Reflecting on Ben Wisner’s Contributions to Scholarship and Scholars

This book is a festschrift in tribute to Ben Wisner’s contributions to disaster studies and adjacent fields of scholarship such as political ecology, development, and sustainability.

This festschrift for Ben, and so The Benschrift, revitalises, promotes, and critiques a selection of six foundational articles that span Ben’s 50-year career. Each article is reproduced integrally and followed by a commentary by an expert in the field and a response from Ben. As a result, this book not only introduces a lifetime’s work to the latest generation of researchers; it also contributes a meaningful dialogue across decades of scholarship, expressing contemporary reflections alongside the understanding of how to engage with and improve past research. Two fundamental truths stand out: the value of local knowledge and the necessity of seeking root causes and radical solutions.

This book is an essential read for students, researchers, policy makers and practitioners interested in the development and evolution of disaster scholarship, political ecology, development and sustainability studies.