The State in Relief

Shows how civil servants navigate duties and dependencies as the aid-reliant Malawian state struggles to recover from disasters.

In March 2019, one of the deadliest tropical cyclones in the southern hemisphere to date wreaked havoc across several African countries. In Malawi, Cyclone Idai affected more than one million citizens directly.

In this vivid ethnography, Tanja D. Hendriks details the decisions and dilemmas of Malawian civil servants in disaster response efforts after Idai. In a context in which relief has become routine, she explores how district-based public officials managed numerous and competing demands placed on them by colleagues, citizens, chiefs, humanitarians and donors. With the state initially appearing incompetent, ill-equipped or even irrelevant, she shows how aid interventions throw the state itself into relief, and render visible civil servants’ sense of duty, while also revealing the challenges facing central government.

Disputing Afropessimist narratives that depict African states as negligent or unable to care for their citizens, Hendriks reveals how the aid-dependent Malawian state remains crucial to disaster governance despite chronic resource scarcity and limited capacity. Contributing to the anthropology of bureaucracy and the state, the book underlines that disasters are neither natural nor isolated events, and offers a novel perspective on disaster relief interventions, state–citizen relations and sovereignty in the Anthropocene.