Epicentre to Aftermath

Book excerpt: "Nepal, a country with a population of approximately 30 million, is located between the rapidly emerging economic powers of India and China, which compete for influence within it. In 2006 Nepal emerged from a ten-year civil war between the monarchical state and Maoist rebels which had cost over 16,000 lives, and was still engaged in a protracted process of political transition to a federal, secular, democratic republic when, on 25 April 2015, its central districts were struck by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake which killed over 8000 people and displaced 2.8 million. A second quake, of magnitude 7.3, struck on 12 May, leading to further devastation. Epicentre to Aftermath aims to make both empirical and conceptual contributions to the growing body of Disaster Studies literature by providing detailed, field research-based insights into Nepal's experience following these earthquakes. By adopting an inductive approach and focusing on a particular post disaster situation, this book will provide an analysis of a disaster aftermath that is steeped in the political and cultural complexities of its social and historical context. Drawing together a range of scholars - ethnographers, geographers, historians, literary critics, political scientists, art historians - the book examines the consequences of the 2015 quakes from a host of perspectives that highlight the political, historical, cultural, artistic, emotional, temporal, embodied, and material dynamics at play. It suggests a new epistemology of disaster consequences and their meanings. By approaching the 2015 Nepal earthquakes from a wide range of analytical and methodological perspectives, it expands the field of knowledge relevant to understanding disasters and their outcomes"--