RAPID: Narrating Disaster: Calibrating Causality and Responses to the 2015 Earthquakes in Nepal

对自然灾害的即时研究反应往往集中在生命损失、伤害、结构破坏和援助反应上。对与应对工作相关的人口变化以及“外来者”参与受影响社区的社会、语言和经济影响的研究往往被忽视。如果不立即采取行动捕捉和记录这些细节，这些事件幸存者的个人经历就有可能被合并成更一般化的叙述，受到媒体报道的影响和同质化。在1992年的安德鲁飓风和2005年的卡特里娜飓风等事件期间，这种脱节的可能性被凸显出来，在这些事件中，最初的媒体报道没有充分代表个人和地方的经历，但随后的民族志研究发现，捕捉这些细节（例如，卫生和住房服务私有化的实际影响，以及关于飓风的文化敏感科学课程材料的构建）具有实用和教学价值。该项目重点关注尼泊尔，该国最近在2015年4月和5月遭受了大地震的破坏，以及时捕捉个人层面和当地的经验。研究人员将收集、注释并公开对地震幸存者进行的采访和叙述。地理语言学的重点将是来自尼泊尔西部地区Mustang、Manang和Gorkha三个地区的藏缅语社区，包括当地居民和以前的居民（农村-城市移民），他们现在正在返回家乡参加救援和重建工作。他们都是濒危语言的使用者。南伊利诺伊大学的语言学家Kristine Hildebrandt、澳大利亚国立大学的Edwardsville和Mark Donahue，以及达特茅斯学院的医学人类学家Sienna Craig和文化人类学家Geoff Childs将与尼泊尔的研究人员合作，从幸存者和救援者的角度出发，提取幸存者的叙述并采访演讲者，建立一个幸存者叙述的数据库。叙事将揭示情感语言的语法和话语特征。这些材料还将揭示人类与其社会和自然环境之间关系的细微差别，同时对事件的集体记忆仍然新鲜，为人们为什么以及如何在极端环境条件持续存在的地方和方式创造和维持生计提供有价值的内部视角。

The immediate research response to a natural disaster frequently focuses on loss of life, injuries, structural damage, and aid response. Research on the demographic shifts associated with response efforts and the social, linguistic, and economic effects of 'outsiders' engaging with affected communities is often overlooked. Without immediate action to capture and document these details, the individual experiences of people who survived these events risks being merged into more generalized narratives, influenced and homogenized by media reports. The possibility of this disconnect was brought to the fore during events such as Hurricanes Andrew in 1992 and Katrina in 2005, where initial media coverage under-represented individual and local experiences, but where subsequent ethnographic studies found practical and pedagogical value in capturing such details (for example, the lived effects of the privatization of health and housing services, and the construction of culturally sensitive science curriculum materials about hurricanes). This project focuses on Nepal, which was recently devastated by major earthquakes in April and May 2015, to capture individual-level and local experiences in a timely manner. The researchers will collect, annotate, and make publicly available interviews and narratives conducted with earthquake survivors. The geo-linguistic focus will be communities of Tibeto-Burman language-speaking peoples from three districts of Nepal's Western Zone: Mustang, Manang and Gorkha, including local residents and former residents (rural-urban migrants) who are now moving back to their home villages to participate in relief and rebuilding efforts. All are speakers of endangered languages. Linguists Kristine Hildebrandt of the Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville and Mark Donahue of Australian National University along with Medical Anthropologist Sienna Craig of Dartmouth College and Cultural Anthropologist Geoff Childs will work with Nepali researchers to elicit narratives and interview speakers to build a database of survivor narratives, one that takes the perspective of the survivors and responders. The narratives will reveal grammatical and discourse features of emotive language. These materials will also reveal nuances about the relationship between humans and their social and physical environment while the collective memory of the event is still fresh, providing valuable insider perspectives on why and how people create and maintain their livelihoods in places and in ways where extreme environmental conditions are a constant and powerful presence.