The article's main focus is on the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and it's inhabiants. It follows the city through the aftermath of the storm, analzying the rebuilding efforts that were never truly seen to completeion. They describe the goverments' lack luster efforts to help the displaced survivors and thus their continued feeling of displacement by survivors.
Google scholars had this article referenced 52 times. Many of these articles are in refernce to major disasters and the recovery of those areas from said disasters.
Vincanne Adams - Former director of Medical Anthropology with UC Berkeley.
Diana English - Assistant Professor at Stanford Hospital and Clinics.
Taslim van Hattum - Director of Behavioral Health Integration for the Louisiana Public Health Institute. Research focuses on public health.
Katrina, being that astronomical disaster that it was, has a response factor on a whole new level. The article touches on the response both immediately after and in a longer term context. It touches upon the aid provided by relief agencies throughout and the difficulties faced by those organizations due to scarcity and over demand of recourses.
The article uses personal anecdotes from individuals that were there during Katrina and data obtained from the NIH and FEMA.
“The response to the disaster was recognized as a bureaucratic nightmare that, regardless of the intent of the federal and state governments, appeared to homeowners as a sign of their having been abandoned.”
"What I experienced was coming back to the devastation of the city. No grocery stores, no cell phone service, certainly no phone service, no regular phone service. We actually had to get other cell phones. You know, it was a ghost town."
'“Chronic disaster syndrome” thus refers in this analysis to the cluster of trauma-and posttrauma-related phenomena that are at once individual, social, and political and that are associated with disaster as simultaneously causative and experiential of a chronic condition of distress in relation to displacement."
I did research into disaster capitalism. I found a book written by Naomi Klein titled "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism", and it mostly disscusses how places may use event such as Katrina to pass legistlation that will benefit their own personal desires.
This article is supported with the following:
- Anecdotes from survivors whom have experienced the turmoil of living in the remains after Katrina.
- Showing the disproportional treatment of individuals based on wealth. Those wealthy enough are able to relocate, but those who live in poverty are less likely able to relocate and forced to live in subpar conditions.
- Showing price gouging done by private companies in order to gain funds from federal funding.
This article has a very lengthy bibliography which contains a variety of government resources for data collection. Many of other papers cited focus on Katrina response, this shows the ideals this article are widley supported by other researchers and scholars.