Cyclone Amphan: Living through the Climate Crisis

In May 2020 a deadly tropical cyclone struck Eastern India and
Bangladesh. Named ‘Amphan’ and classified as a ‘Super Cyclone’ this
was almost certainly a climate change induced extreme event. This
event was organised by the Climate Crisis Thinking in the
Humanities and Social Sciences Network
https://torch.ox.ac.uk/climate-crisis-thinking-in-the-humanities-and-social-sciences
. The full scale of destruction caused by cyclone Amphan in India
(the states of Odisha and West Bengal) and Bangladesh remains to be
yet fully understood and tabulated. We bring together a panel of
historians, geographers, and anthropologists who have longstanding
research in the effected region of South Asia on related topics of
ecology, climate change, human-animal relations, conservation, and
the Anthropocene. This session is interested in probing the
relationship between the climate crisis and the very specific
history, politics, sociology, and ethnography of South Asia. As
such it has two broad aims. Firstly, we try to shine light on the
devastating effect of the climate crisis in South Asia. This is
particularly important given the poor coverage the cyclone – its
causes and the trail of devastation it has left in its wake – got
globally and, even, regionally. As is the case with so much of the
climate crisis there is a collective forgetting of its effects,
especially when they take place in lands considered ‘Other’ or
distant. This panel is but one small attempt to resist such
collective forgetting. Secondly and Relatedly, as we note in the
aims of our network, the academy is oftentimes too slow in
responding to the climate crisis or does so in somewhat
inaccessible forms. Through this discussion we get academics from
across the Humanities and Social Sciences working on the
environment and climate change to present their analyses to a
global public. As such it constituted a demonstration of the ways
in which careful Humanities and Social Science knowledge can
contribute in a timely and engaged manner with what it means to
live through the climate crisis. Panel Debjani Bhattacharyya
(Drexel University) Jason Cons (UT Austin) Annu Jalais (National
University of Singapore) Megnaa Mehtta (Sheffield University) Kasia
Paprocki (The London School of Economics)