The CITY Institute and the York Centre for Asian Research jointly present “Disasters, Climate Risk, and Exclusionary Modernity in Manila″ with Kenneth Cardenas (Department of Geography, York University) as part of the Urban Asia lecture series. This event will be held on Thursday, March 28th from 12:00- 2:00pm in room 626 York Research Tower
In his talk, Kenneth Cardenas traces the role played by the idea of ‘irrationality’ in how Manila’s past and future is being imagined. It begins by reconstructing the experience of Manila with developmentalism, structural adjustment, and globalization to argue that the features of its urbanization which are often understood as consequences of irrationality were in fact produced by rational modern schemes for conquering and managing risks. It will then examine how the definition of disasters and climate change risk in terms of irrationality was used by experts, state agencies, and the Philippine media to articulate a vision for an exclusionary disaster-proofing of Manila by attributing the floods wrought by Tropical Storm Ketsana in 2009 to inadequacies in urban planning and an ‘irrational’ slum-dwelling poor.
Kenneth Cardenas is presently a PhD student in Geography at York University. He completed his MA in Sociology with Distinction at the University of Manchester, where he worked on examining how the definition and management of risks from disasters and climate change are being used to justify an exclusionary reconfiguration of Manila.
This talk is the fifth in a series of talks on Urban Asia at York University.
The series is organized by the York Centre for Asian Research and the City Institute at York University.
Everyone is welcome.