Disaster, Development, Humanitarian Aid: Introduction

No longer considered distinct and, in a certain sense, antithetical fields, emergency and development have become hybridized and in many cases juxtaposed, if not always at a programmatic level, then certainly on the ground, in the contexts where the intervention takes place. Witness the fact that operations of early warning and preparedness with which governments and humanitarian aid organizations try to manage crisis situations, both locally and globally, as well risk-prevention campaigns for disaster situations, have gradually been added to the international agenda as an area of “development” policy. In this introduction we attempt to shed light on these scenarios without detaching the space of emergency from that of the traditionally more studied development.