Overview

Katrina was not just a hurricane. The death, destruction, and misery wreaked on New Orleans cannot be blamed on nature’s fury alone. This volume of essays locates the root causes of the 2005 disaster squarely in neoliberal restructuring and examines how pro-market reforms are reshaping life, politics, economy, and the built environment in New Orleans. The authors—a diverse group writing from the disciplines of sociology, political science, education, public policy, and media theory—argue that human agency and public policy choices were more at fault for the devastation and mass suffering experienced along the Gulf Coast than were sheer forces of nature. The harrowing images of flattened homes, citizens stranded on rooftops, patients dying in makeshift hospitals, and dead bodies floating in floodwaters exposed the moral and political contradictions of neoliberalism—the ideological rejection of the planner state and the active promotion of a new order of market rule. Many of these essays offer critical insights on the saga of postdisaster reconstruction. Challenging triumphal narratives of civic resiliency and universal recovery, the authors bring to the fore pitched battles over labor rights, gender and racial justice, gentrification, the development of city master plans, the demolition of public housing, policing, the privatization of public schools, and roiling tensions between tourism-based economic growth and neighborhood interests. The contributors also expand and deepen more conventional critiques of “disaster capitalism” to consider how the corporate mobilization of philanthropy and public good will are remaking New Orleans in profound and pernicious ways. Contributors: Barbara L. Allen, Virginia Polytechnic U; John Arena, CUNY College of Staten Island; Adrienne Dixson, Ohio State U; Eric Ishiwata, Colorado State U; Avis Jones-Deweever, National Council of Negro Women; Chad Lavin, Virginia Polytechnic U; Paul Passavant, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Linda Robertson, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Chris Russill, Carleton U; Kanchana Ruwanpura, U of Southampton; Nicole Trujillo-Pagán, Wayne State U; Geoffrey Whitehall, Acadia U.

Full Product Details

Author:   Cedric Johnson ,  Chris Russill ,  Chad Lavin ,  Eric Ishiwata
Publisher:   University of Minnesota Press
Imprint:   University of Minnesota Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 3.30cm , Length: 21.60cm
ISBN:  

9780816673247

ISBN 10:   0816673241
Pages:   416
Publication Date:   06 October 2011
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   In Print  
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

Table of Contents

Contents Preface: “Obama’s Katrina” Cedric Johnson Introduction: The Neoliberal Deluge Cedric Johnson Part I. Governance 1. From Tipping Point to Metacrises: Management, Media, and Hurricane Katrina Chris Russill and Chad Lavin 2. “We Are Seeing People We Didn’t Know Exist”: Katrina and the Neoliberal Erasure of Race Eric Ishiwata 3. Making Citizens in Magnaville: Katrina Refugees and Neoliberal Self-Governance Geoffrey Whitehall and Cedric Johnson Part II. Urbanity 4. Mega-events, the Superdome, and the Return of the Repressed in New Orleans Paul Passavant 5. Whose Choice? A Critical Race Perspective on Charter Schools Adrienne Dixson 6. Black and White, Unite and Fight? Identity Politics and New Orleans’s Post-Katrina Public Housing Movement John Arena Part III. Planning 7. Charming Accommodations: Progressive Urbanism Meets Privatization in Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation Cedric Johnson 8. Laboratorization and the “Green” Rebuilding of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward Barbara L. Allen 9. Squandered Resources? Grounded Realities of Recovery in Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka Kanchana Ruwanpura Part IV. Inequality 10. How Shall We Remember New Orleans? Comparing News Coverage of Post-Katrina New Orleans and the 2008 Midwest Floods Linda Robertson 11. The Forgotten Ones: Black Women in the Wake of Katrina Avis Jones-Deweever 12. Hazardous Constructions: Mexican Immigrant Masculinity and the Rebuilding of New Orleans Nicole Trujillo-Pagán Contributors Index

Reviews

This is a very important volume that all people interested in the Katrina disaster, governance, and American politics should read. In this book, Cedric Johnson and the other contributors reframe our understanding of the disaster by highlighting the role of neoliberalism in shaping both the preconditions for and response to this crisis. Those who read this book will come away with deeper knowledge of the meaning and work of neoliberalism over the last quarter century. -Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago

""This is a very important volume that all people interested in the Katrina disaster, governance, and American politics should read. In this book, Cedric Johnson and the other contributors reframe our understanding of the disaster by highlighting the role of neoliberalism in shaping both the preconditions for and response to this crisis. Those who read this book will come away with deeper knowledge of the meaning and work of neoliberalism over the last quarter century."" —Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago

<p> This is a very important volume that all people interested in the Katrina disaster, governance, and American politics should read. In this book, Cedric Johnson and the other contributors reframe our understanding of the disaster by highlighting the role of neoliberalism in shaping both the preconditions for and response to this crisis. Those who read this book will come away with deeper knowledge of the meaning and work of neoliberalism over the last quarter century. --Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago

Author Information

Cedric Johnson is associate professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is the author of Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics (Minnesota, 2007).

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