Katrina New Research Articles

Reanimating Historical Violence in Multi-Ethnic Graphic Narratives

AbstractThe ongoing damage of hurricanes impacting the Gulf regions of the United States, and beyond, resurrect the legacies of Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina exposed the degree to which militarized humanitarianisms linked the “natural” disaster of the hurricane and US military violence in Iraq. In cultural production, scholarship, and social critique, Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War are historically linked discourses. Understanding both events through the fragmented representations of graphic narratives, in particular, compels reconsiderations of the hurricane and the war. In my examination of two graphic narratives, Mario Acevedo and Alberto Dose's Killing the Cobra: Chinatown Trollop (2010) and Mat Johnson and Simon Gane's Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story (2010), I analyze how the recurring presence of Iraqi civilian murder by the US military entwines the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina. The graphic narratives lay bare the liberal maintenance of transnational violence that undo simple distinctions between “at home” and “abroad.” Indeed, both graphic narratives attend to fractures as form and content to structure the geohistorical dynamics of militarized duty in Iraq with foundational legacies of racism in the United States. How the graphic narratives frame the war—spatially fragmented, aggressively nonlinear—reanimates the intertwined cultural histories of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. In their representations of mourning civilian deaths, and the convergence of humanitarian and military force in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, Killing the Cobra and Dark Rain graft the war-sanctioned violence against Iraqi civilians onto militarized registers of US domestic space, tracing the fractures of transnational humanitarian empire.

Gardening in Times of Urban Transitions: Emergence of Entrepreneurial Cultivation in Post–Katrina New Orleans

Expanding scholarship on urban farming has not systematically examined what spurs the proliferation of cultivation practices, especially when the city is undergoing economic and social transitions. This study examines the development of the urban cultivation (UC) scene in New Orleans over the decade following Hurricane Katrina with a particular focus on entrepreneurial UC projects. By contextualizing in–depth interviews with the growers in the historical events in the city, the study finds that the dominant motives of cultivation projects shifted from social missions to economic interests over time, as the city transitioned from recovery to redevelopment. The study highlights the heterogeneity of UC practices, and questions the current scholarship's tendency to situate urban gardens in opposing theoretical frameworks: tools for neoliberal urbanism or food justice activism. The findings show that the distinction between socially motivated and economically motivated UC cannot be easily drawn. Most of the socially motivated UC projects began adopting market participation over time, while many of the economically motivated UC projects operated as social entrepreneurialism. While growers tended to view themselves as alternative to the dominant political–economic system, they also undoubtedly benefitted from the market–driven redevelopment of the city that expanded UC opportunities.

A Cultural Sociology of Social Media: Social Drama, Cultural Affordances and Blogging in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina

Research on social media, networks and collective action currently lacks a strong cultural component, often focusing on network formation and characteristics from afar. At the same time, research in cultural sociology often takes social media for granted, removed from analytical or theoretical attention. We know little about the perspectives of users or the shared meanings, emotions, and codes that inform social media practices and discourses. Addressing this gap requires examining how users imagine, understand and use social media in ways that foment culturally-meaningful social networks and it would “thickly describe” the discourse that they create and share across these networks. This article uses social drama theory to understand the creation of community and collective action among a group of citizen bloggers in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. Informed by their shared grievances and motives, users created a collective social drama across their blogs. This social drama was an important resource with which users developed trusting social ties, voluntary relationships, a sense of community and offline collective actions. These developments were realized in part due to the cultural affordances of the blog platform, the ability to easily, efficiently and effectively communicate and consume richly meaningful and emotive texts unhindered by data limits or media modalities. The cultural affordances of blogs were such that people were able to communicate their shared grievances in the form of social drama, over an extended period of time, and develop meaningful, emotive connections with each other through social media.

Women with Cervical Carcinoma in Pre- and Post- Katrina New Orleans: A Comparative Analysis

Women with Cervical Carcinoma in Pre- and Post- Katrina New Orleans: A Comparative Analysis

Rodent assemblage structure reflects socioecological mosaics of counter-urbanization across post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans

Often overshadowed by global trends in urbanization, counter-urbanization is also on the rise worldwide. Left unaddressed, counter-urbanization can result in conditions that imperil human well-being. For example, counter-urbanization is hypothesized to increase the prevalence of ecological hazards like synanthropic pest and pathogen host species by shifting habitat and resource availability. In this study, we addressed this hypothesis by examining whether the abundance or diversity of rodent hosts varies according to the prevalence of abandoned, unmaintained properties across a mosaic of counter-urbanization in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans (Louisiana, USA). We also sought to determine whether management of vacant lots can influence the abundance or diversity of rodents across counter-urbanizing landscapes. Analysis of capture data from multi-year trapping efforts across the greater New Orleans area showed that total rodent abundance was highest in residential areas with high levels of vacancy and unmaintained vegetation as well as low household income and low residency. Greater rodent abundance and richness also occurred in areas with features related to infrastructure loss, such as trash and debris, especially in winter. While these results highlight that property abandonment can augment populations of pest and pathogen host species, our findings also indicate that management of abandoned areas can potentially mitigate public health concerns in counter-urbanizing landscapes.

