Negotiating expertise in Nepal’s post-earthquake disaster reconstruction

One characteristic feature of post-earthquake recovery in Nepal after the 2015 earthquakes was an owner-driven approach to house reconstruction in the most devastated rural regions, which combined a commitment to appropriate technology and building safety. To implement the model, engineering expertise was deployed throughout the affected areas involving over 3000 engineers deployed by the government’s National Reconstruction Authority (NRA). This paper examines engineers’ encounters with local administrative systems and everyday life-worlds through ethnographic research in two rural settings. It conveys what happened in practice as diverse actors in the reconstruction process encountered each other’s disparate subjectivities and expertise as forms of ‘knowledge transfer’. These experiences of mutual learning and implementation constituted the fraught field of reconstruction in practice. By investigating how engineering expertise engages with local knowledge, the paper identifies and explores three epistemological concepts, asking: ‘what is a house?’, ‘what is an engineer?’ and ‘what is safety?’, which in turn inform a concluding discussion of ‘what is reconstruction?’ These queries relate to the central problematic of negotiating expertise that is necessary for approaching disaster preparedness with ground-level anticipatory frameworks. PRACTICE RELEVANCE An open stance toward expertise requires consultation with local residents about building design through a process that values principles of both structural and cultural integrity. Procedurally, this might take the form of reflecting on the limits to official engineering expertise; expanding the flow of ‘bottom-up’ communications to sharing knowledge and reflecting on the root causes of problems in implementing official policy; and developing protocols for ensuring genuine feedback loops in processes of policy formation. Substantively, an open stance points in the direction of cultural competency: having reasonable knowledge of the affective dimensions that comprise a home in any given context, in addition to the structural dimensions of physical safety. Tracking peoples’ design preferences and local availability of labour, materials and skills could address this kind of cultural competency, a responsibility that local governments can take on in conjunction with national disaster management authorities.