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on work done in the recovery process with architecture students and with
UN-HABITAT, I will look more closely at the responses in Thailand. Finally,
I would like to raise a few points about preparations communities can make
to resist the cruelty of the few.
The international response
What is this pattern represented by the experience of the Laem Pom com-
munity? What emerges from that experience is well described as 'disaster
capitalism' by Naomi Klein in her topic
The Shock Doctrine
.
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Her observa-
tions about the response governments and the private sector have to the
typical circumstances surrounding a disaster provide a valuable context for
understanding the decisions made in the aftermath of the tsunami. With
that in mind, I want to review seven different issues/responses arising from
the tsunami disaster and briefly indicate the responses to them in Sri Lanka,
India and Indonesia.
The shock doctrine
Klein recognized that in natural disasters such as the tsunami and Hurricane
Katrina or in man-made disasters such as the war in Iraq, the acts visited
upon the Laem Pom community and so many others like it were actually a
strategy and not an anomaly.
The shock doctrine is a product of Milton Friedman and the neo-liberal
philosophy of economics that took hold at the University of Chicago
Department of Economics in the 1950s. Klein's contention is based on the
writing of Friedman and his disciples, on policies put into place in a number
of countries in the name of this approach to economics, and on the premise
that these policies are politically unpopular. These policies cover three areas
of concern: deregulation, privatization and dramatic reduction in the funding
for social programmes. Klein gives substantial evidence that they are deeply
unpopular. In order to implement such politically unpalatable policies, there
is a need for what Friedman called 'economic shock treatment'.
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Although
shock treatment refers to the 'speed, suddenness and scope of the economic
shifts', these shifts are most readily performed in the midst of crisis. As
Friedman put it:
… only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that
crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying
around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to
existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically
impossible becomes politically inevitable. (page 6)
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These crises can be created or they can be natural disasters. They can be
economic free-fall or hurricanes. The key to the production of 'real change'
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