Soil Lead and Children's Blood Lead Disparities in Pre- and Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans (USA).

This study appraises New Orleans soil lead and children’s lead exposure before and ten years after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. Introduction: Early childhood exposure to lead is associated with lifelong and multiple health, learning, and behavioral disorders. Lead exposure is an important factor hindering the long-term resilience and sustainability of communities. Lead exposure disproportionately affects low socioeconomic status of communities. No safe lead exposure is known and the common intervention is not effective. An essential responsibility of health practitioners is to develop an effective primary intervention. Methods: Pre- and post-Hurricane soil lead and children’s blood lead data were matched by census tract communities. Soil lead and blood lead data were described, mapped, blood lead graphed as a function of soil lead, and Multi-Response Permutation Procedures statistics established disparities. Results: Simultaneous decreases occurred in soil lead accompanied by an especially large decline in children’s blood lead 10 years after Hurricane Katrina. Exposure disparities still exist between children living in the interior and outer areas of the city. Conclusions: At the scale of a city, this study demonstrates that decreasing soil lead effectively reduces children’s blood lead. Primary prevention of lead exposure can be accomplished by reducing soil lead in the urban environment.

The Visible Hand: Markets, Politics, and Regulation in Post-Katrina New Orleans

In this article Huriya Jabbar examines how the regulatory environment in post–Hurricane Katrina New Orleans has influenced choice, incentives, and competition among schools. While previous research has highlighted the mechanisms of competition and individual choice—the “invisible hand”—and the creation of markets in education, Jabbar focuses here on how markets, especially those in education, are also governed by the “visible” hand of the government, which, through regulations and policies, influences how they operate and the outcomes they generate. She compares two governing agencies to examine how the different policy environments in New Orleans shaped school leaders' perceptions of competition and their behavioral responses to it. Her findings indicate that governing agencies constrain or enable school leaders' ability to respond to market pressures, sometimes mitigating and other times exacerbating inequities in the marketplace. These findings can inform other school districts across the United States as they adopt market-based reforms, providing directions for ensuring that such policies are equitable.

School Choice, Student Mobility, and School Quality: Evidence from post-Katrina New Orleans

In recent decades, school choice policies predicated on student mobility have gained prominence as urban districts address chronically low-performing schools. However, scholars have highlighted equity concerns related to choice policies. The case of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans provides an opportunity to examine student mobility patterns in a choice-based district. This paper analyzes student mobility between and within the various sectors and school types using a multinomial framework. We find rates of student mobility in post-Katrina New Orleans to be similar to other traditional urban school districts. Overall, our results indicate that high-achieving students switch to high-quality schools whereas low-achieving students transfer to low-quality schools. It is clear some students are taking advantage of the ability to choose a high-quality educational option, although many students are still not. Policy implications, especially for education policy makers implementing or considering school choice policies, and areas for future research are discussed.

Why Here and Why Now? Teacher Motivations for Unionizing in a New Orleans Charter School

The rigidity of teachers unions has been given as a primary reason for their lack of representation among America’s rapidly growing, although still relatively small, charter school sector. In the case of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, the city rapidly converted from a union-backed teacher workforce to a largely nonunionized charter school workforce in the years following state takeover and charter conversion. This makes the recent emergence of two single-school unions in charter schools there worthy of study. As the teachers attempt to organize single-school unions in a nearly all charter school system, what are their motivations? This case study of one of New Orleans’ emerging charter school unions found that pay inequities, job insecurity, a lack of teacher voice in school-level decisions, and a culture of compliance, all motivated teachers to seek unionization. Teachers hoped to promote equity and teacher involvement with their union, but the organizing effort did strain some relationships, particularly those involving middle management.

