Synopses & Reviews
Sandy was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history after Katrina, but the waters had barely receded from the Jersey coast when massive efforts began to andldquo;Restore the Shore.andrdquo;and#160; Why do people build in areas open to repeated natural disasters?and#160; And why do they return to these areas in the wake of major devastation?and#160; Drawing on a variety of insights from environmental sociology,
Superstorm Sandy answers these questions as it looks at both the unique character of the Jersey Shore and the more universal ways that humans relate to their environment.and#160;
and#160;
Diane C. Bates offers a wide-ranging look at the Jersey Shore both before and after Sandy, examining the many factorsandmdash;such as cultural attachment, tourism revenues, and governmental regulationandmdash;that combined to create a highly vulnerable coastal region. She explains why the Shore is so important to New Jerseyans, acting as a key cultural touchstone in a state that lacks a central city or even a sports team to build a shared identity among the stateandrsquo;s residents. She analyzes post-Sandy narratives about the Jersey Shore that trumpeted the dominance of human ingenuity over nature (such as the stateandrsquo;s andldquo;Stronger than the Stormandrdquo; advertising campaign) or proclaimed a therapeutic community (andldquo;Jersey Strongandrdquo;)andmdash;narratives rooted in emotion and iconography, waylaying any thought of the near-certainty of future storms. The book also examines local business owners, politicians, real estate developers, and residents who have vested interests in the region, explaining why the Shore was developed intensively prior to Sandy, and why restoration became an imperative in the post-storm period.
and#160;
Engagingly written and insightful, Superstorm Sandy highlights the elements that compounded the disaster on the Shore, providing a framework for understanding such catastrophes and preventing them in the future.and#160;
Review
"This book is the best treatment we have of the American catastrophe c
Review
"The intent [of Katrina's Imprint] is to reveal the human consequences of the city's devastation and to offer a moral perspective on what has been viewed too often as a failure of government, a 'natural' breakdown of technological systems. This volume reminds us of the persistence of racial divisions in American society and the many ways that African Americans are vulnerable to harm. Recommended."
Review
"
Katrina's Imprint is a unique book that makes critical contributions to our understanding not only of the event itself but also of the ongoing production of social inequalities in our society as a whole. The strong blend of empirically-based social science and textual and cultural analyses of
Katrina's Imprint leads to a holistic understanding of the ways that structural inequalities are reproduces, but also resisted and challenged."
Review
"
Katrina's Imprint provides some of the most valuable scholarly insights yet published regarding the 2005 disaster. It serves as an exemplary record of interdisciplinary scholars whose research illuminates Katrina's larger lessons."
Review
"With skilled use of primary and secondary sources,
Katrina's Imprint effectively shakes us out of our 'blissful ignorance' and fulfills its stated aim to broaden and deepen our understanding of Katrina.
Katrina's Imprint is important reading."
Review
andquot;The essays from various disciplines in this collection thoughtfully examine how conceptions of race (or ethnicity) create disparities in health care and its outcomes. Recommended.andquot;
Review
andquot;Mapping 'Race' providesand#160;keen insights about race as a social construction. With its coherent theme and presentation of possible ways to study race and health, this book will fill an important vacuum in the scholarship on the topic.andquot;
Review
andquot;The arguments inand#160;Mapping 'Race' are at the cutting edge of research; the authors' tight focus on health and health disparities is sensible and timely. Besides outlining racial disparities in health, the authors provide an executable set of solutions.andquot;
Review
andquot;an important collection that introduces some of the specific methodological debates on the intersection between race and health inequalities in the USA.andquot;
Review
andldquo;This compelling book addresses the social, political, and economic dimensions of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the Black population in America, making an extremely important contribution to the scholarly literature on the intersections among HIV/AIDS, race and racism, and gender and sexuality. Mackenzieandrsquo;s notion of structural intimacies is a very novel and innovative contribution. This book will have a major impact.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;An engaging, well-crafted addition to the literature on the sociology of disasters in the face of climate change, Superstorm Sandy provides an impressively clear exploration of the events surrounding the hurricane. Readers can feel themselves walking down the boardwalk alongside the author and worrying alongside the residents.andquot;
Review
andquot;What is race? The contributors in Mapping Race brilliantly renew, reconsider, and reimagine this question in light of the pressing new challenges facing the way we think about diverging health outcomes. Mapping Race is necessary reading.andquot;
Review
andldquo;Superstorm Sandy and#160;provides a vivid description and wide-rangingand#160;explanation of that huge stormandrsquo;s impact on Americans.and#160; It is a andlsquo;must readandrsquo; as we prepareand#160;for future storms in coastal America.andrdquo;and#160;
Synopsis
Katrina's Imprint highlights the power of this sentinel American event and its continuing reverberations in contemporary politics, culture, and public policy. Published on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the multidisciplinary volume reflects on how history, location, access to transportation, health care, and social position feed resilience, recovery, and prospects for the future of New Orleans and the Gulf region. Essays examine the intersecting vulnerabilities that gave rise to the disaster, explore the cultural and psychic legacies of the storm, reveal how the process of rebuilding and starting over replicates past vulnerabilities, and analyze Katrina's imprint alongside American's myths of self-sufficiency. A case study of new weaknesses that have emerged in our era, this book offers an argument for why we cannot wait for the next disaster before we apply the lessons that should be learned from Katrina.
