Surviving the second tsunami - Rebuilding After Disasters: From Emergency to Sustainability - page 136

is that these ideas are, in fact, lying around as alternatives. In other words,
it takes planning in order to be prepared to use crisis as an opportunity for
turning the politically impossible into the politically inevitable.
In addition to the implementation of these unpopular economic policies,
the other aspect of these 'shock treatments' is memory loss. Klein uses the
CIA electroshock therapy experiments at McGill University in the 1950s as
a metaphor for the larger societal shock treatments. Dr. Ewen Cameron, the
doctor who conducted these experiments, stated that the 'massive loss of all
recollections brought on by intensive ECT wasn't an unfortunate side effect;
it was the essential point of the treatment.' In the first real opportunity to test
the strategy of economic shock treatments - the Pinochet coup in Chile in
1973 - the erasure of memory was also a key component in the spread of un-
certainty and terror. People simply disappeared along with their histories.
I raise these points because the implementation of a number of the tsunami
recovery policies involved similar strategies.
Policy responses
The object of any recovery process is the return to normalcy, which is to
say 'whatever existed before the disaster'. 5 There is, of course, the urge to
improve on 'whatever existed before'. In many instances, this is absolutely
necessary. We do not want to rebuild schools that will again collapse in
earthquakes. We want to build new housing that can perform better under
the forces of storm surges or a tsunami. Or, to take this idea of improvement
further, we rebuild the housing so it never faces the threat of the tsunami.
If we move people off these beaches or away from that floodplain or out
of the delta area or the fault line, everybody will be safe from that kind of
disaster. This urge to improve on the safety of survivors might work but for
the fact that that would mean finding other land for these people, uprooting
communities from their history and culture and removing them from their
sources of employment.
More often, the urge to improve on whatever existed before the disaster is
related more to the sense of opportunity arising from the slate having been
wiped clean. While the protection and safety of citizens is presented as the
rationale for the policy decision to move people away from the danger zone,
the underlying motivation has much more to do with the opportunity to take
advantage of the shock of disaster and the temporary relocation of traditional
landholders by claiming ownership of the land for development purposes.
In this case, the beach has been wiped clean of traditional landholders and
all their housing, docks, boats and storage. With survivors located in relief
camps, this provides an opportunity to use the now unoccupied land more
effectively for a 'higher economic purpose'. As Klein points out, this is not
the aberrant behaviour of a few greedy people; this is standard operating
procedure for 'disaster capitalism'. It is out of this conflict that the issue of
land rights is raised.