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Omar Pérez: Submarine Roots, Resisting (un)natural disasters

omarperez

I am interested in seeing how social ties and networks have been used to cope with (un)natural disasters. My research focus on places under disasters conditions such as Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, in which social ties have made the difference between life and death. Furthermore, “natural” disaster has been used to approved austerity measures and unjust policies to impoverished communities like in New Orleans after Katrina. These policies were not new, as they are rooted in structures of power to preserve the status quo. Yet, people have resisted, “through a network of branches, cultures, and geographies” that has stimulated a reflective process of looking within for solutions rather than outside. As often this outside solutions are not only detached from community’s reality but can perpetuate social injustices and inequalities.

McKittrick, K., & Woods, C. A. (Eds.). (2007). Black geographies and the politics of place. South End Press.

Bullard, R. D., & Wright, B. (Eds.). (2009). Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to reclaim, rebuild, and revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Westview Press.

Annotated Bibliography (EIS)

This link complements the Essay Bibliography of the Project Environmental Justice framing implications in the EIS.

EPA Database on EISs

This (EIS) database provides information about EISs provided by federal agencies, and EPA's comments concerning the EIS process.

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Zackery.White

“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."