A Time of Disastrous Anticipations: Essays on Life in the Shadow of Catastrophe

This book explores the pervasive anticipation of catastrophe in contemporary society, examining how temporal expectations shape personal and collective experiences and influence our perspectives and responses.

A Time of Disastrous Anticipations highlights the role of anticipation in shaping societal narratives, exploring strategies for redefining responses to catastrophic imaginaries. Through a combination of theoretical insights with practical examples, it offers a comprehensive view of anticipation’s impact in contemporary society. The vista of disastrous anticipations reveals that catastrophe is not so much a matter out of place, but primarily a matter out of time.

Targeted at scholars, students, and professionals in sociology, disaster studies, and public policy, this book is also valuable for policymakers and practitioners interested in understanding the societal dimension of disaster anticipation.

Reidar Staupe is an Associate Professor of Risk Management and Societal Safety at the University of Stavanger in Norway and at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. He is the author of the Routledge title Disasters and Life in Anticipation of Slow Calamity: Perspectives from the Colombian Andes. He has also published dozens of articles and chapters on disasters, global public health and development. From 2021-2023 he was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellow (MSCA-IF) at Roskilde University, Denmark. His research interests revolve around disaster temporalities and ideas about future catastrophes and prognostications.

Monika Gabriela Bartoszewicz is an Associate Professor in Societal Security and Safety at the UiT The Arctic University of Norway, where she leads the Risk, Crisis and Societal Security research group. She specializes in non-linear and cross-sectoral threats to security, especially in the context of political violence and securitized migration. She holds a PhD from St Andrews University (UK), and her doctoral thesis explored the questions of identity and belonging considered from a security perspective, with a particular focus on the potential terrorist threat posed by European converts to Islam. She has carried out interdisciplinary research in Scotland, England, The Netherlands, Denmark, Kosovo, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Taiwan. She is a European Commission Expert, Rapporteur & Evaluator of Horizon Europe projects, and an associate member of the Centre for Security Research in Edinburgh. Recently appointed as the Arctic Six Chair in Terrorism Studies, and the Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, she focuses now on dystopias and societal collapses.