In the Wake of Hurricane Katrina : New Paradigms and Social Visions

by Woods, Clyde

• ISBN13: 9780801895616
• ISBN10: 0801895618
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-02
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

Assessing the damage left by Hurricane Katrina in social, cultural, and physical terms, the essays in this volume suggest that the nation's long and historic engagement with the Gulf Coast has entered a new era.While many of the essays analyze Katrina in terms of the relatively recent past, others explore how reaction to the hurricane's aftermath is rooted in the region's history. Uniquely combining humanities and social sciences research, the contributors reevaluate the political, social, and economic dynamics that existed before this "natural" disaster and the subsequent responses and actions, or lack thereof.Investigations of public policies, organizations, social movements, and neoliberalism range from a traditional policy case study of the often-neglected Alabama and Mississippi experience to an analysis of urban social movements in New Orleans to a broad critique of local policy that has global implications. Innovative young scholars provide essays on music, literature, tourism, and gender. Interviews with key community leaders and historic poets round out the volume.The many social, political, racial, economic, and personal disasters that followed Katrina produced a number of intellectual dilemmas. How could this happen in the wealthiest nation in the world? How could the U.S. government so callously abandon its citizens when they so desperately needed federal aid? Why was the most powerful military in the world unable or unwilling to act? Readers will find in this collection compelling answers to these, and other, complicated questions.

Author Biography

Clyde Woods is an associate professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Development Arrested: Race, Power, and the Blues in the Mississippi Delta and the coeditor of Black Geographies and the Politics of Place.

Table of Contents

Preface. What Is a Disaster?	p. vii
Introduction. Katrina's World: Blues, Bourbon, and the Return to the Source	p. 1
Histories of Race, Gender, Sex, and Class
"More Desultory and Unconnected Than Any Other": Geography, Desire, and Freedom in Eliza Potter's A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life	p. 29
"Justice Mocked": Violence and Accountability in New Orleans	p. 51
Activists and Institutions
Beyond Disaster Exceptionalism: Social Movement Developments in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina	p. 73
Stories at the Center: Story Circles, Educational Organizing, and Fate of Neighborhood Public Schools in New Orleans	p. 103
Of Armed Guards and Kente Cloth: Afro-Creole Catholics and the Battle for St. Augustine Parish in Post-Katrina New Orleans	p. 131
The Politics of Reproductive Violence March 12, 2009	p. 157
Culture, Music, and Performance
Jazz and Revival	p. 167
Second Lining Post-Katrina: Learning Community from the Prince of Wales Social Aid and Pleasure Club	p. 189
Upholding Community Traditions	p. 213
On Conjuring Mahalia: Mahalia Jackson, New Orleans, and the Sanctified Swing	p. 223
"My FEMA People": Hip-Hop as Disaster Recovery in the Katrina Diaspora	p. 245
"We Know This Place": Neoliberal Racial Regimes and the Katrina Circumstance	p. 267
We Know This Place	p. 293
Tourism Industrial Complex
Katrina Tourism and a Tale of Two Cities: Visualizing Race and Class in New Orleans	p. 29$
"Roots Run Deep Here": The Construction of Black New Orleans in Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives	p. 32$
Geographies of Disaster
Les Misérables of New Orleans: Trap Economics and the Asset Stripping Blues, Part 1	p. 34$
Freedom Land: 2-Cent Freedomland Project	p. 37$
After Katrina: Racial Regimes and Human Development Barriers in the Gulf Coast Region	p. 37$
Refugee Bodily Orbits	p. 40$
Contributors	p. 405
Index	p. 411
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