contemporary sociology · reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher....

ContemporarySociology

November 2010 • Volume 39 • Number 6American Sociological Association

A JOURNAL OF REVIEWS

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EDITORAlan Sica

MANAGING EDITORAnne Sica

ASSISTANT EDITORSKathryn Densberger

Amanda Maull

EDITORIAL BOARD

Pennsylvania State University

A JOURNAL OF REVIEWSNovember 2010 – Volume 39 – Number 6

Jimi AdesinaRhodes UniversitySouth Africa

Paul AmatoPennsylvania State University

Robert AntonioUniversity of Kansas

Karen BarkeyColumbia University

Sharon BirdIowa State University

Victoria BonnellUniversity of California,Berkeley

Rose BrewerUniversity of Minnesota

Craig CalhounNew York University

Bruce CarruthersNorthwestern University

Donatella Della PortaEuropean University InstituteItaly

Paul DiMaggioPrinceton University

Elaine DraperCalifornia State University,Los Angeles

Anthony ElliottFlinders UniversityAustralia

Yen Le EspirituUniversity of California,San Diego

Eric FassinÉcole Normale SupérieureFrance

Eva FodorCentral European UniversityHungary

Joe GerteisUniversity of Minnesota

Janice IrvineUniversity of Massachusetts,Amherst

Devorah Kalekin-FishmanUniversity of HaifaIsrael

Caglar KeyderBoğaziçi ÜniversitesiTurkey

Nazli KibriaBoston University

Chyong-fang KoAcademia SinicaTaiwan

Judith LorberBrooklyn College andGraduate Center, CUNY

Marcello ManeriUniversity of Milano-BicoccaItaly

Ruth MilkmanUniversity of California,Los Angeles

Valentine MoghadamPurdue University

Mignon MooreUniversity of California,Los Angeles

Ann MorningNew York University

Andrew NoymerUniversity of California, Irvine

Jennifer PierceUniversity of Minnesota

Harland PrechelTexas A&M University

Wendy SimondsGeorgia State University

Neil SmelserUniversity of California,Berkeley

Nico StehrZeppelin UniversityGermany

Mindy StomblerGeorgia State University

Alenka SvabUniversity of LjubljanaSlovenia

Judith TreasUniversity of California,Irvine

Stephen TurnerUniversity of South Florida

Jeff UlmerPennsylvania State University

John UrryLancaster UniversityUnited Kingdom

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CONTENTS

655 Editor’sRemarks The Courage to Publicize One’s Convictions

SYMPOSIUM CATASTROPHE IN THE MAKING: THE ENGINEERING OF KATRINA AND THE DISASTERS OF TOMORROW, by William Freudenberg, Robert Gramling, Shirley Laska, and Kai Erickson

657 Harvey Molotch Canal to Hell: Elite Strategies as Blunder and Mayhem

659 Charles Perrow Ditching New Orleans

660 Kathleen Tierney Growth Machine Politics and the Social Production of Risk

REVIEW ESSAYS Author Title Reviewer

The Culture of Couples: A Kaufmannesque Sociology

664 Jean-Claude DirtyLinen:CouplesasSeenThrough GaryAlanFine Kaufmann TheirLaundry Gripes:TheLittleQuarrelsofCouples TheSingleWoman&theFairytalePrince

Disregard or Disposition? Assessing Human Rights Practices in the United States

668 edited byJudithBlau, TheLeadingRogueState:TheU.S. TonyaL.Putnam DavidL.Brunsma, andHumanRights AlbertoMoncada, and CatherineZimmer

668 KateNash TheCulturalPoliticsofHumanRights: ComparingtheUSandUK

Beyond Autonomy: Theorizing Italian Fascist Statistics

671 Jean-GuyPrévost ATotalScience:StatisticsinLiberal LibbySchweber andFascistItaly

Explaining the Current Financial Crisis

674 CarmenReinhart ThisTimeisDifferent:EightCenturiesof RichardSwedberg and KennethRogoff FinancialFolly

REVIEWS678 NancyAbelmann TheIntimateUniversity:KoreanAmerican PyongGapMin StudentsandtheProblemsofSegregation

679 NasserAbufarha TheMakingofaHumanBomb:An JeffGoodwin EthnographyofPalestinianResistance

Author Title Reviewer

681 PaulS.Adler, editor TheOxfordHandbookofSociologyand MarkS.Mizruchi OrganizationStudies:ClassicalFoundations

682 KarinAguilar-SanJuan LittleSaigons:StayingVietnamese CarlL.BankstonIII inAmerica

684 M.V.LeeBadgett WhenGayPeopleGetMarried:What KathleenE.Hull HappensWhenSocietiesLegalize Same-SexMarriage

685 AlexanderBetts ProtectionbyPersuasion:International GuyAnkerl CooperationintheRefugeeRegime

687 TheodoreL.Brown ImperfectOracle:TheEpistemicand BanuSubramaniam MoralAuthorityofScience

688 EricaChitoChilds FadetoBlackandWhite:InterracialImages JanicePrinceInniss inPopularCulture

689 WayneA.Cornelius, MexicanMigrationandtheU.S. JoseZapataCalderon DavidFitzGerald, EconomicCrisis:ATransnational PedroLewinFischer,and Perspective LeahMuse-Orlinoff, editors

