Because at the heart of symbolic interactionism is the idea that our social world is constructed ... more Because at the heart of symbolic interactionism is the idea that our social world is constructed for and by us, notions of ambiguity or uncertainty remain underexplored in the paradigm. This chapter uses work on framing and meaning-making to show how the multiple framings of an event can result in uncertainty. Using Čapek’s (2006) eco-self and Zerubavel’s thought communities (1997), this chapter shows how eco-uncertainty is used in New Orleans to both make sense of and deal with environmental suffering (Auyero and Swistun 2009a; Harvey 2016). In particular, against the backdrop of the long-term aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the chapter analyzes a chemical dusting of the Lower Ninth Ward to explore this concept. In what follows, it surveys some of the work in symbolic interaction on nature and the environment and then turns to themes within environmental inequality. It then describes the Lower Ninth Ward and the long-term aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to situate the event in question here. Finally, it uses eco-uncertainty to show how uncertainty structured interaction and meaning-making in the Lower Ninth Ward.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures plans for the rebuilding of ... more In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures plans for the rebuilding of New Orleans favored the redevelopment of some communities over others. Where residents of vulnerable communities, in particular the Lower Ninth Ward, protested the erasure of their communities, they have been largely socially abandoned as a retaliatory measure for not acquiescing to the elite plan of “Katrina Cleansing.” The implementation of this social abandonment as social policy and the various policies and conditions that have collectively punished residents of the Lower Ninth Ward who are trying to rebuild their community should be seen as uneven racialized capitalist development and as an important extension to what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism.” In this article, I conceptualize these policies and conditions as secondary violences and through three vignettes I provide a brief description of life in the Lower Ninth Ward where these violences permeate the warp and the woof of the community.
443 IAND A GROUP OF MY FRIENDS have, for about thirty-one years, been trying to develop and expan... more 443 IAND A GROUP OF MY FRIENDS have, for about thirty-one years, been trying to develop and expand and improve a system for people relating to each other helpfully. For the last eleven years our efforts have gone beyond the city of Seattle and in that time have spread to nearly every state in the Union, nearly every large city in the United States, most Canadian provinces, and about thirty-eight other countries. We’ve had an explosive expansion. Our understanding SOMEONE MUST LISTEN If we were to encapsulate what we have learned to do in a sentence or two—and there’s much more, there are many complicated applications that come from it—it is to explain to people that what they are trying to do all the time, this trying to be listened to, is a very profound process. It will have profound results if it ever gets a chance to operate and it will operate, if they will take turns. They need to just take turns, and agree, “Yes, I will listen to you and really pay attention to you for a while, if you will give me a chance to do the same thing later on.” We call that “Co-Counseling.” The awkward word “counseling” meant “giving advice” to most people when we first started using it, but it has now come to have a good deal of the meaning we’ve used for it in the intervening thirty-one years, which does not mean “giving advice” at all, but basically listening and paying attention. This inherent process that we’re all equipped to use has been, in general, frustrated, simply because it takes another person outside of ourselves really paying attention while we talk and think about ourselves, and re-experience the distresses that we have accumulated, for it to work.
Despite a recent increase in attention within the social sciences, suffering remains for the most... more Despite a recent increase in attention within the social sciences, suffering remains for the most part outside of the purview of sociologists. In this essay, I explore the possibilities for a sociology of suffering by briefly interrogating suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the Lower Ninth Ward, the epicenter of the hurricane and the federal levee failures.
Agency: Integration and Expansion in the Baseball World,’’ ‘‘A Piece of Property: The Making and ... more Agency: Integration and Expansion in the Baseball World,’’ ‘‘A Piece of Property: The Making and Meaning of Free Agency,’’ ‘‘Two Strikes: Star Power and Solidarity in the United States and Mexico,’’ ‘‘On the Borders of Free Agency: Dominican Baseball and the Rise of the Academies,’’ and ‘‘Constructing Ichiro’s Home Field: Seattle, the Mariners, and the Politics of Location,’’ makes an important contribution to understanding the business of baseball. I was particularly impressed with the sections describing the struggle of baseball players to establish the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) and the important roles of Curt Flood and Marvin Miller in that struggle to end the reserve clause and establish free agency. Gilbert describes these actions as involving players’ agency and their attempts to collectively control their own commodification. In Chapter Three, by drawing a comparison between newly elected President Reagan’s ‘‘ruthless treatment’’ of striking members of PATCO (the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) and the successful 1981 strike of the MLBPA, Gilbert identifies the power of baseball players in their irreplaceability and thereby skillfully shows the difference but also the connection between two seemingly different areas of work and labor-management conflict. As it turned out, the difference would be critical in the success or failure not only of baseball players’ struggles, but also of other sport professionals, such as football, basketball, and hockey players as well as other American workers during a period of strong antiunion and anti-worker sentiment in the United States. Gilbert’s chapter on the rise of the baseball academies in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela is also striking, as it clearly demonstrates the exploitative aspects of MLB as a business whose intent was not to give opportunity to poor Latino youth (as they advertised) but instead to save money by exploiting their cheap labor. In his concluding paragraph, expressing an optimism informed perhaps by his own praiseworthy research, Gilbert writes:
As the author notes, Egypt’s Beer, is part of a litany of texts, most now just appearing, that fo... more As the author notes, Egypt’s Beer, is part of a litany of texts, most now just appearing, that focus on the cultural geographies of beer; the underlying assumption being that there is reciprocal re...
The devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures facilitated the unprecedented... more The devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures facilitated the unprecedented proliferation of non-profits in some areas of the city. While the short- and moderate-term experiences of non-profits in the aftermath of Katrina have been examined, their long-term successes and failures remain unknown. In this paper we look at how race and nativism hindered the success of non-profits in rebuilding New Orleans. We likewise seek to demonstrate how the reactions on the part of non-profits to being the racial other or that of an outsider often further impeded the effectiveness of non-profits. The three authors, using data from participant observation, interviews, and ethnography, over a four-year period, describe generalisable lessons learned from rebuilding New Orleans’ communities, including the recognition of competing racial discourses in redevelopment; the valuing of local knowledge; and coming to terms with the paradoxes of the affect economy.
How far has America come when it comes to race? November 4, 2008. The first black man is elected ... more How far has America come when it comes to race? November 4, 2008. The first black man is elected president of the United States, and journalists like Richard Cohen (2008) of The Washington Post conclude the country has transcended race. Yet in many ways, race continues to color the Obama years as much now as in the past. Indeed, one might say that his election has been a cover to proceed with the state-sponsored looting and pillorying of black communities. ‘‘Black codes’’ that compelled emancipated slaves into involuntary, underpaid, or sometimes unpaid labor are now a criminal justice system that oversees more black people than were enslaved in 1850 (Alexander 2010). Poll taxes, literacy tests, and residency requirements that denied people of color suffrage have evolved into Voter ID laws that thwart participation in electoral politics (Bell [1973] 2008). Racial violence of yesterday has become the ‘‘shoot first, ask questions later’’ practices of today in places like Ferguson, Missouri. Meanwhile, court systems remain complicit (as do numerous other political entities). Their silence on ugly displays of racial violence parallels how lynch mobs would leave bodies to hang for days, like Ida B. Wells (1892) describes, as a message to keep minorities ‘‘in their place.’’ The body of an unarmed, ‘‘hands held high’’ teenager laid lifeless, from being shot at least six times and twice in the head, on cold pavement for four hours. Much like extreme forms of Jim Crow, Michael Brown was transformed into a spectacle—into a warning. Blood is on the hands of police officer Darren Wilson, but he is not the only one. White people are responsible for this tragedy. We are implicated in a social fabric that has long made communities like
The Lower Ninth Ward was ground zero for Hurricane Katrina and the Federal levee failures. And ye... more The Lower Ninth Ward was ground zero for Hurricane Katrina and the Federal levee failures. And yet August 29, 2005, was not the first time the community was placed in peril. Decades of dealing with flooding, failed infrastructure and underdevelopment, poverty, crime, and toxic events from nearby petrochemical plants have produced a particular way of making sense of suffering. In the Lower Ninth, suffering is normative; suffering permeates the warp and woof of the community; suffering helps construct the culture there. In this chapter I document what I call a culture of suffering—the cultural tools and worldview that helps residents mitigate their suffering and deal with it in ways that make life livable there.
