Facing adversity together: the biopolitics of the community-focussed recovery policies in post-earthquake Canterbury, New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Community building was a feature of the recovery policies implemented to respond to the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand. This strategy aimed for survivors to manage the disruption of the events by activating and enhancing their community networks. Drawing on Foucault’s and Esposito’s theorizing of biopolitics, community, and immunity, this article provides a close reading of the policies and tools implemented to manage the post-earthquake context. I outline the unacknowledged effects of two intertwined forms of governance. First, populational governance through which communities were guided to take care of themselves within a recovery framework, which prized resilience. Second, therapeutic governance in which vulnerable individuals and groups were offered specialized, therapeutic assistance. I argue, whilst operating at different levels, both forms of governance functioned to re-value the desires, motivations, and actions of survivors in terms of their capacity to contribute to post-earthquake life in Canterbury.

KEYWORDS:

• Disaster
• community
• biopolitics
• policy
• exclusion

Acknowledgement

I acknowledge the support from the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship for completing the doctoral research that this article draws from, and thank Dr Uschi Bay and Dr Phillip Mendes for their supervision and guidance. I would also like to thank Dr Gretchen Perry and the peer reviewers for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raewyn Tudor

Dr Raewyn Tudor is a Lecturer in the Department of Human Services and Social Work at the University of Canterbury. Her research focusses on biopolitics, social work and disaster recovery. Her recent articles include Governing through relationship: A positive critique of school social work practice in post-earthquake, Christchurch, New Zealand in the British Journal of Social Work (2019).