Using Land Swaps to Concentrate Redevelopment and Expand Resettlement Options in Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Although many researchers frame post-disaster reconstruction as an opportunity to build safer communities less vulnerable to natural hazards, widespread land use change and relocations are rare in the United States. Residents often resist relocation and attempt to recreate the city as it was before the disaster. In this study, I examine the potential of land swaps to encourage post-disaster redevelopment that is more concentrated and less vulnerable to hazards, while expanding resettlement options for displaced residents. This article is based on a case study of an innovative land swap program developed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina by a nonprofit housing organization, Project Home Again (PHA). PHA's land swap program concentrated redevelopment during a time of uncertain population return and expanded resettlement options for nearly 100 low- and moderate-income households devastated by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters. I describe the operation of PHA's land swap program and identify three conditions that can increase the viability and impact of land swaps in other disaster recovery settings: the incorporation of land swaps into housing recovery policy; cross-sector collaboration in the implementation of land swaps; and coordination with public or quasi-public land banks.Takeaway for practice: Land swaps can be a useful tool in disaster recovery by helping to guide redevelopment while expanding resettlement options for displaced residents. Increasing the range of relocation and resettlement tools available to planners is essential as repeated extreme weather events, sea level rise, and coastal erosion threaten the habitability of more and more cities and communities.

Going "Beyond Food": Confronting Structures of Injustice in Food Systems Research and Praxis

This commentary argues for a need to go "beyond food" in research, writing, and activism on the food system. Noting a tendency within both academic and activist discourse around food to focus on "the food itself," rather than on broader structures of inequality and disinvestment, I argue that more research is needed that focuses explicitly on the ways in which institutional structures and systems (including nonprofits, schools, housing, as well as the food system) can exacerbate broad injustices, including limited food access. I draw on research experience in post–Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, USA, as well as commentary from eminent food systems scholars, to advocate for new research trajectories that utilize food as a lens for contesting broader structures of injustice, rather than advocating for more and better food as an end in itself.

Justice as Measure of Nongovernmental Organization Success in Postdisaster Community Assistance

Through exploring multiple contemporary conceptions of justice, this article illustrates that justice matters when considering outcomes in nongovernmental organization (NGO) assistance. In environmental justice (EJ) scholarship, the term justice has been underproblematized, assuming a tacit understanding of the concept as fairness or equitable distribution of environmental harms. Using the rebuilding of two heavily damaged poor and minority neighborhoods in post–Katrina New Orleans as case studies, this article makes evident the different conceptualizations of justice embedded within the strategies and techniques of NGOs and community organizations. Examining both practices and outcomes, I argue that the definition of justice that NGOs implicitly or explicitly adopt in their strategies and technologies of assistance can lead to very different results in postdisaster neighborhood revitalization. For science and technology studies, conceptions of justice can help articulate a more critical social science that opens up the descriptive/normative divide. This is important in thinking about equitable social change and allied policy—as it applies not only to NGO assistance but also to other science and technology issues that intersect with marginalized communities as well.

Protective factors and college student drinking patterns in pre and post Katrina New Orleans

Rates of heavy drinking, tobacco use and illicit substance use peak among college students between 18 and 25 years of age. Attitudes, personal characteristics, and behaviors that are called protective factors could play a role in reducing college students’ use of alcohol and drugs. We studied the relationships between selected protective factors and alcohol consumption in college students from a public commuter university in New Orleans, Louisiana pre-and post-Hurricane Katrina utilizing the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey (CADS) Long Form. We applied Hirschi’s social control theory to examine the relationships between drinking and the identified protective factors. Three research questions with null and alternative hypotheses were tested to explore the impact of Hurricane Katrina on protective factors and drinking utilizing linear/ logistic and multivariate regression models to test the hypotheses. We found that post-Katrina students were on average about 1.5 years older and drank approximately 1.5 more drinks per week than pre-Katrina students. Both pre and post Katrina age, gender, and race/ethnicity were significantly related to drinking among these groups of college students such that older students, women, and non-Whites tended to have reduced odds of drinking. There were no statistically significant relationships between individual protective factors or any group of protective factors and drinking after controlling for age, gender, and race/ethnicity indicating that these 3 individual characteristics that cannot be altered were stronger predictors of drinking than any other factors we tested.

Sex and Drug Risk Behavior Pre- and Post-Emigration Among Latino Migrant Men in Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans

High rates of sex and drug risk behaviors have been documented among Latino migrant men in the US. Whether these behaviors were established in the migrants' home countries or were adopted in the US has not been described and has implications for prevention strategies. Quarterly surveys were conducted to gather information on selected sex and drug risk practices of Latino migrant men who arrived in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina seeking work. Both kappa scores and McNemar's tests were performed to determine if practice of these behaviors in home country was similar to practice post-emigration to the US. Female sex worker (FSW) patronage, same sex encounters (MSM), and crack cocaine use was more likely to occur post- rather than pre-emigration. Of those who ever engaged in these selected behaviors, most adopted the behavior in the US (i.e., 75.8% of FSW patrons, 72.7% of MSM participants, and 85.7% of crack cocaine users), with the exception of binge drinking (26.8%). Men who were living with a family member were less likely to adopt FSW patronage OR = 0.27, CI = 0.10-0.76, whereas men who earned >$465 per week were more likely to adopt crack cocaine use OR = 6.29 CI = 1.29, 30.57. Interventions that facilitate the maintenance of family cohesion and provide strategies for financial management may be useful for reducing sex and drug risk among newly arrived migrants.

