Clinging to hope through sensemaking and sentiments: A process view of Queensland flood disaster

Abstract

Valuable insights have been gained from Weick's notion of mindfulness. Such insights have given way to some very useful research. Using the recent floods of the Brisbane River in Australia as an example, I attempt to explore the connections between Weick's notion of mindfulness and the notion of agency - both human and nonhuman. Agency provides the capacity and the willingness to enhance mindfulness; agency can also become a factor in the diminution of mindfulness. I argue for a shift away from a preoccupation with conventional (singular) mindfulness (where levels of mindfulness are attributed to culture) to mindfulness, as a prototypic (sociomaterial) notion, involving agencies-in-phenomena. Mindfulness is achieved, in its entirety, only through the embodiment of human and nonhuman agency. Hence, my claim is that conventional mindfulness will not exist, in its entirety, if and when it is located outside the embodiment of human and nonhuman agency.