Dr. Olimpia Kot, Senior Project Coordinator at the European Values Center for Security Policy Taiwan Office, delivered a guest lecture titled State, Land and Agency During Disaster at the College of Social Sciences, National Taitung University on May 20, 2026. The lecture examined the long-term social consequences of disaster governance and relocation policies in Taiwan, drawing on ethnographic research conducted with a relocated Paiwan community.
The presentation explored how displacement continues to shape everyday life through housing arrangements, kinship relations, religious practices, gendered forms of labor and care, and interactions with state institutions. It highlighted the enduring effects of relocation beyond the immediate aftermath of disaster, demonstrating how these processes continue to influence community life over time.
The lecture also addressed broader questions of vulnerability, governance, and resilience. It argued that vulnerability should be understood not only as exposure to environmental hazards but also as a condition shaped by historical processes, state policies, and unequal power relations. At the same time, it emphasized that affected communities are not passive recipients of policy but actively navigate and reinterpret institutional frameworks to pursue locally meaningful priorities within structural constraints.
By bringing together perspectives from disaster anthropology and Indigenous studies, the lecture contributed to broader discussions on how societies live with long-term disruption and how resilience emerges through everyday practices of negotiation, care, and social reproduction, rather than solely through institutional interventions.