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Narrating the Storm: Sociological Stories of Hurricane Katrina
Author(s): Kristen Barber (Author, Editor), Danielle A. Hidalgo (Author, Editor)
- Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Publication Date: 31 Jan. 2008
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 265 pages
- ISBN-10: 184718362X
- ISBN-13: 9781847183620
Book Description
For those interested in learning more about the personal impact of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, Narrating the Storm serves as an essential read. This important and timeless volume is a compilation of sixteen narratives that address the experiences of Gulf Coast residents, faculty, and graduate students who were caught up in the largest (not so) natural disaster in United States history. Each contributor deploys storytelling sociology as a methodological approach in order to illustrate how “personal” experiences with disaster are not so personal, but rather reflect and are informed by larger social phenomena related to issues including race, class, gender, age, bureaucracy, risk, collective memory, the blasé, and more. The narratives in this volume exemplify how inequality and injustice are unveiled, exacerbated, and created by the occurrence of disaster; and reveal the sociological in everyday and not-so-everyday experiences.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Before we are done with it, hundreds of books and thousands of articles will be written about that set of events we have come to call Katrina. But none of them will be anything like this remarkable collection of memoirs. The authors gathered here all know how to spin a tale and how to do so with a rich sociological sensibility. But, far more to the point, they all have gripping stories to tell.”– Kai Erikson, author of A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience of Modern Disasters”. . . Narrating the Storm is must reading for anyone interested in the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath. Emotionally evocative, riveting at times, this engaging collection of original essays is replete with sociological insight. The book is an important contribution, as well, to the genre of storytelling sociology.”– Ronald J. Berger, author of Storytelling Sociology: Narrative as Social Inquiry”The stories told by these individuals provide compelling applications and examples of sociological concepts and theories that serve to stimulate our sociological imaginations. Narrating the Storm is an important contribution to society’s efforts to better understand this latest American tragedy unleashed by Katrina.”– Duane A. Gill, editor of Voices of Katrina, the Journal of Public Management and Social Policy”The authors . . . give us thoughtful, personal, often emotional narratives as well as clear analytical insight on a wide range of issues . . . Narrating the Storm humanizes the disaster with its honest stories and aptly uses theoretical tools to place the stories in a larger sociological context. This is a unique and engaging book.”– Alice Fothergill, author of Heads Above Water: Gender, Class, and Family in the Grand Forks Flood
About the Author
Danielle A. Hidalgo received her Masters degree in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before joining the Sociology program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she completed three years of graduate study at Tulane University. Working for the Southern Sociological Society’s Annual Conference in New Orleans, she co-organized a Silent Auction for the SSS Katrina Fund, Gulf Coast Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the ASA Minority Scholarship Fund. Additionally, she organized a panel session that directly led to this book project. She is currently a doctoral student in Sociology, and is completing dissertation research on spatio-temporal relations of gender and sexuality in the context of Bangkok, Thailand. Her areas of interest include gender, sexuality, the sociology of the body, immigration, Asian and Asian American studies, the sociology of development, and Southeast Asia with a particular emphasis in Thailand. She is co-editor, with Carl L. Bankston III, of Immigration in U.S. History: An Encyclopedia survey of U.S. Immigration (Salem Press 2006) and has authored or co-authored numerous journal articles and book chapters. Kristen Barber is a Doctoral Student in Sociology at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include sex and gender, the sociology of the body, sexuality, and qualitative methods. Barber’s current research focuses on masculinity and beauty culture. She is author or co-author of several journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries. Her articles are published in the Journal of Bisexuality and the Journal of Public Management and Social Policy. As co-author of “The Dyadic Imaginary: Troubling the Perception of Love as Dyadic,” she received the 2006 Mid-South Sociological Association Graduate Student Paper of Distinction Award. Prior to continuing her graduate studies at the University of Southern California, Barber received her Masters in Sociology from Tulane University.
