B O O K R E V I E W
The Indian Ocean Tsunami: The Global Response to a Natural Disaster
By Pradyumna P. Karan and Shanmugam P. Subbiah (eds.)
Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2011. 310 pages. $40.00 (cloth).
ISBN: 978-0-8131-2652-4.
The December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed
over 200,000 people and left more than a million people
homeless, and millions more without basic services. (As
a comparison, the Indian Ocean tsunami dead totaled
more than 75 times the number of coalition fighters
reported killed as of July 28, 2011, in the war in
Afghanistan http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/war.casualties).
Subsequent to the writing of this book, the incentive to
prevent casualties and other losses from tsunamis was
reinforced by the east Japan earthquake and tsunami
in March 2011, and the associated nuclear power plant
crisis. This volume is a potpourri of chapters on various
geographical areas of and topical approaches to the Indian
Ocean cataclysm. It is a welcome investigation into damage
by and recovery from tsunamis, and perhaps prevention
of future losses. Portions of the book will be useful
as supplementary reading for the most advanced high
school students with a particular interest in how to cope
with disasters, as well as for upper-level college students
exploring the topic.
The book contains thirteen chapters plus an introduction.
Case studies come from five of the countries suffering
deaths from the tsunami, including, in descending order
of casualties, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and
the Maldives (see the book’s Fig. 1.1, p. 2—presumably
these figures include foreign tourists killed in each of
the countries). Somalia is missing from the list of case
studies, though it suffered more deaths than the Maldives.
Two chapters take a disasterwide perspective, chapter
twelve on “Improving Governance Structures for Natural
Disaster Response,” and chapter thirteen on “ Transnational
Geopolitical Competition and Natural Disasters.” The book
is divided into three parts, with seven chapters on physical
aspects of the catastrophe, five chapters on socioeconomic
aspects of coping and response, and the final chapter
(mentioned above) on geopolitics. The distinctions between
the physical and social sections of the book are somewhat
porous, with some insights into coping ability coming in
the physical section and vice versa. In particular, chapter
seven on “Tsunami Disasters in Seenigama Village, Sri
Lanka, and Taro Town, Japan” seems misplaced. With its
comparative focus, historical coping analysis, and its nod
to the importance of cultural acknowledgment of tsunamis
as a coping resource, it might have been better located in
part 2 on “Socioeconomic Dimensions.”
The sheer scale of the disaster makes it difficult to take
in, and stories about individual people, families, and small
groups are welcome in the book whenever they appear. The
understandable lack of such qualitative social perspectives
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C 2012 National Council for Geographic Education
in the geological, ecological, and geochemical chapters
(chapters one through six) will make these chapters slow
going for all but physical scientists of at least an advanced
undergraduate level. Others may benefit from mining these
chapters for photographs, maps by Dick Gilbreath, and
other figures, as well as for nuggets of insight into land
use, damages, and recovery. The photographs in these
chapters often would have benefitted from more detailed
explanatory captions.
Chapter seven and the following sections of the book
will be of more general use. Chapter seven (by K. Yamazaki
and T. Yamazaki) compares tsunami-affected towns in
Sri Lanka and Japan to tease out factors that may lead to
better tsunami preparation. This chapter gives valuable
systematic attention to immediate coping, recovery, and
differently vulnerable populations according to age and
gender. It would have benefitted from adding some context
to its perspective, citing some of the seminal or summary
literature on social vulnerability and coping. Reading this
chapter subsequent to the 2011 tsunami in Japan, one hopes
that the authors will return to the Japanese case study of
Taro Town, Iwate, subsequent to its inundation by the 2011
tsunami.
Chapter eight (D. Zurick) studies the aftermath of the
tsunami in South Thailand, with particular attention to
beach tourism and the relative losses in different parts of
the built environment. Chapter nine (M. Kumaran and T.
Torris), on Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu, India, makes
welcome recommendations on how to improve warning
against and coping with future tsunamis. However, the
authors combine these remarks with first-person reflections
on experiences in aid volunteerism that would have been
better served by a separate, standalone chapter. Chapter
ten (S. Sugimoto, A. Sagayaraj, and Y. Sugimoto) focuses on
miracle stories around the tsunami in South India, pointing
out that while religious actors and institutions were often
important as community resources, the sectarian miracle
narratives about the event may serve to heighten tension
rather than foster humanitarianism.
Chapter eleven (M. Mulligan and J. Shaw) is a solid,
well-documented, generalist examination of Sri Lankan
reconstruction with some welcome attention to gender
differences. The authors describe on one hand how a
ceasefire in the ongoing political conflict there made
immediate relief more effective. On the other hand,
they lament the lost opportunities for greater prosperity
that may have come with recovery in the context of a
lasting peace. Chapter twelve (M. A. Schreurs) provides
a transnational assessment of governmental structure,
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Book Review
national capacity, and international assistance. This chapter
includes a superb set of references to postdisaster reports;
however, the citations are distributed among the endnotes
rather than alphabetically in a list of references as in
the other chapters. The final chapter, chapter thirteen (C.
Jasparro and J. Taylor), provides a realist international
relations perspective on the tsunami disaster, describing
outside countries’ contributions to the relief effort as a
means of competing for the hearts and minds of citizens
while militant Islamic groups, according to the authors, do
the same. This seems a vision of inevitable mutually assured
fear. It contrasts sharply with Mulligan and Shaw’s view of
potential and actual cooperation in incremental steps on
mutual goals despite ongoing conflict.
Overall, while chapter twelve gives a good national- and
international-level summary of response to the disaster,
readers may find themselves wishing for further analysis
from a disaster-wide point of view. A concluding chapter
based on some level of standardized case study structure
or data would have allowed for easier comparison
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between localities and perhaps easier extrapolation
to future tsunami occurrences based on combined
insights.
Researchers in tsunami recovery will be grateful for this
volume, and it will be a must-have for libraries specializing
in natural, environmental, and technological hazards. It
will also be in demand where advanced high school
and college students frequently do projects on tsunamis.
However, as this volume is a collection of narrowly focused
academic inquiries, those in need of a general summary
of the events and their humanitarian aftermath would be
better served by consulting public policy reports (such as
the Joint Evaluation conducted by the Tsunami Evaluation
Coalition, Synthesis Report: Expanded Summary at
http://www.alnap.org/pool/files/Syn Report Sum.pdf ), many of
which are referred to in the text and mentioned in the
endnotes of this book’s twelfth chapter.
Reviewed by George E. Clark, Research Libriarian, Harvard
University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.