691 MatthewDavid PeertoPeerandtheMusicIndustry: GabrielRossman TheCriminalizationofSharing

692 GerardDelanty TheCosmopolitanImagination: AnthonyMoran TheRenewalofCriticalSocialTheory

694 HenrykDoman’ ski, SociologicalToolsMeasuringOccupations: TimFutingLiao ZbigniewSawin’ ski, NewClassificationandScales andKazimierzM. Słomczyn’ ski

695 SusanEvaEckstein TheImmigrantDivide:HowCuban RicardoA.DelloBuono AmericansChangedtheU.S.and TheirHomeland

697 AlainEhrenberg TheWearinessoftheSelf:Diagnosingthe GilEyal HistoryofDepressionintheContemporaryAge

698 GøstaEsping-Andersen TheIncompleteRevolution:Adaptingto JanetC.Gornick Women’sNewRoles

700 RobertFisher,editor ThePeopleShallRule:ACORN, CarlMilofsky CommunityOrganizing,andtheStruggle forEconomicJustice

701 RichardFlorida Who’sYourCity?:HowtheCreative JohnJoeSchlichtman EconomyisMakingWheretoLivetheMost ImportantDecisionofYourLife

703 SteveFuller TheSociologyofIntellectualLife:TheCareer EleanorTownsley oftheMindinandAroundAcademy

704 ScottGates and ChildSoldiersintheAgeofFracturedStates SteveCarlton-Ford SimonReich, editors


706 PaulGilroy DarkerThanBlue:OntheMoralEconomies MichaelO.West ofBlackAtlanticCulture

707 HavaRachelGordon WeFighttoWin:InequalityandthePolitics RichardFlory ofYouthActivism

708 EdwardGranter CriticalSocialTheoryandtheEndofWork JonathanCutler

710 HughGustersonand TheInsecureAmerican:HowWeGotHere CaryL.Cooper CatherineBesteman, andWhatWeShouldDoAboutIt editors

712 LynneA.Haney OffendingWomen:Power,Punishment,and JamesJ.Chriss theRegulationofDesire

713 ScottR.Harris WhatisConstructionism?: NavigatingIts KarlaB.Hackstaff UseinSociology

715 ChesterHartmanand TheIntegrationDebate:CompetingFutures NandineeK.Kutty GregoryD.Squires, forAmericanCities editors

716 MiriamKonrad TransportingAtlanta:TheModeofMobility StephenHalebsky UnderConstruction

718 KhunEngKuah-Pearce SocialMovementsinChinaandHongKong: DavidTyfield and GillesGuiheux, TheExpansionofProtestSpace editors

719 EdwardJ.Lawler, SocialCommitmentsinaDepersonalized AmitaiEtzioni ShaneR.Thye, and World JeongkooYoon

720 NanLin and Bonnie SocialCapital:AnInternational BobEdwards Erickson, editors ResearchProgram

721 LigayaLindio-McGovern GlobalizationandThirdWorldWomen: TorryDickinson and IsidorWallimann, Exploitation,CopingandResistance editors

723 JarrettS.Lovell CrimesofDissent:CivilObedience,CriminalValerieJenness Justice,andthePoliticsofConscience

724 DarylJ.Maeda ChainsofBabylon:TheRiseofAsianAmerica LindaTrinhVõ

726 ScottMelzer GunCrusaders:TheNRA’sCultureWar RobertD.Benford

728 CynthiaMiller-Idriss BloodandCulture:Youth,Right-Wing JochenSteinbicker Extremism,andNationalBelongingin ContemporaryGermany

729 TorinMonahan and SchoolsUnderSurveillance:Culturesof NancyLópez RodolfoD.Torres, ControlinPublicEducation editors

730 BeckyPettitand GenderedTradeoffs:Family,SocialPolicy, MyraMarxFerree JenniferL.Hook andEconomicInequalityinTwenty-One Countries

732 BirgitPfau-Effinger, FormalandInformalWork:TheHidden FrançoiseCarré LluísFlaquer, and WorkRegimeinEurope PerH.Jensen, editors

733 JadwigaE. ThePoliticsofMotherhood:Maternityand JulieShayne PieperMooney Women’sRightsinTwentieth-CenturyChile

735 JamesPtacek RestorativeJusticeandViolenceAgainst MargaretAbraham Women

737 LeahRogne, SocialInsuranceandSocialJustice:Social AaronMajor CarrollL.Estes, Security,Medicare,andtheCampaign BrianR.Grossman, AgainstEntitlements BrookeA.Hollister, and EricaSolway, editors

