There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina by Unknown

by Gregory Squires

i There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster /i is the first critical scholarly book on the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. The disaster will go down in record as one of the worst in American history, not least because of the government's generally inept and cavalier response. But it's also a huge story for other obvious reasons. Firstly, the impact of the hurricane was uneven, and race and class (and tied to this, poverty) were deeply implicated in the unevenness. It was not by accident that the poorest and blackest neighborhoods were the ones that were buried under water. Secondly, the response underscored the impoverishment of social policy (or what passes for it) in both George W. Bush's America and more specifically the Republican-dominated South. Thirdly, New Orleans is not just any place - it's a great American city with a rich and unique history. People care about the place and what happens there. Fourthly, what happened and what will happen there can tell us a great deal about the state of urban and regional planning in contemporary America. br The book, edited by two eminent scholars/authors, gathers together ten excellent scholars to put forth a multifaceted portrait of the social implications of the disaster. And the disaster was primarily social in nature, as the title reminds us. The book covers the response to the disaster and the roles that race and class played, its impact on housing, the historical context of urban disasters in America, the nature of contemporary metropolitan planning, what the hurricane has taught us about planning, the role of the vast prison system in all of this, the future of economic development, the roles of business and the media, and how the hurricane disproportionately impacted female headed households. In total, it offers a critical and comprehensive social portrait of the disaster's catastrophic effects on New Orleans.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, Politics, History, Class, Environment, Social Justice

Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Tinea · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you only read one book about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, this might be the one you should choose.

Each chapter explores in depth one aspect of the Gulf Coast before, during, and after the hurricane. After reading almost exclusively Katrina books & articles for the past month or two, I was surprised to find three very different chapters especially insightful: One on the much discussed topic of race, the one on the overlooked issue of the storm's impact on the elderly (holy shit), and one on the often protested but rarely explained subject of why and how one must fight for both low-income housing rights and ecological justice in neighborhoods where subsidized/low-income houses were marginalized onto land below sea level and polluted with toxic sludge. The chapter on oral history included some powerful quotes, but I wish it had spent less time naval gazing the idea of oral history and more time letting survivors tell their stories.

This anthology is very academic and kind of dry, but I found it compelling anyway. The main problem is that since each author focuses their chapter on one specific subject, the book comes off disjointed. You get a lot of "The hurricane affected [insert one identity here] worse than everyone else." And in a book that examines the racist structural causes of disaster, it was ridiculous to find the chapter on medicine repeatedly deny that any disparate medical treatment statistics after the hurricane were the result of racism. Come on now!

Other topics included public education, economic recovery plans, poverty and class, and gender. Aside from a deep analysis of New Orleans, this "before and after" approach on such a range of subjects acts as a good case study for issues that are pretty ubiquitous in US cities. It sorted out the big picture into smaller, more easily understood little pictures.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very cool disaster theory concepts discussed here, but wayyyyyy to wordy and academic. Making these ideas accessible to the layman is how these ideas can get spread, understood, and implemented.

[Dosem · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is definitely terrific.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting discussion of the purpose and challenges of oral history. A critic of the media coverage of the aftermath of the hurricanes. The most useful essay was the one that deals with age and the elderly.

[Sarju · Rating 4 out of 5]

a must read book for all those who wants to understand how disaster can affect people of different backgrounds in one of the most developed country in the world 'America'.