Kai T. Erikson

A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community.

Sociologist Kai Erikson visited seven man-made disasters around America including a mercury spill which displaced a Native American tribe from its homeland; Three-Mile Island, where nearby residents feared exposure to radiation; and Yucca Mountain, Nevada, where the American government proposes to build a vast nuclear waste dump. He discovered that all these communities had in common a chronic dread and helplessness caused by radiation and other toxic substances. The author argues that this is a new and insidious type of trauma and this book is his plea that we do more to protect people from it.

A COMMENT ON DISGUISED OBSERVATION IN SOCIOLOGY

We would suggest that, in principle, anyone is publicly accountable for the actions which it is his duty to perform. Most of the time, however, since sociologists are not muckrakers, it is not necessary or desirable to single out individuals or even clearly identifiable small groups. In such situations one may reasonably use confidentiality as an inducement to cooperation. In other situations, however, this is clearly unwarranted. If one wishes to study the functioning of courts, or of a mayors office, or of General Motors, or of unions, it is perhaps better to put up with the difficulties of only doing what one can do without promising to keep information confidential. Since publicly accountable individuals often recognize the fact of their accountability and the useful purposes that might be served by sociologists studying them, one can often gain a good deal of cooperation without the promise of confidentiality.5 We are suggesting that sociologists in this respect have the same rights that journalists have. Our understanding of the social process may be such that we do not use this right in the same way as journalists, because we are not interested in momentary sensations but in developing an understanding of the persisting tendencies of social systems, large or small.

Nuclear Waste: Knowledge Waste?

A stalled nuclear waste program, and possible increase in wastes, beg for social science input into acceptable solutions. Nuclear power is re-emerging as a major part of the energy portfolios of a wide variety of nations. With over 50 reactors being built around the world today and over 100 more planned to come online in the next decade, many observers are proclaiming a “nuclear renaissance” (1). The success of a nuclear revival is dependent upon addressing a well-known set of challenges, for example, plant safety (even in the light of improved reactor designs), costs and liabilities, terrorism at plants and in transport, weapons proliferation, and the successful siting of the plants themselves (2, 3).

Obsolete and Irreversible: Technology, Local Economic Development, and the Environment

While “economic development” projects have long been proposed and supported by local growth machine elites, technological change has affected the social desirability of large projects in three ways. First, large development projects—we examine water transportation—have grown in size, meaning that backers often seek public funding. With increased size and the need for external funding, many years or decades can elapse by the time a project can be conceived, politically supported, funded, and built. Second, during that time, the technology of the industrial sector in question may have changed radically—to the point that the project can be obsolete, or rapidly nearing obsolescence, by the time it is actually completed. Third, the massive size of the project may also mean that even if the project is obsolete as well as environmentally harmful, we may find ourselves unable to undo it or the environmental damage that it has caused.

Trauma at Buffalo Creek

Editors Note: The disastrous Buffalo Creek, West Virginia flood occurred on February 26, 1972. The sudden collapse of the Pittston Companys (the local coal company and absentee landlord) massive refuse pile dam unleashed 132 million gallons of water and coal waste materials on the unsuspecting residents of Buffalo Creek. The rampaging wave of water and sludge traveled down the creek in waves of between twenty and thirty feet and at speeds sometimes approaching thirty miles per hour. Buffalo Creeks sixteen small towns were devastated by the deluge, over 125 people were killed, and over four thousand survivors were left homeless.