738 NicoleRousseau BlackWoman’sBurden:Commodifying ShirleyA.Jackson BlackReproduction

739 HermanM.Schwartz SubprimeNation:AmericanPower,Global FredBlock Capital,andtheHousingBubble

741 BenjaminShepard QueerPoliticalPerformanceandProtest: J.ToddOrmsbee Play,PleasureandSocialMovement

742 BeckyA.Smerdon and SavingAmerica’sHighSchools TinaWildhagen KathrynM.Borman, editors

744 GeorgeSoros TheCrashof2008andWhatItMeans: DavidKarjanen TheNewParadigmforFinancialMarkets

746 KarenSternheimer ConnectingSocialProblemsandPopular JoshuaGamson Culture:WhyMediaIsNottheAnswer

747 MitchellStevens CreatingaClass:CollegeAdmissionsand JohnD.Skrentny theEducationofElites

749 RogerThurow and Enough:WhytheWorld’sPoorestStarve DanielMendelson ScottKilman inanAgeofPlenty

750 ChristianeTimmerman, In-BetweenSpaces:ChristianandMuslim ValentineMoghadam JohanLeman, MinoritiesinTransitioninEuropeandthe HanneloreRoos, and MiddleEast BarbaraSegaert, editors

BRIEflY NOTED753 RogerE.Backhouse and TheHistoryoftheSocialSciencessince1945 PhilippeFontaine, editors

753 MichaelaBensonand LifestyleMigration:Expectations,Aspirations,andExperiences KarenO’Reilly, editors

754 BeverleyBest MarxandtheDynamicoftheCapitalFormation: AnAestheticsofPoliticalEconomy

754 JamesS.Bielo WordsupontheWord:AnEthnographyof EvangelicalGroupBibleStudy


755 MichelleBrown TheCultureofPunishment:Prison,Society,andSpectacle

755 MalcomBryninand ChangingRelationships JohnErmisch, editors

756 MelissaHopeDitmore, SexWorkMatters:ExploringMoney,Power, AntoniaLevy,and andIntimacyintheSexIndustry AlysWillman, editors

756 NickDyer-Witheford GamesofEmpire:GlobalCapitalismandVideoGames andGreigdePeuter

756 JamesL.Flannery TheGlassHouseBoysofPittsburgh: Law,Technology,andChildLabor

757 KennethA.Gould, TheTreadmillofProduction:Injusticeand DavidN.Pellow, and UnsustainabilityintheGlobalEconomy AllanSchnaiberg

758 TessKay, editor FatheringthroughSportandLeisure

758 HenriLefebvre, State,Space,World:SelectedEssays edited by NeilBrenner and StuartElden; translated by G. Moore, N. Brenner, and S. Elden.

759 CharlieV.Morgan IntermarriageacrossRaceandEthnicityamong Immigrants:EPluribusUnions

759 HugoG.Nutini SocialStratificationinCentralMexico,1500–2000 and BarryL.Isaac

760 RhianParker Women,DoctorsandCosmeticSurgery: Negotiatingthe‘Normal’Body

760 KavithaRajagopalan MuslimsofMetropolis:TheStoriesofThreeImmigrant FamiliesintheWest

761 S.Karthick CivicHopesandPoliticalRealities:Immigrants,Community Ramakrishnan and Organizations,andPoliticalEngagement IreneBloemraad, editors

761 JamesP.Sterba AffirmativeActionfortheFuture

762 KarenWells ChildhoodinaGlobalPerspective

762 KathWoodwardand WhyFeminismMatters:FeminismLostandFound SophieWoodward

764 CommentandReply

766 publiCationsReCeived

773 indexofauthoRsbyCategoRy

776 indexfoRvolume39

Author Title

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews (ISSN 0094-3061) is published bimonthly in January, March, May, July, September, and November by SAGE Publications, 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320, on behalf of the American Sociological Association, 1430 K Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20005. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Contemporary Sociology c/o SAGE Publications, Inc., 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320.

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Printed on acid-free paper

EDITOR’S REMARKS

THE COURAGE TO PUBLICIZEONE’S CONVICTIONS

Over the last few months the journal hasreceived a disturbing set of unrelated emailsfrom scholars who promised to reviewa book for CS. They have not all originatedfrom one part of the United States, noreven from one country. These unwelcomemessages convey the following information:‘‘I, the reviewer, have read the book that wassent to me some months ago, and have con-cluded, after much agonizing, that I do notwish to write the review I promised to write,’’or, worse still, ‘‘I have written a review butwill not send it because the tone or substanceof the review displeases me.’’ When only oneof these showed up, it was not cause foralarm, but now that a handful have beensent, suggesting that more might be on theway as part of a new social movement of cir-cumspection, I thought it was wise to pre-empt such future missives by addressingthe problem immediately.

Scholars always give reasons for theiractions, even if spurious, improbable, inaccu-rate, or inscrutable. It is not enough simply tosay, ‘‘I do not want to review the bookbecause I am not so inclined.’’ One isreminded of Melville’s ‘‘Bartleby,’’ who waspersecuted in 1853 for saying ‘‘I would prefernot to.’’ But Bartleby’s special form of rhetoricis no longer in vogue. The reasons I have beengiven are (1) the book is not very good insome ways, and even though it is sound inothers, I would prefer not to review it nega-tively, since (1a) I know that the departmentin which the author works is undergoingexternal review, and do not want to abetthose who wish it ill, (1b) I have learnedthat the author is going through a roughpatch right now and I don’t want to worsenthe situation, (1c) I have very good reasonswhich are so sensitive that I cannot revealthem. Less mysterious are these reasons: (2)when I began the book, I had great hope forit based on its author(s) and subject-matter,but have discovered that it fell short of myexpectations, and so I cannot work up the

energy to write about it, and wish I had notaccepted the review assignment. There isalso: (3) this book is so tedious and unin-spired that I cannot think of any way to writeabout it that would interest the CS audience,even though I have tried several gambits,none of which seem to work. Or, more dra-matically, (4) this book treats a tragic condi-tion of life which I, too, experienced once,and the book brought back to me too force-fully my sad situation in those days, so Ifind that I am existentially incapable ofassessing the book objectively. I also heardthat (5) the book dealt only with U.S./English language sources regarding its cho-sen topic, and since it neglected a copious lit-erature in other languages, it does notmeasure up to the reviewer’s standards,and therefore does not deserve review, atleast in CS.

