Sen Sovereignty at the Margins (original) (raw)

2022, Representing Poverty and Precarity in a Postcolonial World

Politically and emotionally, different kinds of disaster possess unequal heft. Falling bodies, burning towers, exploding heads, avalanches, tornadoes, volcanoes-they all have a visceral, pageturning potency that tales of slow violence cannot match. Stories of toxic buildup, massing greenhouse gases, and accelerated species loss because of ravaged habitats may all be cataclysmic, but they are scientifically convoluted cataclysms in which casualties are postponed, often for generations. (Nixon, "Slow Violence") ∵ It is early January in 2018 and the weather forecast for the next few days in the Sundarban islands seems reasonable enough: an average of 22 degrees Celsius, 0% probability of rain or thunderstorms, hazy sunshine during the day.1 The Indian subcontinent, a mere hundred kilometers to the west of these islands, has had one of its hottest winters in recent memory, and temperatures are not any cooler in the Sundarbans.2 But that anomaly does not even begin to compare with the long-term forecast for these islands. By all accounts this region of the world, home to nearly 5 million people, will become hotter, and much, much harsher for human settlement in the coming decades. Given the fact that almost all climate change indicators are occurring faster than predicted, perhaps the future of these islands will also arrive sooner than anticipated