Synopsis
The essays in this unique book argue for the inclusion of race as a social construction in the design of large-scale data collection efforts and how scientists must utilize race in the context of specific research questions. This landmark collection concludes on a prescriptive note, providing an arsenal of multidisciplinary, conceptual, and methodological tools for studying race specifically within the context of health inequalities.
Synopsis
Researchers commonly ask subjects to self-identify their race from a menu of preestablished options. Yet if race is a multidimensional, multilevel social construction, this has profound methodological implications for the sciences and social sciences. Race must inform how we design large-scale data collection and how scientists utilize race in the context of specific research questions. This landmark collection argues for the recognition of those implications for research and suggests ways in which they may be integrated into future scientific endeavors. It concludes on a prescriptive note, providing an arsenal of multidisciplinary, conceptual, and methodological tools for studying race specifically within the context of health inequalities.
Contributors: John A. Garcia, Arline T. Geronimus, Laura E. Gandoacute;mez, Joseph L. Graves Jr., Janet E. Helms, Derek Kenji Iwamoto, Jonathan Kahn, Jay S. Kaufman, Mai M. Kindaichi, Simon J. Craddock Lee, Nancy Landoacute;pez, Ethan H. Mereish, Matthew Miller, Gabriel R. Sanchez, Aliya Saperstein, R. Burciaga Valdez, Vicki D. Ybarra
Synopsis
Structural Intimacies brings together scholarship on the structural dimensions of the AIDS epidemic and the social construction of sexuality to address the continuing HIV epidemic in the Black population, It asserts that shifting forms of sexual stories, structural intimacies, are emerging and presents a compelling argument: in an era of deepening medicalization of HIV/AIDS, public health must move beyond individual-level interventions to community-level health equity frames and policy changes.
Synopsis
One of the most relevant social problems in contemporary American life is the continuing HIV epidemic in the Black population. With vivid ethnographic detail, this book brings together scholarship on the structural dimensions of the AIDS epidemic and the social construction of sexuality to assert that shifting forms of sexual storiesandmdash;structural intimaciesandmdash;are emerging, produced by the meeting of intimate lives and social structural patterns. These stories render such inequalities as racism, poverty, gender power disparities, sexual stigma, and discrimination as central not just to the dramatic, disproportionate spread of HIV in Black communities in the United States, but to the formation of Black sexualities.
Sonja Mackenzie elegantly argues that structural vulnerability is feltandmdash;quite literallyandmdash;in the blood, in the possibilities and constraints on sexual lives, and in the rhetorics of their telling. The circulation of structural intimacies in daily life and in the political domain reflects possibilities for seeking what Mackenzie calls intimate justice at the nexus of cultural, economic, political, and moral spheres. Structural Intimacies presents a compelling case: in an era of deepening medicalization of HIV/AIDS, public health must move beyond individual-level interventions to community-level health equity frames and policy changes
Synopsis
Why do people build in areas open to repeated natural disasters? Drawing on a variety of insights from environmental sociology,
Superstorm Sandy offers a wide-ranging look at the Jersey Shore both before and after this disaster, examining the many factorsandmdash;such as cultural attachment, tourism revenues, and governmental regulationandmdash;that combined to create a highly vulnerable coastal region and that fueled the demand to rebuild.
About the Author
KEITH WAILOO is the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University, and the author and editor of several books, among them
Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health.
KAREN M. O'NEILL is a sociologist and associate professor of human ecology at Rutgers University, and the author of Rivers by Design: State Power and the Origins of U.S. Flood Control.
JEFFREY DOWD is a Ph.D. candidate in the sociology department at Rutgers University.
ROLAND V. ANGLIN is the director of the Initiative for Regional and Community Transformation (IRCT) at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Storying Sexuality in the Black AIDS Epidemic
2. A Liquor Store on Every Corner: Intimate States of Alcohol and HIV / AIDS
3. Never a Black Brokeback Mountain: Sexual Silence and the andquot;Down Lowandquot; in the Age of AIDS
4. Crazy Talk: The Conspiracy Counter-Narrative in the Black AIDS Epidemic
5. The President, the Preacher, and Race and Racism in the Obama Era
Appendix: Methodological Matters
Notes
References
Index