For the sake of politeness and collegialgood-will, let us assume that all of these rea-sons/excuses/rationalizations for not turn-ing in a review are absolutely true, and thatthe would-be reviewers told me exactlywhat they honestly thought regarding thebooks in question. (Is it surprising to notethat oftentimes the expiatory email is verynearly as long as the assigned review wouldhave been? And that my response has severaltimes been simply this: ‘‘Add a few para-graphs and send in your email as the review,please,’’ a plea which occasionally works, butnot often enough.) Aside from the Old Schoolissues revolving around apothegms like ‘‘apromise is a promise,’’ ‘‘duty above all else,’’and so on, there is a far more practical issue.The specifics are these: Let us say a bookarrives in the CS office in January; it willimmediately be processed and stored, andwithin 1 or 2 months, the Editorial Boardwill be asked for reviewer nominations. After2 or 3 more months under the best circum-stances, reviewers will begin to be asked.Another month or two might elapse beforea reviewer is found who agrees to evaluate

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655 Contemporary Sociology 39, 6

the book. So by now it is May or June. Thebook is sent out immediately upon receiptof the reviewer’s promise to review, and thereviewer is normally given two months tosend us useable material. It is now July orAugust. Typically reviewers do not abide bythe 2-month deadline and sit on the bookfor a while longer, until they tire of hearingfrom us, repeatedly. It is entirely possiblethat we will not see a review until Septemberor later. So the book has been in our ‘‘care’’ for9 or 10 months.

Obviously, if a reviewer balks at the veryend, we must start over practically from thebeginning, especially if we have exhaustedthe finite list of potential reviewers nominat-ed by our Editorial Board. Since timelinessmatters, this situation hurts the author andpublisher of the book under review, the inter-nal workings and schedules of the CS staff,and probably the ozone layer. But there is,of course, a larger question about this inabil-ity to deliver the goods that transcends mereschedule-busting. Most of the hesitationseems to originate in a dread of angering ordispleasing someone whom, in most cases,is personally unknown to the reviewer.

What is the source of this timidity? CSwould never allow a gratuitously mean-spirited review to appear in its pages. But isit not a platitude in the Academy that lively,constructive, polite debate is the foundationof intellectual advance? Or is that too mucha premodern notion in a postmodern world,

a print-era practice which our screen-drivenexistence has expunged since it exhibits toomuch in-your-face-ism? One could also talkabout generational shifts, of course. Whatwas ‘‘collegially proper’’ in 1910 was entirelycrushed by 1925 via looser norms, and forgood reason. So perhaps there is abroada new set of interactional rules which prohib-its straightforward disagreement or chal-lenges to a stated scholarly position. Takento its extreme, this would mean that journalslike CS will cease to exist (until, inevitably,they are revived) since reviewing means bydefinition taking a position, explaining it,approving or disapproving of the bookunder review, and not being afraid to saywhatever requires saying under one’s ownname—not in anonymous reviews of thekind that used to appear in literary maga-zines. If it is, as I have argued in a previouseditorial, a duty for scholars to carry outreviewing as part of their professional perso-na, then it follows that submitting a reviewone has agreed to write is equally duty-bound. Short of debilitating illness, personaltragedy, or war, sending in the review onehas promised to write, even if late (a commonand forgivable occurrence), makes scholarlydiscourse at the highest levels possible.

Riley Dunlap was instrumental in assem-bling the symposium on Freudenburg et al.,and CS would like to thank him for his help.

656 Editor’s Remarks

Contemporary Sociology 39, 6

A SYMPOSIUM ON CATASTROPHEIN THE MAKING: THE ENGINEERINGOF KATRINA AND THE DISASTERS

OF TOMORROW

Canal to Hell: Elite Strategies as Blunder and Mayhem

HARVEY MOLOTCH

New York [email protected]

Although an obvious contribution to thefield of environmental sociology, Catastrophein the Making exemplifies a number ofaccomplishments more general to the socio-logical mission. First, it contains a lot ofinformation, in this case about the causesof the Katrina disaster. Along the way it tellsabout the sociological nature of flood and itspolitical and organizational dynamics. Itjoins the emerging school in environmentalsocial science that presses home the pointthat there is no such thing as a natural disas-ter. But with a rare specificity, this book tellsexactly what this ‘‘such thing’’ actually was(and is). The authors show the primary cul-prit to be the huge ditch completed in 1968by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers toshorten the shipping route to the Gulf ofMexico from New Orleans. Instead of actingas a route to the Gulf, ‘‘MRGO’’—informallypronounced ‘‘Mister Go,’’ for ‘‘MississippiRiver Gulf Outlet’’—acted in reverse asa ‘‘hurricane highway’’ for storm surgefrom the Gulf into the heart of the city.