Catastrophe in the Making

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Acceptance of advertising in this journal in no way implies endorsement of the advertised product or service by SAGE, American Sociological Association, or the journal editor(s). No endorsement is intended or implied. SAGE reserves the right to reject any advertising it deems as inappropriate for this journal. Change of Address for Non-Members: Six weeks’ advance notice must be given when notifying of change of address. Please send the old address label along with the new address to the SAGE office address above to ensure proper identification. Please specify name of journal. Cover art by Tina Burke; coloration advice by Jennifer Norton. Additional work by Kristin Kerns, Casey McManus, and Carrie Wakeley. Printed on acid-free paper EDITOR’S REMARKS THE COURAGE TO PUBLICIZE ONE’S CONVICTIONS Over the last few months the journal has received a disturbing set of unrelated emails from scholars who promised to review a book for CS. They have not all originated from one part of the United States, nor even from one country. These unwelcome messages convey the following information: ‘‘I, the reviewer, have read the book that was sent to me some months ago, and have concluded, after much agonizing, that I do not wish to write the review I promised to write,’’ or, worse still, ‘‘I have written a review but will not send it because the tone or substance of the review displeases me.’’ When only one of these showed up, it was not cause for alarm, but now that a handful have been sent, suggesting that more might be on the way as part of a new social movement of circumspection, I thought it was wise to preempt such future missives by addressing the problem immediately. Scholars always give reasons for their actions, even if spurious, improbable, inaccurate, or inscrutable. It is not enough simply to say, ‘‘I do not want to review the book because I am not so inclined.’’ One is reminded of Melville’s ‘‘Bartleby,’’ who was persecuted in 1853 for saying ‘‘I would prefer not to.’’ But Bartleby’s special form of rhetoric is no longer in vogue. The reasons I have been given are (1) the book is not very good in some ways, and even though it is sound in others, I would prefer not to review it negatively, since (1a) I know that the department in which the author works is undergoing external review, and do not want to abet those who wish it ill, (1b) I have learned that the author is going through a rough patch right now and I don’t want to worsen the situation, (1c) I have very good reasons which are so sensitive that I cannot reveal them. Less mysterious are these reasons: (2) when I began the book, I had great hope for it based on its author(s) and subject-matter, but have discovered that it fell short of my expectations, and so I cannot work up the energy to write about it, and wish I had not accepted the review assignment. There is also: (3) this book is so tedious and uninspired that I cannot think of any way to write about it that would interest the CS audience, even though I have tried several gambits, none of which seem to work. Or, more dramatically, (4) this book treats a tragic condition of life which I, too, experienced once, and the book brought back to me too forcefully my sad situation in those days, so I find that I am existentially incapable of assessing the book objectively. I also heard that (5) the book dealt only with U.S./ English language sources regarding its chosen topic, and since it neglected a copious literature in other languages, it does not measure up to the reviewer’s standards, and therefore does not deserve review, at least in CS. For the sake of politeness and collegial good-will, let us assume that all of these reasons/excuses/rationalizations for not turning in a review are absolutely true, and that the would-be reviewers told me exactly what they honestly thought regarding the books in question. (Is it surprising to note that oftentimes the expiatory email is very nearly as long as the assigned review would have been? And that my response has several times been simply this: ‘‘Add a few paragraphs and send in your email as the review, please,’’ a plea which occasionally works, but not often enough.) Aside from the Old School issues revolving around apothegms like ‘‘a promise 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 book arrives in the CS office in January; it will immediately be processed and stored, and within 1 or 2 months, the Editorial Board will be asked for reviewer nominations. After 2 or 3 more months under the best circumstances, reviewers will begin to be asked. Another month or two might elapse before a reviewer is found who agrees to evaluate American Sociological Association 2010 DOI: 10.1177/0094306110386712 http://cs.sagepub.com 655 Contemporary Sociology 39, 6 the book. So by now it is May or June. The book is sent out immediately upon receipt of the reviewer’s promise to review, and the reviewer is normally given two months to send us useable material. It is now July or August. Typically reviewers do not abide by the 2-month deadline and sit on the book for a while longer, until they tire of hearing from us, repeatedly. It is entirely possible that we will not see a review until September or later. So the book has been in our ‘‘care’’ for 9 or 10 months. Obviously, if a reviewer balks at the very end, we must start over practically from the beginning, especially if we have exhausted the finite list of potential reviewers nominated by our Editorial Board. Since timeliness matters, this situation hurts the author and publisher of the book under review, the internal workings and schedules of the CS staff, and probably the ozone layer. But there is, of course, a larger question about this inability to deliver the goods that transcends mere schedule-busting. Most of the hesitation seems to originate in a dread of angering or displeasing someone whom, in most cases, is personally unknown to the reviewer. What is the source of this timidity? CS would never allow a gratuitously meanspirited review to appear in its pages. But is it not a platitude in the Academy that lively, constructive, polite debate is the foundation of intellectual advance? Or is that too much a premodern notion in a postmodern world, a print-era practice which our screen-driven existence has expunged since it exhibits too much in-your-face-ism? One could also talk about generational shifts, of course. What was ‘‘collegially proper’’ in 1910 was entirely crushed by 1925 via looser norms, and for good reason. So perhaps there is abroad a new set of interactional rules which prohibits straightforward disagreement or challenges to a stated scholarly position. Taken to its extreme, this would mean that journals like CS will cease to exist (until, inevitably, they are revived) since reviewing means by definition taking a position, explaining it, approving or disapproving of the book under review, and not being afraid to say whatever requires saying under one’s own name—not in anonymous reviews of the kind that used to appear in literary magazines. If it is, as I have argued in a previous editorial, a duty for scholars to carry out reviewing as part of their professional persona, then it follows that submitting a review one has agreed to write is equally dutybound. Short of debilitating illness, personal tragedy, or war, sending in the review one has promised to write, even if late (a common and forgivable occurrence), makes scholarly discourse at the highest levels possible. Riley Dunlap was instrumental in assembling 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 CATASTROPHE IN THE MAKING: THE ENGINEERING OF KATRINA AND THE DISASTERS OF TOMORROW Canal to Hell: Elite Strategies as Blunder and Mayhem

The Axe in the Attic

After a number of New Orleanians died from Hurricane Betsy, having fled to their attics only to find them-JL selves trapped there, many families learned the wisdom of keeping an axe in the attic. One story about such an axe involves a family that was deciding whether or not to evacuate in the face of an advancing hurricane. After the man of the household had decided the family would stay put, his mother-in-law, the matriarch of the clan, ask whether he had an axe in the attic. When he answered yes, she responded, “Good. After you use it to chop us out, I’m going to want you to give it to me, so I can kill you with it.” The family decided to evacuate after all.

A Mighty Storm Hits the Shore

We noted in the prologue that Katrina became an event in human history when it left the waters of the Gulf and began to hammer the land, affecting areas that had been both settled and shaped by people. The largest concentration of population in the region, of course, is to be found in New Orleans, and for the people who lived there in 2005, the term “Katrina” has come to refer to a reality that has little to do with storm systems forming out at sea or winds spiraling at terrifying speeds as they slammed into the coast.

The First Days of Katrina

The staggering disaster we have come to call “Katrina” was named for a hurricane that formed out in the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean in the waning days of August 2005.

The Growth Machine Comes to New Orleans

One of the names that will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in New Orleans belongs to a hero of the War of 1812 who was also one of the city’s most famous celebrities during its early years—Jean Lafitte. Lafitte, an early entrepreneur, was a pirate—or as he preferred it, a “privateer.” As such, his career involved an ambiguous relationship between virtue and villainy—and an equally ambiguous relationship with economic development.