Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyze socio-spatial accelerator processes at stake during a disaster management. The potential role of a mixed-methods research for anthropology of disasters is also taken into account.

Paper long abstract:

A disaster is usually represented and narrated by survivors as a disruption in their daily lives and life stories, as a rift in time and space. At the same time, as shown in disaster research, an earthquake can "act" as an accelerator of processes at different levels: the factors might be already present in the social system but their "being there" is amplified or revealed by the "faults" apparently activated by the triggering agent. The management of 2012 Emilia earthquake (Northern Italy), reported by Italian media as "the workers' earthquake" followed by "multi-ethnic tent cities", is currently presented by local institutions as a virtuous model driven by regional and local actors. Considering the emergency trajectories of households and commercial activities, it becomes otherwise clear the role of some dynamics of neoliberal processes already on going, such as the relocation of population and services, spatial segregation of migrants, the "development" of the historical centre, the dialectic between ambiguous rhetoric of identity and socio-economic hegemonic stances.

Through spatial and statistical analysis of National Census data and local datasets (pre and post-earthquake) related to one of the most affected town (Mirandola), we elaborate a socio-economic zoning of the earthquake and introduce the "time" variable in the "space of the disaster". From a methodological perspective, our aim is to produce a secondary data analysis in order to build a frame for a following ethnographical fieldwork and make a reflection on the potentiality of GIS and mixed-methods researches for the anthropology of disasters.