As other commentators were placing theblame on ‘‘mother nature’’ and/or the failureof various levees along the river, the authorsconcluded from aerial photographs and otherevidence at their disposal that the key (albeitnot the only) cause was this MRGO. In part,they knew it because two of them (RobertGramling and Shirley Laska) were them-selves residents of the area with vast pre-existing knowledge and research experienceon the Gulf and its adjacent wetlands. They

also had direct contact with the region’s aca-demic engineering and science experts whohad issued prior warnings and who werealso present in the area as events unfolded.By piecing together the evidence, these soci-ologists (along with William Freudenburgwho was early on the scene and Kai Eriksonwith, of course, a lifetime of relevant disasterknowledge) established what was to becomethe authoritative understanding of thehuman cause.

Under the analysis of these authors,MRGO thus reveals much more than a water-way and its foibles. It had been built, theauthors explain, as a boondoggle of the localgrowth machine whose leaders saw it asa way to use federal funds to subsidize ship-ping and industrial development. In fact, itdid not do so because emerging shippingtechnologies made it, in the authors’ phrase,‘‘obsolete on delivery’’ (p. 64). Requiringmore earth removal than was used to buildthe Panama Canal (!), it also came to needannual dredging by the Corps of Engineersbecause wave action and other forces caused

Catastrophe in the Making: The Engineeringof Katrina and the Disasters of Tomorrow,by William R. Freudenburg, RobertGramling, Shirley Laska, and KaiErikson. Washington, DC: IslandPress/Shearwater Books, 2009. 209pp.$26.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781597266826.

657 Contemporary Sociology 39, 6

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its unstable banks to erode continuously, withsubstantially more than 100 acres of land losseach year. In fiscal 2004, the year beforeKatrina, fewer than a dozen large ships usingthe canal benefitted from the dredging. Thismeant the federal government was subsidiz-ing each such ship passage to the astoundingtune of $1.5 million per round trip (p. 141).And this does not take into account the orig-inal cost of building the waterway. The ton-nage going through represented 0.4 per centof the total tonnage served by the MississippiRiver meandering more or less parallel to it.

A project originally depicted by its propo-nents as ‘‘economically vital’’ (p. 141) hadbeen close to useless even for the profiteerswho pressed for its creation. The shorelineof the industrial canal did not develop andthe facility did not encourage very much (ifany) shipping. And land that might havebeen useful in some regard (housing? parks?commerce?) slipped away or was carted offby what ‘‘fed up property owners’’ came tocall the ‘‘land-eating channel’’ (p. 127). Norational cost-benefit analysis, even one gross-ly manipulated, could ever justify sucha project.

On other fronts, MRGO did a lot of ecolog-ical harm, even beyond its direct contributionto land loss along the banks or, more disas-trously, the ravages of Katrina’s storm surge.MRGO was a routine source of salt-waterintrusion into the wetlands adjoining theurban area, thus killing off cypress forestsand grasslands that otherwise abate stormsurge. Along with various other human-made projects, some of them like oil companycanals vastly profitable to the corporationsinvolved, it helped turn huge swaths of wet-lands into open water, further exposing thecity to storm damage, from Katrina as wellas past and future hurricanes.

So there are layers of intersecting irration-alities. MRGO did not make money for itssponsors, but they had little incentive tostop it because others carried its ultimatecosts. It did not aggregate into benefits forthe business community as growth projectsare supposed to do. And, from a longer-term perspective, it further exposed all con-cerned, including the oil industry throughits capital-intensive infrastructure, to futuremayhem as natural protections fall awayfrom the regional geography.

Accidents, we know, teach. Here we havea stunning indictment of the New Orleansgrowth machine, but one that goes wellbeyond the normal scandals and injusticesto which irresponsible power so often leads.We learn that growth elites do not necessarilyknow what they are doing. Especially whenothers pay the bills, they can encourage proj-ects that will not even make them any mon-ey, much less devolve to the public good.And when it does become evident theinvestment does no good, or even doesbad, there is not sufficient inclination tocall the whole thing off. Maybe just throughinertia, abetted perhaps by interested dredg-ing companies, the project goes forward.Acts of omission among the powerful, notjust acts of commission, become villainous.

The growth machine, in other words, canbe dumb. Put profoundly, the authors remarkthat once set in motion, the growth machine(and we might add, capital in general) ‘‘hasno internal brakes and no sensors to takenote of the damage it is doing as it churnsalong’’ (p. 10). This is perhaps an endemicaspect of power structures, but especiallyworrisome when it involves potential forsevere collective damage. As is at leastimplicit in this book about catastrophe, thelack of such brakes and sensors—and thisis an original and critical extension ofgrowth machine theory—threatens us withdoom. It may be possible to head off catas-trophe; these authors are not committedpessimists. But they identify enormouspolitical and organizational challengesthat have to be overcome.

