暗い未来に抗して : トルコ・イスタンブルにおける地震とコミュニティ  [in Japanese] Against a Bleak Future: An Anthropological Study of Disaster and Community in Istanbul  [in Japanese]

災害の人類学は従来、洪水などの周期的な災害に対する、その地域の災害観や伝統的な対応(「災害文化」)、地震や産業災害など突発的に起きる災害の復興過程のエスノグラフィ、あるいは災害の被害拡大の社会的(歴史的・文化的)要因に着目しながらの持続的開発にかかわる応用実践などを中心的に扱ってきた。中でもこの「災害の社会的要因」の研究は、1990年代の「国際防災の10年(IDNDR)」以降、広い分野で注目を集め、「社会的要因」は「コミュニティ(あるいはそのサブカテゴリー)の脆弱性(vulnerability)」という概念として定式化され広く普及しているが、その枠組みには検討すべき点も残る。本論文は筆者が2004-5年に行った調査に基づき、過去の災害と将来の災害の間にあるイスタンプルのあるコミュニティを事例に議論を進める。地震学の蓄積はイスタンプルで近い将来大きな地震が起きる可能性がきわめて高いことを明らかにしているが、本論文ではそのコミュニティにおいて、災害という問題がどのように認識され、またそこで暮らす人々がどのような対応を取り、それがどのように状況を変化させているのか(あるいはさせていないのか)を分析する。

This paper attempts to provide a description and analysis of a community living under the constant threat of an earthquake disaster. Based on my field research, I present a case report on activities concerned with disaster risk that are being conducted in the "C" neighborhood of the "Z" district in Istanbul. In the introduction, based on a review of the literature, I look at the several phases of disaster prevention. Disaster anthropologists have developed the so-called "vulnerability" approach to disasters, which assumes that in a given society, the more vulnerable people (e.g., the poor, the elderly, the handicapped, ethnic minorities, etc.) suffer more greatly from disasters. That approach calls for a look at disaster mitigation and prevention practices in the light of "sustainable development." I accept vulnerability as a concept and attempt to elaborate on its hypothesis of the static simple reproduction of disaster damage further by emphasizing two points. The first point at issue is people's perception of future disasters. Disasters are LPHC (low-probability, high-consequence) risks, so people in a given society may perceive them in various ways. In this paper, I pay attention to the specific contexts (such as the structure of buildings, the improvement of search and rescue teams, education, and so on) in which people problematize and take measures to prepare for future disasters. Second, I argue that the practices of a certain community in the area of disaster prevention can improve the level of its vulnerability management. Here, I illustrate the emergence of a "community of practice" from the local community using field data. In the second section, I explain the history of the "Z" district in Istanbul. The district is situated on the European side of Istanbul (i.e., west of the Bosporus), and most of the population came from outside the city for employment purposes starting in the 1950s. Some are from the Black Sea region of Turkey, while others are from Eastern Europe or the Balkan States. Upon their arrival in Istanbul, these people built small huts named gecekondu from brick and stone. Having established a place to live, they then called their family and friends in from the countryside, thus giving rise to communities. Those shantytown communities later created representative community associations to negotiate with local municipalities, appealing to them not to demolish their illegal homes and to obtain access to such infrastructure-related necessities as electricity and wastewater. Starting in the 1980s, the populist parties of the local municipalities gave them title deed for their land in exchange for their vote. Once obtaining those deeds, people contracted with building constructors to transform their 1- or 2-story houses into 5- or 6-story apartments for financial gain. As a consequence, both the size of the population and the number of inferior buildings increased rapidly in the "Z" district. Initially people had no problems with their non-earthquake-resistant homes, but the Izmit Earthquake, which hit the province next to Istanbul on August 17, 1999, changed their perception. After that earthquake, experts said that Istanbul could expect a similar massive earthquake because Turkey's most prosperous city stands on the North Anatolian Fault. Some people saw such risk-related information as a sign of the potential destruction of their lives in the future. Using any knowledge, information and memory they could get, they tried to calculate their probability of dying in such an earthquake. Consequently, narratives were propagated about disaster risk in the "Z" district, but no effective measures were taken. In the winter of 2004, the Neighborhood Disaster Support Project of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) started work in the "Z" district. Primarily, it is an educational program aiming to create a team of around 50 people (Neighborhood Disaster Volunteers, abbreviated in Turkish as "MAG") in each neighborhood for the purpose of conducting search and rescue activities for the first 72 hours after a disaster. Although the muhtars (elected heads of a neighborhood) of other neighborhoods hesitated to recruit more than 50 people, the muhtar and a local association from the "C" neighborhood of the "Z" district worked together with the SDC to assemble people to attend the programs. Most of the MAG candidates (some 40 men and 10 women) were people who had lived in the "C" neighborhood for more than two decades already, or who were born there. During the four-week MAG courses, people learn the rudiments of first aid and search and rescue, and how to use a fire extinguisher skillfully. As the lectures progress, the people come to organize their MAG as a group, and through that group-forming process, rules and norms are established. For that reason, the group attending the MAG program can be identified as a 'community of practice.' But the SDC staff usually tries to let the participants do something voluntary after the class finishes. The "C" neighborhood group wavered between becoming a passive group supported by the SDC, and becoming a voluntary group that acts on its own to deal with high-risk earthquakes. At that time, the MAG attendants had a vague apprehension that the pilot project of the urban redevelopment plan, conducted by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality in the "Z" district, might affect their lives adversely just as an earthquake could, because the project details weren't made available to the local people. That project started in 2003, and its purpose was said to be the lessening of damage caused by future earthquakes; however, people were afraid that this plan was the same as the old method, namely, simply demolishing buildings. So the MAG, as a group and stakeholder, began taking action to enter into direct dialogue with the municipality. Although their endeavor failed, MAG worked as a core community in that process. As described above, active communities emerge through the interaction with other organizations and the dissemination of information and, as a result, venture into the future.