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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

International and Area Studies

2018

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Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Disasters

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Malaya's Greatest Menace? Slow-Onset Disaster And The Muddy Politics Of British Malaya, C. 1900–50, Fiona Williamson Sep 2018

Malaya's Greatest Menace? Slow-Onset Disaster And The Muddy Politics Of British Malaya, C. 1900–50, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In 1948, a chilling statement from British Malaya’s Director of Agriculture, F. Burnett, made headline news. According to Burnett, unchecked soil erosion across hillside Malaya would soon render the country’s precious agricultural land infertile. Erosion had worsened considerably after the 1880s due to widespread, indiscriminate agricultural and industrial clearing. By the 1920s, it had become a sizeable socioeconomic and environmental issue, thought also to contribute to the scale and intensity of flooding and the likelihood of dangerous landslips. The British Government raised a series of empire-wide inquiries across the first half of the twentieth century, tied to an emerging global …


Strategies Of Salvation: Evangelical Christian Praxis And Sites Of Degradation In Sri Lanka, Orlando Woods Feb 2018

Strategies Of Salvation: Evangelical Christian Praxis And Sites Of Degradation In Sri Lanka, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper demonstrates how disasters create sites of degradation – potent spaces of upheaval and engagement – that are readily filled and exploited by evangelical Christian groups. In doing so, it explores how disasters provide opportunities for evangelical groups to gain a foothold in localities where Christian presence, and evangelical praxis, may otherwise be restricted. Drawing on qualitative data collected in Sri Lanka throughout 2010–2011, two comparative case studies are presented that reveal the strategies of evangelical Christian praxis in and through sites of environmental and political degradation. Specifically, the case studies reveal how evangelical groups pursue ‘outside‐in’ and ‘inside‐out’ …