Convincingly, the book uses historic photo-graphs, maps, detailed aerial shots and pre-cise technical descriptions (always madefriendly) to present its arguments. It showshow to use the intersection of apparatus,nature, and organization to understand con-crete economic and social losses, includingdeath. These forces are each important‘‘actants,’’ as scholars in actor-network theoryor science-technology studies might say. Butit is through their synthesis in historic andreal time that they come alive; the authorsin effect give a macro dimension to theman/machine micro-intersections so oftenthe focus of science and technology studies.This is still another model for emulationacross the discipline.

658 Symposium


Written in a readily accessible style withbold (and opinionated) turns of phrase,Catastrophe in the Making will interest intro-ductory sociology students and those enroll-ing in environmental studies. The publisher,Island Press, is a leader in reaching out to theenvironmental community and larger pub-lic. And reach out is what the authors have

in mind. As they put it in their ominousyet hopeful conclusion: ‘‘We live in a worldwhere it is not just an option, but a duty, tobring to light the kinds of evidence thathave too long been overlooked, and to chal-lenge mistaken conclusions. We owe it toourselves and our children’’ (p. 170). Hear,hear.

Ditching New Orleans

CHARLES PERROW

Yale [email protected]

This important book has a number of out-standing virtues. First, it is exceptionallywell written; the first chapter, in particular,is a model of graceful, yet powerful prose.Second, it is historically grounded; historyis a major actor in this account, not just thefifty or so years of incubation that resultedin MRGO, a canal that was responsible formuch of the damage to New Orleans whenthe hurricane came ashore, but the long his-tory of New Orleans itself, as well as the lon-ger one of the Mississippi River. Sociologyuses history much more today than it didthirty years ago, but this book is still anexemplary demonstration of the role of his-tory in explaining any phenomena.

Third, it answers a long-standing call tobring the natural environment into socio-logical analysis in a serious way. Thisbook goes well beyond the usual discus-sions of wetlands and channeling the sedi-ment dump of the mighty river. Onecannot understand what happened toNew Orleans without the authors’ detailedand revealing discussions of:

the way that natural levees get built asfloods deposit silt at the river’s edge,

the role of cypress tree roots,varying soil densities and the compacting

of soils,the importance of storm surges rather

than just high winds,the effect of salinity on aquatic marsh life,

and much more.

The business community paid little heed tothe role of nature, as they tried to dominate

it, but along with history, it is a major explan-atory variable in this book.

But for me, the fourth contribution is themost important. The saying is that all politicsis local; but few, other than Molotch andLogan, say that about power. I certainlyhave not. When I examine disasters, big cor-porations figure most prominently, withlegislatures providing little check on themand even enabling their domination. Forme, ‘‘shareholder value capitalism’’ is in thenation’s driving seat, and I can link this toall sorts of vulnerabilities and disasters inour society. It is not mentioned in thisaccount. They show that local interests inthe North kept the government from financ-ing canals in New Orleans until the Northgot the St. Lawrence Seaway. Only then didCongress allow another set of local interests,in Louisiana and Mississippi to get their sub-sidies for canals.

The oil and gas industry does get coverage,but it is not clear that they cared a aboutMRGO, and it was obsolete for them beforeit was even finished. The oil and gas industrychurned up and helped destroy the wetlands,with oil and gas channels responsible for


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nearly half the destruction of the wetlands,making coastal settlements more vulnerable.That we know; it is well established. Evenwithout MRGO and the Industrial Canal,New Orleans was still vulnerable becauseof the unimpeded dragging and drillingand underwater pipelines and steadysmall-scale oil spills, and the channeling ofthe Mississippi. But the hypodermic needlefor the vast destruction of New Orleanswas local business.

This is important, because it is so hard tomitigate and cope with this source of failure.We have not invested in mechanisms to con-trol the local growth machines because somuch of power is local. FEMA is not fundedenough to map carefully even most of theflood zones that need mapping. And evenwhen they do, they do not have the powerto enforce zoning restrictions on new con-struction. When it recently tried to do thisin the Midwest the local uproar was over-powering. Everyone affected would see theirproperty values and their investmentsdecline sharply. It is easy to see why our

House of Representatives is reluctant toenrage local business and home owners,even if the 100-year flood comes every 15years, as the book points out for the St. Louisarea.

Big business is powerful at the nationaland regional levels, and it counts. Coal andoil interests can defeat, delay, or at leastgravely weaken legislation on greenhousegases. Their well-funded denier programhas been quite successful in maximizing theappeal of short-term interests. I work at thatlevel.

But I cannot find a single big business thatwas responsible for the unnecessarily highlevel of destruction from Katrina. The Corpsof Engineers is a possible candidate, butwithout the local business and industryleaders of New Orleans, it would not havedug the ditch that ditched New Orleans.

I wish the last chapter had fewer grandgeneralizations, and instead followed theMolotch and Logan lead and used this spec-tacular case to speculate on the sources ofpower in our nation.

