Kieran Healy

The Drowned and the Saved

Alan Schussman takes a first look at the social ecology of the flooded areas of New Orleans:

The flood area has a population of about 380,000. Here’s how it compares to national numbers [from the 2000 census]:
  median HH income % black % poverty % owns home % private trans. […]

Social Disasters II

According to AP, this photo shows a man covering the body of a man who died—apparently in a chair—on Thursday outside the convention center in New Orleans. The baby in his arms looks to be about three or four months old. I wonder whether she has any milk to drink.

Plenty of people are saying this […]

Social Disasters

I’ve written before about the sociological dimension of disasters—the fact that natural disasters are never wholly natural, because some kinds of people will be more likely to suffer and die than others, depending on how life is organized when the disaster hits. As everyone knows, social order is under severe pressure in New Orleans at […]