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Katrina disaster has roots in 1700s / Earthquake disaster in South Asia man-made

Published on October 16, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, culture traditions, development empowerment, ecology nature, Northern America

As noted before, disasters have their cultural aspects: Disasters are embedded in cultural practices of societies. “Disasters do not just happen.”

Anthropologist Anthony Oliver-Smith says in an interview about the earthquake in South Asia:

People often believe that nearly all environmental disasters are natural disasters when in fact many are the result of human actions, such as unsustainable use of natural resources. Even in the case of the recent earthquake in Pakistan, the majority of the deaths and displaced people can be attributed to the failure of building structures and their location.

A recent expert panel at Louisiana State University stated that the Katrina disaster actually has roots in 1700 when the French settlers started building levees in an attempt to stop flooding from the Mississippi River. Hurricane Katrina’s effects are the consequences of natural forces combined with the way people have engineered the landscape as far back as the early 1700s:

“It was not just a meteorological event, it was a social event as well,” said Craig Colten, professor of geography at LSU.

John Pine, interim chair of LSU’s department of geography and anthropology, said rebuilding will need to include recognizing how people have changed the landscape around New Orleans and how that could affect flooding and storm damage in the future. In doing that, he said, it’s important to include the unique culture and heritage of neighborhoods instead of imposing outside ideas on people.

Helen Regis, associate professor of anthropology, agreed.

“The people who live in New Orleans are the main experts on how to rebuild,” Regis said.

>> read more in The Advocate (Louisiana) (copy of article)

“Disasters do not just happen” – The Anthropology of Disaster (2)

New website: Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

Globalvoices: South Asian earthquake blogging highlights

South Asia Quake Help Blog

As noted before, disasters have their cultural aspects: Disasters are embedded in cultural practices of societies. "Disasters do not just happen."

Anthropologist Anthony Oliver-Smith says in an interview about the earthquake in South Asia:

People often believe that nearly all environmental…

Pacific Ethnography – Anthropology research consultancy on Human and Environmental Interaction

Published on October 3, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, development empowerment, ecology nature

(Via my site statistics) Most anthropological research consultancies concentrate on design and business anthropology. Pacific Ethnography do conduct consumer product research, but they provide human environmental impact research as well and work with non-profit-organisations. One of their project is called “Understanding and Changing Polluting Behavior in Los Angeles”: They develop benchmarking tools to guide water quality education in Los Angeles County watersheds. They have offices both in San Pedro (California), in Santiago (Chile) and in Pondicherry (India).

>> visit Pacific Ethnography’s website

(Via my site statistics) Most anthropological research consultancies concentrate on design and business anthropology. Pacific Ethnography do conduct consumer product research, but they provide human environmental impact research as well and work with non-profit-organisations. One of their project is…

New website: Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

Published on September 19, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, ecology nature

This is how social scientists should act. The Social Science Research Council has set up the website Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. SSRC explains:

“As analyses and “spin” of the Katrina crisis grow, we confront the sort of public issue to which a social science response is urgently needed. Accordingly, the SSRC has organized this web forum addressing the implications of the tragedy that extend beyond “natural disaster” “engineering failures,” “cronyism” or other categories of interpretation that do not directly examine the underlying issues—political, social and economic—laid bare by the events surrounding Katrina.”

Three texts are written by anthropologists:

An Imperfect Storm: Narratives of Calamity in a Liberal-Technocratic Age. By Alex de Waal

Un/natural Disasters, Here and There. By Stephen Jackson

Disasters and Forced Migration in the 21st Century. By Anthony Oliver-Smith

The Anthropology of Disaster – Anthropologists on Katrina

This is how social scientists should act. The Social Science Research Council has set up the website Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. SSRC explains:

"As analyses and "spin" of the Katrina crisis grow, we confront the sort of…

The Anthropology of Disaster – Anthropologists on Katrina

Published on September 5, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, development empowerment, Northern America

(post in progress)

A quick round-up of some news and blog-entries on the Katrina-disaster:

Anthropologist Anthony Oliver-Smith has researched how communities re-emerge from destruction. He’s surprisingly pessimistic according to a press release (University of Florida):

“When neighborhoods that are tightly woven together get impacted like this, and houses get torn up and people are displaced, that breaks up some of those cooperative networks; they lose access to services they can afford such as child care,” he said. He hope authorities will consider those needs when they help people rebuild.”

