Divergent Thinking In Disaster: Examples from Typhoon Haiyan Survivors

Abstract

In this presentation, delivered at Off the Lip 2015 at Plymouth University, we shared some of the ethnographic research on the creative and cognitive work needed to survive the high-stakes, high-stress, and emotionally charged situation of a disaster, in which “divergent thinking” is more just than a cognitive process: it becomes a survival skill. The presentation centred on a series of narratives based on our experiences of conducting fieldwork in the province of Leyte in the Philippines on December 2013, six weeks after Typhoon Haiyan decimated the Visayas region of one of most typhoon-prone countries in the world.