The Asian tsunami in December 2004 severely affected people in coastal
regions all around the Indian Ocean. This book provides the first
in-depth ethnography of the disaster and its effects on a fishing
village in Tamil Nadu, India. The author explores how the villagers have
lived with the tsunami in the years succeeding it and actively worked to
gradually regain a sense of certainty and confidence in their
environment in the face of disempowering disaster. What appears is a
remarkable local recovery process in which the survivors have interwoven
the tsunami and the everyday in a series of subtle practices and
theorisations, resulting in a complex and continuous recreation of
village life. By showing the composite nature of the tsunami as an
event, the book adds new theoretical insight into the anthropology of
natural disaster and recovery.