A very interesting review--thanks for posting. I especially like what you have to say about the underlying philosophy about the role of government, and how it feeds into these attitudes.
If you're interested in Katrina and incompetent responses to disaster, I cannot recommend highly enough Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. She looks at five disasters in North America--the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 1917 Halifax explosion, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11 in New York City, and Katrina--and Katrina really benefits from being put in that context.
There are some interesting parallels, I think, between the outbreaks of anti-Chinese racism that occurred in the wake of the SF earthquake and the anti-black racism that marked the response to Katrina, and the way the government response in each case went beyond incompetence and into endangerment. Solnit is especially good on the rise of racist white vigilantism in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster.
She's also very interested in the underlying philosophy of how people respond to disaster and how that guides official relief efforts, for good and for ill, which you seem like you might enjoy. She actually has a chapter on how Hollywood disaster movies reinforces certain political ideologies that come into play during real disaster relief efforts, and her theory on the role of "elite panic" is incredibly provocative.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-05-25 03:53 pm (UTC)If you're interested in Katrina and incompetent responses to disaster, I cannot recommend highly enough Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. She looks at five disasters in North America--the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 1917 Halifax explosion, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11 in New York City, and Katrina--and Katrina really benefits from being put in that context.
There are some interesting parallels, I think, between the outbreaks of anti-Chinese racism that occurred in the wake of the SF earthquake and the anti-black racism that marked the response to Katrina, and the way the government response in each case went beyond incompetence and into endangerment. Solnit is especially good on the rise of racist white vigilantism in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster.
She's also very interested in the underlying philosophy of how people respond to disaster and how that guides official relief efforts, for good and for ill, which you seem like you might enjoy. She actually has a chapter on how Hollywood disaster movies reinforces certain political ideologies that come into play during real disaster relief efforts, and her theory on the role of "elite panic" is incredibly provocative.