Disastrous Social Theory - Lessons From New Orleans

The current issue of Space and Culture is now available with links to the abstracts below.

Disastrous Social Theory—Lessons From New Orleans: Editorial Introduction by Joost Van Loon and Simon Charlesworth

“Contemporary social theory struggles to deal with disasters not just because of epistemological shortcomings regarding the continued dualistic nature of its dealings with social phenomena and events, relegating disasters to the real of ‘extraordinary events,’ but also because it has effectively foreclosed on its ability to deal with social reality. The latter is less the consequence of epistemic shortcomings but itself a social by-product of the institutionalization of social thought in the academy. Divorced from an ability to come to terms with social reality, because it lacks both an empirical grounding and a sense of urgency to understand that which lies outside the comfort zone of academic life, social theory is left rather aimlessly afloat amid a sea of debris that signals that the apocalypse has already happened.”


Space and Culture Volume 9, No. 1

Lester Spence - The Deaths Could Have Been Prevented

Marcia Alesan Dawkins - A Rhetorical Response to Hurricane Katrina

James C. Fraser - The Relevance of Human Geography for Studying Urban Disasters

Urbano Fra Paleo - Site and Situation: Impossible but Inevitable Cities

Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley - On Flexible Urbanism

Fernando Lara - In the Dark All You Have Left Is Architecture

Daren C. Brabham - Noticing Design/Recognizing Failure in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina

Harvey Molotch - Death on the Roof: Race and Bureaucratic Failure

Matthew Tiessen - Speed, Desire, and Inaction in New Orleans: Like a Stick in the Spokes

Martin Kich - Those Who Overstate the Lessons of the Past Are Condemned to Draw Erroneous Conclusions

Matt Sakakeeny - Resounding Silence in the Streets of a Musical City

Timothy Gibson - New Orleans and the Wisdom of Lived Space

Chad Lavin and Chris Russill - The Buoyancy of Failure: Battling Nature in New Orleans

Judith Pintar - Rethinking Trauma in the Hurricane’s Wake

William V. Faux, II and Heeman Kim - Visual Representation of the Victims of Hurricane Katrina: A Dialectical Approach to Content Analysis and Discourse

Hugh Bartling - Suburbia, Mobility, and Urban Calamities

Stephen Graham - “Homeland” Insecurities?: Katrina and the Politics of “Security” in Metropolitan America

C. Tabor Fisher - The Position of the Theorist in the Lower Ninth Ward

DeMond Shondell Miller - Visualizing the Corrosive Community: Looting in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

Adam Burgess - The Shock of a Social Disaster in an Age of (Nonsocial) Risk

Peter S. Alagona - What Makes a Disaster “Natural”?

Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria - Urban Calamities: A View From Mumbai

Katherine Fry - Television News: Hero for New Orleans, Hero for the Nation

Matthew Gandy - The Drowned World: J. G. Ballard and the Politics of Catastrophe

Michael Dear - Remembering Katrina: But Please, No Photos of Dead People

Daina Cheyenne Harvey - “Mise en Fiction du Monde”: Les Lieux de Mémoire and New Orleans

Norman K. Denzin - Katrina and the Collapse of Civil Society in New Orleans

Nigel Clark - Offering

Jacob A. Wagner - Creole Urbanism: Searching for an Urban Future in the Flooded Streets of New Orleans

Rob Shields and Matthew Tiessen - New Orleans and Other Urban Calamities

4 Responses to “Disastrous Social Theory - Lessons From New Orleans”

  1. Anonymous Says:

    It appears you forgot to include the link to Hugh Bartling’s “Suburbia, Mobility, and Urban Calamities”

    http://sac.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/1/60

  2. Anne Says:

    Sorry - now fixed!

  3. Karen George Mason Univ. Says:

    Hey there, It seems that two more links have gone “inactive”… could you fix them?

    Lester Spence - The Deaths Could Have Been Prevented

    Rob Shields and Matthew Tiessen - New Orleans and Other Urban Calamities

  4. Anne Says:

    Karen - those aren’t inactive; they’re simply not links. All links lead to abstracts only, and there are no abstracts for those two papers. Please access the full-text journal articles through your university library.

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