Paper short abstract:

Tacking back and forth between disaster preparedness actors’ struggles for the present and that of anthropologists’, this paper explores how the subjunctive mode of playfulness (the ‘as if’) and the ethos of patchwork ethnography might help both groups of experts keep hold of what is in front of us.

Paper long abstract:

Disasters are ordinarily approached as issues of the future (e.g. prediction) or the past (e.g. memory). But for many advocates of disaster preparedness and risk reduction in Japan and Chile, the struggle is for the present. How do we make the prospect of a mass disaster that might or might not happen in one’s lifetime, present in people’s everyday lives? This presence would need to feel immediate to urge action but not terrifying in ways that would be paralyzing. It would need to be concrete but with the imagination of future anticipation and past memories. Tacking back and forth between disaster preparedness actors’ struggles for the present and that of anthropologists’, this paper explores how the subjunctive mode of playfulness (the ‘as if’) and the ethos of patchwork ethnography might help both groups of experts keep hold of what is in front of us. The analysis suggests that the elusive present might be a challenge shared not only by these two groups but also by other knowledge professionals today.