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Article: Commentary on the special section on the Indian Ocean Tsunami: disasters, generosity and the other.
- Article from:
- The Geographical Journal
- Article date:
- September 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Indian Ocean Tsunami has invited unseen scales of generosity, both by 'ordinary' people and by donor governments. The Tsunami fitted nicely into a conception of 'natural' disaster that invites images of innocent, 'pure' victims. There is nothing you can do when Nature comes over you with her destructive forces. This is different in the case of famine or civil war--these kinds of disasters seem to be contaminated by human evil. And still, even though we have seen these impressive expressions of generosity at different levels and in different contexts, the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition (TEC) in its recent report enumerates a number of failures in the delivery and ...