to events resulting from natural hazards. Disasters emerge also as a result of major economic and political instabilities due to the nature of the contemporary global political economy and global financial crises. Disasters also include those that often go unnoticed such as violent conflicts or famines, and also include global pandemics such as Ebola and COVID-19. Disasters understood in this way also include aftermaths of resource extractivism and settler coloniality. The intersection of disasters and visual methodologies offers insights into theorizing International Relations nature, the everyday, and the politics of disasters. This article focuses on such visual and audiovisual scholarship that has predominantly emerged from, and actively engages with, collaborative visual methodologies and a rethinking of research processes. Such works offer insights into critical exploration of academic knowledge production processes and praxis, suggesting that visual is not a method, but a methodological and ethical choice. Research processes adopting photo-elicitation, graphic novels and comics, and films in specific disaster contexts challenge text-dominated scholarship and offer reflection on the roles between the researcher and researched, and on the question of authorship. Turning to visuals also brings to the fore questions of representations and the strategic use of the visual in the overall scholarly storytelling practice. Further, scholars have suggested that instead of focusing on the visual devices, or the visual products, visual methodologies as a process orientation allow questions related to democratizing and accessibility to the research process to be addressed, weighing up whose priorities matter, that is, making research useful for (Indigenous) communities and resisting legacies of the imperial shutter.Peer reviewe

Scraps of Hope in Banda Aceh

Scraps of Hope in Banda Aceh examines the rebuilding of the city of Banda Aceh in Indonesia in the aftermath of the celebrated Helsinki-based peace mediation process, thirty years of armed conflict, and the tsunami. Offering a critical contribution to the study of post-conflict politics, the book includes 14 documentary videos reflecting individuals’ experiences on rebuilding the city and following the everyday lives of people in Banda Aceh. Marjaana Jauhola mirrors the peace-making process from the perspective of the ‘outcast’ and invisible, challenging the selective narrative and ideals of the peace as a success story. Jauhola provides alternative ways to reflect the peace dialogue using ethnographic and film documentarist storytelling. Scraps of Hope in Banda Aceh tells a story of layered exiles and displacement, revealing hidden narratives of violence and grief while exposing struggles over gendered expectations of being good and respectable women and men. It brings to light the multiple ways of arranging lives and forming caring relationships outside the normative notions of nuclear family and home, and offers insights into the relations of power and violence that are embedded in the peace

Journeys in Aidland : An Autobiographic Exploration of Resistance to Development Aid

The article is inspired by autobiographical and auto-ethnographic approaches to studying international relations, development and humanitarian aid.1 It consists of a collage of the authors’ personal experiences in two post-disaster contexts, respectively in Aceh, Indonesia and Haiti, and presents a dialogue between two autobiographical stories that reveal the shared experiences and emotional labour of the humanitarian aid practice. Addressing questions such as “What does it mean to feel like an outsider?”; “Outsider to what?”; “Is being an outsider a failure or a strategy of resistance?” This article circulates around the themes of mobility, temporality, intersections of class, gender and ‘whiteness’, and how they are embedded within the materiality and spatiality of humanitarian aid. Feelings of separation and discomfort point towards an opening for critical discussion on the ways in which these practices are both maintained and resisted. Although considered as an important vehicle for the care of the self, the authors struggle to offer any easy solutions, recognising their privilege of confession, and the risk of becoming trapped in the familiar circulation of truths of the Global North.Peer reviewe

Journeys in Aidland: An Autobiographic Exploration of Resistance to Development Aid

Abstract: The article is inspired by autobiographical and auto-ethnographic approaches to studying international relations, development and humanitarian aid.1 It consists of a collage of the authors’ personal experiences in two post-disaster contexts, respectively in Aceh, Indonesia and Haiti, and presents a dialogue between two autobiographical stories that reveal the shared experiences and emotional labour of the humanitarian aid practice. Addressing questions such as “What does it mean to feel like an outsider?”; “Outsider to what?”; “Is being an outsider a failure or a strategy of resistance?” This article circulates around the themes of mobility, temporality, intersections of class, gender and ‘whiteness’, and how they are embedded within the materiality and spatiality of humanitarian aid. Feelings of separation and discomfort point towards an opening for critical discussion on the ways in which these practices are both maintained and resisted. Although considered as an important vehicle for the care of the self, the authors struggle to offer any easy solutions, recognising their privilege of confession, and the risk of becoming trapped in the familiar circulation of truths of the Global North

Welcome to ‘Indonesia’! Feminist Readings of “teach yourself Indonesian” Self-Learning Language Course1

Coinciding with the celebration of 80 years of Sumpah Pemuda 1928, this paper offers a feminist close reading of the “teach yourself Indonesian” self-learning language material. “Teach yourself Indonesian” offers for the English speaking world, ways to learn bahasa Indonesian, but it also offers ways to “discover” Indonesia and Indonesians. The close reading provided in this paper draws from the perspective that concepts, ideas and norms are constituted through reiteration in everyday social practices, such through repetition of the sixteen learning units of the “teach yourself Indonesian”. This paper aims to illustrate from the readings of the learning units, who are the “normalized” students of Indonesian language, and who, on the other hand, Indonesians and Indonesia with whom the students will interact, with a particular focus on constructs and boundaries of gender norms. Paper also briefly reflects the “forgotten” events of May 1998, that form an important part of the authors process of learning Indonesia(n)

Welcome to ‘Indonesia’! : Feminist Readings of “teach yourself Indonesian” Self-Learning Language Course

Non peer reviewe

Scraps of Home : Banda Acehnese Life Narratives Contesting the Reconstruction Discourse of a Post-Tsunami City that is ‘Built Back Better’

Peer reviewe

Co-Creation Through Quilting : Connected Entanglements and Disruptions With Care

Non peer reviewe