Doctoral Dissertation Research: Earthquake Anticipation in Istanbul

博士生伊丽莎白·安吉尔（哥伦比亚大学），由布林克利·梅西克博士监督，将调查一个重大自然灾害的预期如何影响人类景观的相互作用。这项研究将通过对土耳其伊斯坦布尔的案例研究进行，这是一个位于活动断层带的特大城市，历史上发生过毁灭性地震。 这项研究将考察伊斯坦布尔的地震预测的经验和影响，既作为一个技术政治项目，试图塑造景观，建筑物和身体进入一种准备状态，也作为一种情感关系，通过居住在地震活跃的景观中产生的时间和空间。研究人员将在伊斯坦布尔进行为期13个月的民族志研究，在专家和非专家环境中采用参与者观察研究和半结构化访谈，收集出版和档案文献材料，并调查选定的建筑物和地区。 这项研究将询问地震风险是如何作为地震学家，工程师和精算师等专家的知识对象产生的，但也通过谣言，迷信和宗教信仰;记录预期如何转化为行动;并探索灾难的社会想象如何影响伊斯坦布尔地震城市景观中的日常生活体验。该研究将通过专门关注预期及其生成效应来扩展人类学对灾害的研究，并有助于有关预期，风险和准备的理论对话。 对震区城市生活的研究突出了人与景观的共同构成，即各种信息和实践在塑造社会感知和地方经验中的作用。 因此，该项目将整合景观考古学和地理学的理论观点和方法，探索它们在人地互动跨学科研究中的潜力。 最后，该项目将通过关注科学，灾害和环境等主题，为当代土耳其的人类学做出具体贡献。支持这项研究也有助于社会科学家的教育。

Doctoral student Elizabeth Angell (Columbia University), supervised by Dr. Brinkley Messick, will investigate how the expectation of a major natural disaster affects human-landscape interactions. The research will be conducted through a case study of Istanbul, Turkey, a megacity located in an active fault zone with a history of devastating earthquakes. The research will examine the experience and effects of earthquake anticipation in Istanbul, both as a technopolitical project that seeks to mold landscapes, buildings, and bodies into a state of preparedness, and as an affective relationship to time and space generated through dwelling in a seismically active landscape.The researcher will conduct thirteen months of ethnographic research in Istanbul, employing participant-observation research and semi-structured interviews in both expert and non-expert settings, gathering published and archival documentary material, and surveying selected buildings and areas. The research will ask how earthquake risk is produced as an object of knowledge by experts like seismologists, engineers, and actuaries, but also through rumor, superstition, and religious faith; document how anticipation is translated into action; and explore how the social imagination of disaster affects everyday experiences of life in Istanbul's seismic cityscape. The research will expand the anthropological study of disaster by focusing specifically on anticipation and its generative effects, and contributing to theoretical conversations about anticipation, risk, and preparedness. The study of urban life in an earthquake zone foregrounds the co-constitution of people and landscape, by which is meant the role of different kinds of information and practices in shaping social perception and experience of place. The project will therefore integrate theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches from landscape archaeology and geography, exploring their potential for the interdisciplinary study of human-landscape interaction. Finally, the project will contribute specifically to the anthropology of contemporary Turkey by focusing attention on the topics of science, disaster, and the environment. Supporting this research also contributes to the education of a social scientist.