Respiratory Health Effects Associated with Restoration Work in Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans

Background. This study examines prevalence of respiratory conditions in New Orleans-area restoration workers after Hurricane Katrina. Methods. Between 2007 and 2010, spirometry and respiratory health and occupational questionnaire were administered to 791 New Orleans-area adults who mostly worked in the building construction and maintenance trades or custodial services. The associations between restoration work hours and lung function and prevalence of respiratory symptoms were examined by multiple linear regression, χ 2, or multiple logistic regression. Results. 74% of participants performed post-Katrina restoration work (median time: 620 hours). Symptoms reported include episodes of transient fever/cough (29%), sinus symptoms (48%), pneumonia (3.7%), and new onset asthma (4.5%). Prevalence rate ratios for post-Katrina sinus symptoms (PRR = 1.3; CI: 1.1, 1.7) and fever and cough (PRR = 1.7; CI: 1.3, 2.4) were significantly elevated overall for those who did restoration work and prevalence increased with restoration work hours. Prevalence rate ratios with restoration work were also elevated for new onset asthma (PRR = 2.2; CI: 0.8, 6.2) and pneumonia (PRR = 1.3; CI: 0.5, 3.2) but were not statistically significant. Overall, lung function was slightly depressed but was not significantly different between those with and without restoration work exposure. Conclusions. Post-Katrina restoration work is associated with moderate adverse effects on respiratory health, including sinusitis and toxic pneumonitis.

The continuing impact of lead dust on children's blood lead: Comparison of public and private properties in New Orleans

BackgroundCompared with a maximum collective lead (Pb) estimate of ∼1811 metric tons (MT) in exterior paint on 86,000 New Orleans houses, Pb additives in gasoline were estimated at ∼12,000MT in New Orleans, yielding ∼9100MT Pb exhausted as aerosols from vehicles; ∼4850MT were particles >10μm and ∼4200MT were particles <0.25μm. ObjectivesTo evaluate pre-Hurricane Katrina soil Pb and children's blood Pb at public housing and private residential properties in the inner-city compared with the outer city of New Orleans. MethodsThis study includes 224 soil samples from 10 public housing properties and 363 soil samples from residential private properties within an 800m radius of centroids of public housing census tracts. The Louisiana Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program data from 2000 to 2005 (pre-Hurricane Katrina) was the source for 9807 children's blood Pb (μg/dL) results. Soil and blood Pb data were grouped by public housing census tracts and private residential properties. This study uses Multi-Response Permutation Procedures for statistical analysis. ResultsBrick public properties in the city core had significantly more soil Pb contamination and higher prevalence of elevated children's blood Pb than same-aged brick public properties in the outer areas of the city. The pre-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans concentration of Pb dust in the inner-city soil displayed a median of 438mg/kg or 3.7 times larger than Pb dust in outlying areas where the median soil Pb was 117mg/kg (p-value=2.9×10−15). Also, the pre-Hurricane Katrina prevalence of children's blood Pb ≥10μg/dL was 22.9% within the inner-city compared with 9.1% in the outer areas of New Orleans (p-value=3.4×10−74). ConclusionsComparing the quantities of Pb dust from paint and Pb additives to gasoline, this study supports the later source as a more plausible explanation for the differences in soil Pb and children's blood Pb within public and private housing in the higher traffic congested inner-city core compared with the lower traffic congested outer areas of New Orleans. Similar patterns of environmental Pb dust contamination and childhood Pb exposure are expected in all cities.

Mental Health Professionals' Experiences of Vicarious Traumatization in Post–Hurricane Katrina New Orleans

Mental health professionals in a variety of work settings regularly encounter clients who are trauma victims. This secondary exposure to trauma often results in the professionals experiencing the effects of trauma themselves, known as vicarious traumatization (VT). The present descriptive, sequential mixed-method study explored VT experienced by mental health professionals in the post–Hurricane Katrina New Orleans region using the Vicarious Traumatization Questionnaire (VTQ). The study also examined the impact of VT on the professional and personal functioning of mental health professionals through interviews with agency directors. Results indicated notable VT impact. Prevention and treatment implications are discussed.