Growth Machine Politics and the Social Production of Risk

KATHLEEN TIERNEY

University of Colorado, [email protected]

If you do not happen to be a disasterresearcher or know the history of disasterresearch, you might not realize how unusualCatastrophe in the Making is. Disaster researchhas been a sociological specialty since thelate-1940s, but the field has faced severalchallenges, particularly on a theoreticallevel. One challenge stems from the factthat the original funders of disaster research,which were primarily military and civildefense institutions at the federal level,were not particularly interested in theory.Rather, they were interested in solid empiri-cal research about social and organizationalresponses during disasters that could pro-vide practical insights into how peoplemight behave should the United Statesbecome involved in an extreme nuclear con-frontation or all-out nuclear war. This focusin turn led to another problematic outcome,

which is that researchers conceptualizedand studied disasters primarily as events—as occurrences that were, in the words ofthe pioneering researcher Charles Fritz,‘‘concentrated in time and space.’’ Put anoth-er way, early social science researchersthought about disasters in more or less theway the general public did: as events thathave a beginning, middle, and end, with the‘‘beginning’’ of the disaster being the time


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when the disaster ‘‘agent’’—the flood, earth-quake, hurricane, fire, or other threat—appears on the scene and begins to threatenhuman communities. Most research hasfocused on such topics as responses to pre-disaster warnings; patterns of social behaviorduring the period following disaster impact;organizational adaptation and improvisationduring disasters; and the disaster responseactivities of specific types of organizationsand institutions. There has also been anemphasis on developing empirical general-izations and insights on the basis of the studyof specific disasters, which subsequentlydeveloped in an incremental fashion intoa body of empirical findings.

This is not to claim that the field has beenatheoretical. Disaster research was shapedinitially by the sociological theory thatwas prominent at the time of its develop-ment, which was functionalism or systemstheory—an influence that can still be seenin current scholarship. However, as the influ-ence of functionalism declined, no overarch-ing theoretical perspective has replaced it.As I discuss elsewhere (Tierney 2010), currentdisaster research boasts a wealth of middle-range theory and an even greater wealth ofempirical findings, but no unifying theoreti-cal paradigm tying the field together.

The field also took a very long time toincorporate broader sociological perspectiveson social inequalities and disparities, such asthose associated with race, class, gender, anddifferences in access to political power. Thesetopics were not incorporated into disasterscholarship in a meaningful way until themid-1990s (on gender, for example, seeFothergill 1996; Enarson and Morrow 1998;Enarson, Fothergill, and Peek 2007). Sincethat time, race, class, gender and their inter-sectionality have been taken into account ina great deal of the work that is being done.In contrast, despite its importance for thestudy of disasters, political power stillreceives little emphasis.

Catastrophe in the Making is in many waysthe antidote for these ills. It was not writtento answer the questions that federal agencieswant answered. Quite the contrary, it asksand answers questions that many agencieswould like to ignore. The book is not aboutwhat people, organizations, or institutionsdid during a disaster, but rather about

a lengthy series of historical processes, deci-sions, and practices—and indeed ideologiesconcerning nature, technology, and theirmanagement—that produced the catastro-phe that was Katrina. Additionally, thebook makes political power central to anunderstanding of disasters, their impacts,and their outcomes. But most important, itprovides a framework and set of conceptsthat explain the process of risk buildup,showing in the process how disasters aresocially produced. That framework is politi-cal economy/political ecology, and thebook’s key concepts include the idea of citiesas growth machines and rent-seeking, orefforts to extract profits from land-use, infra-structure, and ‘‘development’’ projects forthe benefit of elites. At the same time, theoutcome of growth machine politics is thespread of downstream risks to others,including future generations. And in anespecially nice twist, the book shows how,at least in the case of New Orleans, but nodoubt also true in many other cases, thepromised benefits from such activities (inthis case, the massive boondoggle that wasthe Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, or MR-GO) never actually materialized.

The ideas in the book are not entirely newin the field of sociological disaster research.Other studies have been guided by similartheoretical assumptions. For example, Hurri-cane Andrew: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Sociol-ogy of Disaster (Peacock, Morrow, andGladwin 1997) explicitly argued for a socio-political ecology approach to the study ofdisaster, even though many of the chaptersin that book did not make the best use ofthat framework. The Northridge Earthquake(Bolin and Stanford 1998) analyzed thepost-disaster recovery experiences of fourdifferent communities affected by that earth-quake, taking into account those communi-ties’ positions in the political economy ofGreater Los Angeles, including their distinc-tive histories and political ties with regionalelites. More than two decades ago (Tierney1989), I argued that to understand theseeming inability of local communities toenact hazard mitigation measures, such asimproved building codes, earthquake retro-fit ordinances, and land-use planningmeasures that can reduce losses fromfuture disasters, we need to focus on how

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growth-machine politics operate to discour-age the adoption of such measures. (I devel-oped that view through looking into thepolitics of earthquake hazard reduction inLos Angeles and California more generally.)But no prior sociological work has the histor-ical reach, detail, and seamless line of argu-ment that characterize Catastrophe in theMaking—even if the book tells only part ofthe story of the victimization of NewOrleans: the vulnerability of the built envi-ronment and ecosystems, as opposed to thevulnerability of the city’s largely black,largely poor population.

The most comparable research of which Iam aware was done not by a sociologist,but by an anthropologist. I am referring toAnthony Oliver-Smith’s The Martyred City(1992) and his other publications on the1970 Peruvian earthquake, which atthe time he did his research, and before the2010 Haiti earthquake, was the WesternHemisphere’s most deadly disaster. Oliver-Smith (1994) refers to the Peruvian catastro-phe as the ‘‘500-year earthquake,’’ because,he argues, the origins of that devastatingdisaster, which killed over 60,000 people,could be found in the Spanish conquestand the colonial and post-colonial historyof Peru and of the communities he studied.

