As I am part of the group working on the Librizol Fire in Rouen, France, I find it very interesting to see and compare how social and cultural structures shape people's actions and options. e.g.: (Non-)knowledge and power hierachies, as well as infrastructures like universities, and environmental organizations; official/governmental actions (top-down) and citizen-le actions (bottom-up), and blurred lines and spaces inbetween.
Originally published in French, this article was authored by Dr. Didier Fassin, physician of internal medicine, French anthropologist, sociologist, and an expert in public health. Dr. Fassin is also a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He has authored and edited numerous research articles and publications, in addition to receiving several awards for his work.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security that was founded on June 19, 1978. The agency's primary purpose is to coordinate the emergency and recovery response efforts to a disaster that occurs within the United States.
Many studies look at intimate partner voilence (IPV), but only two previous studies look at it specifically related to a natural disaster, so this research is inventive in that way. It uses data from a larger study of the area that was hit by Katrina. The data was obtained through interviews, and in the period of time 6 months before Katrina to 6 months after, measures of psychological and physical IPV are analyzed. These measures were also compared to a scale of how stressful the individual's life had been in that time frame, which was reached based on answers to questions about how Katrina affected the individual.