After the Flood

I flew to post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans on July 1, 2006, one week after my eighteenth birthday, where, except for a few weeks of visits home, I would live for the next eight months. I thought I was going to build the revolution. I didn't know that the biggest change would be in me. My journey had begun six months earlier at the 2006 World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, where I attended a workshop about bottom-up organizing in post-Katrina New Orleans led by Curtis Muhammad, a prominent civil rights organizer who worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the sixties. Curtis had been living in New Orleans for many years and, with others, had founded the People's Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF), an organization designed to empower those New Orleans residents who had suffered the most from the effects of the storm but who had very little political clout of their own.

Denaturalizing Disaster: Teaching Comparatively on New Orleans and Detroit

Denaturalizing DisasterTeaching Comparatively on New Orleans and Detroit Nicole Pagan (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution NASA/JPL/NGA Iteach on race, ethnicity, and urban problems at a university in Detroit. The setting amplifies social divisions based on race and class. My classrooms are generally populated by upper-level undergraduate students and professional and graduate students ranging in age from their early 20s through their mid-50s. About half the students in any given class live in this hyper-segregated city. Students living in predominantly white suburban areas have less familiarity with the intense challenges facing their classmates, which include the lack of an adequate labor market for city residents, concentrated poverty, high crime rates, residential segregation, poor public transportation, and urban sprawl. Students living in the city are left in a difficult position. On the one hand, most share a hope for mobility that often includes leaving the city. On the other hand, Detroit students are personally implicated in (and resent) the negative stereotypes held about the city and its residents. They reasonably share a defensive posture and are repeatedly forced to face disaster "in the eye." Teaching in Detroit is a model for teaching in hard times because Detroit exists "in the eye of the storm," and represents what is disastrous about our current economic relationships. This model also shows us that crises are not discrete events. Urban areas across the country increasingly share cityscapes of boarded-up shops, fire-ravaged buildings, and decayed billboards. Similarly, suburban students who have, through the economic collapse, started to understand the implications of disaster find greater common cause with city residents. Over the winter 2009 semester, in a race relations course, I encouraged students to look for commonalities based on the experience of "disaster" and rethink how they distinguished "natural" from "manmade" calamities. I wanted my students to see that an "act of God" is more complicated [End Page 28] than the phrase implies. I built on the premise that natural events, including droughts and hurricanes, are catastrophic only in relation to human activity. People shape their relationships to the built and natural environment, and make decisions about where to settle and what resources to use in maintaining infrastructure that turn a storm into a calamity. Thinking about both "natural" and "social" disasters as human products encourages a relational understanding of the broader dynamics, actions, and dominant actors that generate episodic crises. Click for larger view View full resolution NASA/JPL/NGA In the course, students built a comparative frame around disaster by comparing Detroit and pre-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. Their readings proposed a comparative framework for understanding patterned and recurring crises. Students identified common features of the two cities, features which were produced by housing segregation, economic decline, and inadequate federal relief. We also considered post-Katrina recovery efforts, weighed their successes and failures, and tried to imagine similar strategies for economic recovery in Detroit. Having carefully considered the roots of urban crises, students asked themselves personal questions about how they reproduced social inequality. They considered where they would like to live and why, their differential access to the resources needed to realize their desires, and alternate forms of mobility. They pushed each other to question who they were as individual and collective actors amidst disaster, and struggled to build solidarity around opportunities for action. They reconsidered themselves as an interrelated group with common, or at least compatible, interests, disadvantaged by industrial decisions in which they had little influence, and a city government that had failed to protect their security and stability. Rather than being demoralized, students felt empowered because they had gained tools [End Page 29] to articulate their concerns. Some were motivated to move forward in joining the struggle to solve their city's problems. Teaching in the context of disaster can produce this result when instructor and students understand their experience as shared. The classroom becomes a place for solidarity that can lead to future activism and community engagement. An "Unnatural" Disaster Students from Detroit generally recognize they live in what many call a "war zone." They experience an uncomfortable tension characterizing disasters more generally: how can one appreciate the extent and severity...

End of the Line: Tracing Racial Inequality from School to Prison

Building on an interpretive case study of a public school at a prison in New Orleans, this paper examines the punitive culture of public education and points to its role in extending both the minority achievement gap and mass minority incarceration. The work documents how racial minorities, and African American males in particular, are criminalized by school disciplinary policies and shows how these policies foreshorten educational careers and increase risk for incarceration. The paper concludes by turning to a school site in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans where a grassroots student organization has resisted the correctional school disciplinary model and has advocated for more positive educational investments.