His pessimism might be explained by some findings in his book Catastrophe and Culture: the Anthropology of Disaster that he edited together with Susanna M. Hoffman: People won’t learn from past disaster experience and adjust their behavior accordingly.

In an review of this book in The American Ethnologist Paul L. Doughty writes:

With the relentless attention given to all kinds of disasters by the popular media, from sinking ferries in South Asia, exploding volcanoes, El Niño perturbations, oil spills, and airplane crashes, it is high time anthropologists turned serious attention to the examination of their impacts on society and culture in both the short and long term.

Among the case studies in the book, we’ll find a optimistic review of how indigenous people managed to deal with the effects of natural perturbations that have regularly caused major problems throughout Andean history.

Paul L. Doughty:

Surely this is a hopeful finding, suggesting that people today might also learn from past disaster experience and adjust their behavior accordingly. But will they? Reading other case materials in this book, however, one becomes a bit depressed because it seems humans are reticent to learn from past experience and show an unwillingness to accept the conclusions to be drawn from it.

>> read the whole review

>> Anthony Oliver-Smith: Environment and Disaster in Honduras: The Social Construction of Hurricane Mitch

Race, Poverty and Katrina: Craig E. Colten, professor of geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University, says race played a role in the New Orleans’ level of preparedness for Hurricane Katrina. >> listen to the interview at NPR

Nomadic Thoughts: More on Katrina and Anthropology

Will Klinger writes:

The dynamics of the entire situation beg for anthropological insight. Overnight the Superdome was transformed into a new society with new rules and new survival tactics. How did they deal with unrest? These are anthropological questions whose answers can serve a purpose. That purpose make become more obvious in the coming weeks and months but it is safe to conclude at this point that by studying how the people affected by the hurricane reacted and acted will be integral to planning for similar future situations.

>> continue

Katrina Help Wiki / see more Katrina help resources (Dina Mehta) – as always Dina’s blog is the best place regarding social tools, see her entry Skype virtual call centre opens web to Katrina refugees

WikiNews: Effect_of_Hurricane_Katrina_on_New_Orleans

Kerim Friedman: Government irresponsibility, race and damage control

American Anthropological Association Responds to Katrina

Blogs on Katrina (Technorati)

Tsunami and Internet: Social Tools – Ripples to Waves of the Future

MORE DISASTER ANTHROPOLOGY

Abdul Safique: Impact of the super cyclone: myths & realities

“Disasters do not just happen” – The Anthropology of Disaster (2)

New website: Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

“Disasters are also a social event”: Panel says Katrina disaster has roots in 1700s

Anthropology News October: How Anthropologists Can Respond to Disasters

(post in progress)

A quick round-up of some news and blog-entries on the Katrina-disaster:

Anthropologist Anthony Oliver-Smith has researched how communities re-emerge from destruction. He's surprisingly pessimistic according to a press release (University of Florida):

“When neighborhoods that are tightly woven together…

To provide better services at the library: Another anthropologist is studying college students

Published on August 10, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, design anthropology, fieldwork / methods, technology, University / Academia

“Rebekah Nathan” isn’t the only anthropologist who is studying students.

The article in Democrat & Chronicle starts like this (quite typically for journalists who are somehow puzzeled by recent changes in anthropology)

On and off for two years, anthropologist Nancy Foster lived with and observed the Wapishana, an indigenous tribe in Guyana and northern Brazil whose members live as hunters, farmers and fishermen. Now she’s studying a group nearly as exotic — college students.

And it goes on:

Employing the same methods numerous companies use to study their workers, University of Rochester’s River Campus library system is dissecting how its students live and work. The goal is to figure out ways of making the library more accessible to them for research papers and other projects.

The work comes on the heels of a similar study led by Foster of UR faculty to see how they used the library, particularly its online offerings. The result was that UR faculty now have personalized pages on the library’s UR Research Web site — it being a repository of various studies and papers done by faculty.

PS: We read about the possible consequences of this research. Students might be able to send an instant message to a reference librarian with questions. Something similar is already possible at the public library in Oslo. You can send sms and chat with librarians, see here

www.biblioteksvar.no/en/

"Rebekah Nathan" isn't the only anthropologist who is studying students.

The article in Democrat & Chronicle starts like this (quite typically for journalists who are somehow puzzeled by recent changes in anthropology)

On and off for two years, anthropologist Nancy Foster…