The work of disaster: Building back otherwise in post-Earthquake Nepal

Abstract

What does a disaster generate? This article brings a critical phenomenological approach into conversation with theories of event to trace the emergence of a mental health crisis and its consequences in Nepal after the 2015 earthquakes. Following the disaster, people who received psychosocial counseling often presented chronic problems that had become visible through the frame of crisis and its ethical demands. At the same time, humanitarian agencies were aware of the logics of crisis and strategically used the disaster as an opportunity to increase mental health governance under the rubric of "building back better. " I demonstrate that these phenomena are linked consequences of the work of disaster, the destruction and creation of worlds set into motion by disaster and its management. I argue that a phenomenological approach to disaster helps us attend to the ways a priori frames of crisis and "the better" create and foreclose possibilities both for care and for building the world back other wise.