Evacuating actively, passively, or a middle-voiced approach

ノウドウテキ　ジュドウテキ　チュウドウテキ　ニ　ニゲル

Yamori, Katsuya

サイガイ　ト　キョウセイ　ケンキュウカイ

「能動対受動」の枠組み

避難

middle-voice

“active vs. passive” paradigm

evacuation

When considering evacuations in disaster situations, a conventional paradigm, in which two types of evacuations, active and passive, are contrasted in an oppositional manner, still prevails both in the literature and practice. As shown in the following commonly expressed views, this paradigm holds that “people’s passive attitude towards evacuations, just waiting for evacuation information from authorities, disturbs a quick and early evacuation,” and “we need to foster active mindsets in local citizens for evacuating on their own without relying on directions from disaster experts.” This paradigm is closely related to a strong social demand for specifying completely and exclusively who makes decisions to evacuate, or not, and who should be responsible for the evacuation. This paper proposes, by introducing a couple of noteworthy cases of evacuations, the “active vs. passive” paradigm is not so effective in solving pressing social issues in evacuations, and should be replaced by a new paradigm, in which we can plan a new, more collaborative style of evacuations in a “middle-voiced” manner.