Catastrophe in the Making seems to havemore in common with global scholarshipon hazards, disasters, and risk (e.g., Pelling2003) than it does with a lot of current U.S.research. Outside the United States, socialscientists seem much more ready to embracethe idea that political-economic forces drivedisaster-related vulnerabilities, whetherthose forces are analyzed at a macro-level,as an outgrowth of the political economy ofthe world system, or at more meso- andmicro-levels, where growth machine politicsoccur. The failure to connect disaster vulner-ability and losses with larger global systemprocesses and economic and political powerdynamics at national, regional, and localscales may have been understandable inthe past, but why have such patterns per-sisted in our little protected bubble here inthe United States, when the evidence isabundant both here and around the world?Thankfully, Catastrophe in the Making movesthe field in the right direction and helpslink U. S. research with theoretical and

research advances that are being madearound the world.

One of the key contributions of Catastropheis the message that while Katrina wasa unique hurricane and New Orleans isa unique place, the conditions that gaverise to the Katrina disaster are anything butunique. In fact, they are extremely common.Local conditions vary, but the same generalsocial forces are at work, both in this countryand around the world. For example, like TheNext Catastrophe (Perrow 2007), this bookpoints to the Northern California Delta asa likely location for a future Katrina-scaleevent that will occur as a result of levee fail-ures, triggered perhaps by an earthquake,perhaps by large-scale flooding amplifiedby sea level rise. Here again, the roots ofdisaster are to be found in larger historical,political and economic forces, including thehousing bubble that in this century, whenwe presumably know better, encouragedeven more intensive development in the Del-ta behind fragile and poorly-maintainedlevee systems that, like those in Louisiana,are systems in name only. And there aremany other communities and regions inthe United States that, in the words of disas-ter sociologist Dennis Mileti (1999), haveeffectively designed their disaster futuresby aceeding to the political wishes of theoperators of the growth machine. The found-er of the University of Colorado NaturalHazards Center, geographer Gilbert F.White, once noted that while ‘‘floods areacts of God,’’ ‘‘flood disasters are largelyacts of man.’’ He said that in his doctoraldissertation—in 1942. Freudenburg and hisco-authors show clearly how ‘‘acts of man’’produced the Katrina catastrophe, and evenmore important, they show us the underlyingmotivations that drove those acts.

Finally, the book’s concluding chaptermakes a point to which we should pay veryclose attention. The authors state that ‘‘oursmay be the first generation to have createda world in which the planet itself could becaught up in a new dynamics of damagefrom which we might find it impossible torecover’’ . . . and that ‘‘there is no evidence,unfortunately, that our ability to foreseeharm has kept up with our ability to createit’’ (Freudenburg et al. 2009: 165-166). Thoseare disturbing statements, and true ones.

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Even as the nation makes what really are veryminimal investments in mitigating futuredisaster losses in areas around the country,new vulnerabilities continue to pop up inother places, as if our society were caughtup in some bizarre game of environmentalwhack-a-mole. But as a result of the argu-ments laid out in Catastrophe in the Making,we now understand far better why that isthe case.

References

Enarson, E. and B. H. Morrow (eds.) 1998. TheGendered Terrain of Disaster. Westport, CT:Praeger.

Enarson, E., A. Fothergill, and L. Peek, 2007.‘‘Gender and disaster: Foundations and direc-tions.’’ Pp. 130-146 in H. Rodriguez, E. L.Quarantelli, and R. R. Dynes (eds.) Handbookof Disaster Research. New York: Springer.

Fothergill, A. 1996. ‘‘Gender, risk, and disaster.’’International Journal of Mass Emergencies andDisasters 14: 33-56.

Mileti, D. S. 1999. Disasters by Design: A Reassess-ment of Natural Hazards in the United States.Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press.

Oliver-Smith, A., 1992. The Martyred City: Deathand Rebirth in the Peruvian Andes, 2nd ed. Pros-pect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Oliver-Smith, A., 1994. ‘‘Peru’s five hundred yearearthquake: Vulnerability in historical con-text.’’ Pp. 3-48 in A. Varley (ed.) Disasters,Development, and Environment. London: Wiley.

Peacock, W. G., B. H. Morrow, and H. Gladwin(eds.), 1997. Hurricane Andrew: Ethnicity, Gen-der and the Sociology of Disasters. London:Routledge.

Pelling, M., 2003. Natural Disasters and Developmentin a Globalizing World. London: Routledge.

Perrow, C. 2007. The Next Catastrophe: ReducingOur Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, andTerrorist Disasters. Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press.

Tierney, K. J. 1989. ‘‘Improving theory and re-search on hazard mitigation: Political economyand organizational perspectives.’’ InternationalJournal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 7:367-396.

Tierney, K. 2010. ‘‘Societal dimensions of earth-quakes and other disasters: Findings in searchof theory.’’ Proceedings of the 9th U. S. Nationaland 10th Canadian Conference on EarthquakeEngineering: Reaching Beyond Borders. Oak-land, CA: Earthquake Engineering ResearchInstitute.

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