S10E8 - The Philippines, Vietnam, and Engaged Ways of Knowing Disaster

Episode overview
Episode 8 continues Season 10’s regional focus by turning to Southeast Asia, with a conversation centered on the Philippines and Vietnam. This episode brings together political sociology, disaster mental health, Buddhism, and grassroots practice to examine disasters as products of political systems, colonial legacies, and relational breakdowns—and to explore what engaged, justice-oriented alternatives might look like.

Hosts

• Jason von Meding

• Ksenia Chmutina

Guests

• Jake Cadag — Assistant Professor, University of the Philippines; scholar of community participation, postcolonial disaster studies, and grassroots disaster risk reduction

• Caroline Contillo — disaster researcher, resilience trainer, and disaster mental health practitioner; lead trainer with the New York Office of Mental Health

Key themes

• Postcolonial and Indigenous ways of knowing disasters

• Disaster, authoritarianism, and political repression

• Activism, scholarship, and public sociology

• Buddhism, interdependence, and socially engaged practice

• Mutual aid, disaster mental health, and collective recovery

• Disaster risk creation through development and infrastructure

• Moving beyond reformism toward structural change

Core discussion highlights

• Jake Cadag reflects on rediscovering Filipino-language scholarship and postcolonial social science, emphasizing reclamation rather than rejection of global knowledge.

• Disaster is framed as inseparable from political economy, authoritarian governance, and long-standing systems of marginalization in the Philippines.

• Jake discusses Walden Bello as a public sociologist whose work connects development, dictatorship, and disaster risk creation, and whose activism illustrates the risks scholars face under repressive regimes.

• The conversation highlights how political persecution and “red-tagging” of NGOs and academics can depoliticize disaster risk reduction and weaken grassroots participation.

• Caroline Contillo introduces Thích Nhất Hạnh as a thinker whose concept of interbeing challenges the idea of detached, objective disaster research.

• Socially engaged Buddhism is discussed as a framework for witnessing suffering without withdrawal—and for allowing compassionate action to emerge from that witnessing.

• Mutual aid and disaster mental health are explored through relational perspectives, including interpersonal neurobiology and community-based recovery.

• The episode challenges “bounce back” versions of resilience, arguing instead for recovery that confronts structural violence, inequality, and capitalism.

• Both guests emphasize that disasters reveal deeper systemic failures—and that meaningful recovery requires political engagement, not neutrality.