Abstract
The term ‘state of exception’ has been used by Italian political theorist Giorgio Agamben to explain the ways in which emergencies, crises and disasters are used by governments to suspend legal processes. In this paper, we innovatively apply Agamben's theory to the way in which countries prepare and educate the population for various types of emergencies. We focus on two main aspects of Agamben's work: first, the paradoxical nature of the state of exception, as both a transient and a permanent part of governance. Second, it is a ‘liminal’ concept expressing the limits of law and where ‘law’ meets ‘not-law’. We consider the relationship between laws related to disasters and emergencies, and case studies of the ways in which three countries (England, Germany and Japan) educate their populations for crisis and disaster. In England, we consider how emergency powers have been orientated around the protection of the Critical National Infrastructure and how this has produced localised ‘states of exception’ and, relatedly, pedagogical anomalies. In Germany, we consider the way in which laws related to disaster and civil protection, and the nature of volunteering for civil protection, produce exceptional spaces for non-German bodies. In Japan, we consider the debate around the absence of emergency powers and relate this to Japanese non-exceptional disaster education for natural disasters. Applying Agamben's work, we conclude by developing a new, multilevel empirical framework for analysing disaster education with implications for social justice.
Highlights
The term ‘state of exception’ has been used by Italian political theorist Giorgio Agamben to explain the ways in which emergencies, crises and disasters are used by governments to suspend legal processes
It is evident that approaches to disaster education, the extent to which disaster education might exist as a separate structure to national education systems and the way that it interacts with other social structures differ globally
We focus on the laws which might create a potential ‘State of Exception’ in the face of a national disaster, and explore the theory of Giorgio Agamben in order to develop a framework for understanding different national approaches to disaster education
Summary
We consider the relationship between laws related to disasters and emergencies, and case studies of the ways in which three countries (England, Germany and Japan) educate their populations for crisis and disaster. Agamben does distinguish between states of exception which are regulated by terms in the constitution and those which are not (10), but in both senses the state of exception is contradictory in that it aims to be a set of legal arrangements that abolishes the law. These cases differ in terms of their explicit legal form, or their emphasis on constitutional provision for a state of exception, they are topologically identical in that the state of exception is the expression of a paradox, or as Agamben states, ‘How can an anome be inscribed within the judicial order?’ (25). This distinction between ‘law’ and ‘non-law’ enables Agamben to move to a more general critique of the law which is the substantive subject of the book [the state of exception acting like a lever for Agamben to use to look under the concept of law itself (Table 1)]
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