Preface List of Acronyms Chapter 1: Introduction: Comparing the Incomparable: Towards a Theory of... more Preface List of Acronyms Chapter 1: Introduction: Comparing the Incomparable: Towards a Theory of Crisis Cities Chapter 2: "Tighten Your Belts and Bite the Bullet": The Legacy of Urban Crisis in New York and New Orleans Chapter 3: Constructing the Tabula Rasa: Framing and the Political Construction of Crisis Chapter 4: Crisis as Opportunity: Tracing the Contentious Spatial Politics of Redevelopment Chapter 5: Landscapes of Risk and Resilience: From Lower Manhattan to the Lower Ninth Ward Chapter 6: Re-Branding the "Big Apple" and the "Big Easy": Representations of Crisis and Crises of Representation Chapter 7: Conclusion: Lessons In the Wake of New York and New Orleans Notes References Index
Because at the heart of symbolic interactionism is the idea that our social world is constructed ... more Because at the heart of symbolic interactionism is the idea that our social world is constructed for and by us, notions of ambiguity or uncertainty remain underexplored in the paradigm. This chapter uses work on framing and meaning-making to show how the multiple framings of an event can result in uncertainty. Using Čapek’s (2006) eco-self and Zerubavel’s thought communities (1997), this chapter shows how eco-uncertainty is used in New Orleans to both make sense of and deal with environmental suffering (Auyero and Swistun 2009a; Harvey 2016). In particular, against the backdrop of the long-term aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the chapter analyzes a chemical dusting of the Lower Ninth Ward to explore this concept. In what follows, it surveys some of the work in symbolic interaction on nature and the environment and then turns to themes within environmental inequality. It then describes the Lower Ninth Ward and the long-term aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to situate the event in question here. Finally, it uses eco-uncertainty to show how uncertainty structured interaction and meaning-making in the Lower Ninth Ward.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures plans for the rebuilding of ... more In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures plans for the rebuilding of New Orleans favored the redevelopment of some communities over others. Where residents of vulnerable communities, in particular the Lower Ninth Ward, protested the erasure of their communities, they have been largely socially abandoned as a retaliatory measure for not acquiescing to the elite plan of “Katrina Cleansing.” The implementation of this social abandonment as social policy and the various policies and conditions that have collectively punished residents of the Lower Ninth Ward who are trying to rebuild their community should be seen as uneven racialized capitalist development and as an important extension to what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism.” In this article, I conceptualize these policies and conditions as secondary violences and through three vignettes I provide a brief description of life in the Lower Ninth Ward where these violences permeate the warp and the woof of the community.
443 IAND A GROUP OF MY FRIENDS have, for about thirty-one years, been trying to develop and expan... more 443 IAND A GROUP OF MY FRIENDS have, for about thirty-one years, been trying to develop and expand and improve a system for people relating to each other helpfully. For the last eleven years our efforts have gone beyond the city of Seattle and in that time have spread to nearly every state in the Union, nearly every large city in the United States, most Canadian provinces, and about thirty-eight other countries. We’ve had an explosive expansion. Our understanding SOMEONE MUST LISTEN If we were to encapsulate what we have learned to do in a sentence or two—and there’s much more, there are many complicated applications that come from it—it is to explain to people that what they are trying to do all the time, this trying to be listened to, is a very profound process. It will have profound results if it ever gets a chance to operate and it will operate, if they will take turns. They need to just take turns, and agree, “Yes, I will listen to you and really pay attention to you for a while, if you will give me a chance to do the same thing later on.” We call that “Co-Counseling.” The awkward word “counseling” meant “giving advice” to most people when we first started using it, but it has now come to have a good deal of the meaning we’ve used for it in the intervening thirty-one years, which does not mean “giving advice” at all, but basically listening and paying attention. This inherent process that we’re all equipped to use has been, in general, frustrated, simply because it takes another person outside of ourselves really paying attention while we talk and think about ourselves, and re-experience the distresses that we have accumulated, for it to work.
Despite a recent increase in attention within the social sciences, suffering remains for the most... more Despite a recent increase in attention within the social sciences, suffering remains for the most part outside of the purview of sociologists. In this essay, I explore the possibilities for a sociology of suffering by briefly interrogating suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the Lower Ninth Ward, the epicenter of the hurricane and the federal levee failures.
Agency: Integration and Expansion in the Baseball World,’’ ‘‘A Piece of Property: The Making and ... more Agency: Integration and Expansion in the Baseball World,’’ ‘‘A Piece of Property: The Making and Meaning of Free Agency,’’ ‘‘Two Strikes: Star Power and Solidarity in the United States and Mexico,’’ ‘‘On the Borders of Free Agency: Dominican Baseball and the Rise of the Academies,’’ and ‘‘Constructing Ichiro’s Home Field: Seattle, the Mariners, and the Politics of Location,’’ makes an important contribution to understanding the business of baseball. I was particularly impressed with the sections describing the struggle of baseball players to establish the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) and the important roles of Curt Flood and Marvin Miller in that struggle to end the reserve clause and establish free agency. Gilbert describes these actions as involving players’ agency and their attempts to collectively control their own commodification. In Chapter Three, by drawing a comparison between newly elected President Reagan’s ‘‘ruthless treatment’’ of striking members of PATCO (the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) and the successful 1981 strike of the MLBPA, Gilbert identifies the power of baseball players in their irreplaceability and thereby skillfully shows the difference but also the connection between two seemingly different areas of work and labor-management conflict. As it turned out, the difference would be critical in the success or failure not only of baseball players’ struggles, but also of other sport professionals, such as football, basketball, and hockey players as well as other American workers during a period of strong antiunion and anti-worker sentiment in the United States. Gilbert’s chapter on the rise of the baseball academies in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela is also striking, as it clearly demonstrates the exploitative aspects of MLB as a business whose intent was not to give opportunity to poor Latino youth (as they advertised) but instead to save money by exploiting their cheap labor. In his concluding paragraph, expressing an optimism informed perhaps by his own praiseworthy research, Gilbert writes:
As the author notes, Egypt’s Beer, is part of a litany of texts, most now just appearing, that fo... more As the author notes, Egypt’s Beer, is part of a litany of texts, most now just appearing, that focus on the cultural geographies of beer; the underlying assumption being that there is reciprocal re...
The devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures facilitated the unprecedented... more The devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures facilitated the unprecedented proliferation of non-profits in some areas of the city. While the short- and moderate-term experiences of non-profits in the aftermath of Katrina have been examined, their long-term successes and failures remain unknown. In this paper we look at how race and nativism hindered the success of non-profits in rebuilding New Orleans. We likewise seek to demonstrate how the reactions on the part of non-profits to being the racial other or that of an outsider often further impeded the effectiveness of non-profits. The three authors, using data from participant observation, interviews, and ethnography, over a four-year period, describe generalisable lessons learned from rebuilding New Orleans’ communities, including the recognition of competing racial discourses in redevelopment; the valuing of local knowledge; and coming to terms with the paradoxes of the affect economy.
How far has America come when it comes to race? November 4, 2008. The first black man is elected ... more How far has America come when it comes to race? November 4, 2008. The first black man is elected president of the United States, and journalists like Richard Cohen (2008) of The Washington Post conclude the country has transcended race. Yet in many ways, race continues to color the Obama years as much now as in the past. Indeed, one might say that his election has been a cover to proceed with the state-sponsored looting and pillorying of black communities. ‘‘Black codes’’ that compelled emancipated slaves into involuntary, underpaid, or sometimes unpaid labor are now a criminal justice system that oversees more black people than were enslaved in 1850 (Alexander 2010). Poll taxes, literacy tests, and residency requirements that denied people of color suffrage have evolved into Voter ID laws that thwart participation in electoral politics (Bell [1973] 2008). Racial violence of yesterday has become the ‘‘shoot first, ask questions later’’ practices of today in places like Ferguson, Missouri. Meanwhile, court systems remain complicit (as do numerous other political entities). Their silence on ugly displays of racial violence parallels how lynch mobs would leave bodies to hang for days, like Ida B. Wells (1892) describes, as a message to keep minorities ‘‘in their place.’’ The body of an unarmed, ‘‘hands held high’’ teenager laid lifeless, from being shot at least six times and twice in the head, on cold pavement for four hours. Much like extreme forms of Jim Crow, Michael Brown was transformed into a spectacle—into a warning. Blood is on the hands of police officer Darren Wilson, but he is not the only one. White people are responsible for this tragedy. We are implicated in a social fabric that has long made communities like
The Lower Ninth Ward was ground zero for Hurricane Katrina and the Federal levee failures. And ye... more The Lower Ninth Ward was ground zero for Hurricane Katrina and the Federal levee failures. And yet August 29, 2005, was not the first time the community was placed in peril. Decades of dealing with flooding, failed infrastructure and underdevelopment, poverty, crime, and toxic events from nearby petrochemical plants have produced a particular way of making sense of suffering. In the Lower Ninth, suffering is normative; suffering permeates the warp and woof of the community; suffering helps construct the culture there. In this chapter I document what I call a culture of suffering—the cultural tools and worldview that helps residents mitigate their suffering and deal with it in ways that make life livable there.
Preface List of Acronyms Chapter 1: Introduction: Comparing the Incomparable: Towards a Theory of... more Preface List of Acronyms Chapter 1: Introduction: Comparing the Incomparable: Towards a Theory of Crisis Cities Chapter 2: "Tighten Your Belts and Bite the Bullet": The Legacy of Urban Crisis in New York and New Orleans Chapter 3: Constructing the Tabula Rasa: Framing and the Political Construction of Crisis Chapter 4: Crisis as Opportunity: Tracing the Contentious Spatial Politics of Redevelopment Chapter 5: Landscapes of Risk and Resilience: From Lower Manhattan to the Lower Ninth Ward Chapter 6: Re-Branding the "Big Apple" and the "Big Easy": Representations of Crisis and Crises of Representation Chapter 7: Conclusion: Lessons In the Wake of New York and New Orleans Notes References Index
Untapped: Exploring the Cultural Dimensions of Craft Beer, 2017
In this chapter we look at the craft beer movement in New England. Like many other places in the ... more In this chapter we look at the craft beer movement in New England. Like many other places in the United States, craft beer in New England is burgeoning. But perhaps unique to New England is the way in which brewers and brewery owners are framing the movement. In our interviews with craft brewers, respondents spoke of the relationship between beer, place, and ethics. Over our research it became apparent that making beer in New England evoked a return to a pastoral landscape and the early cottage industry of " Yankee material production. " Likewise, respondents saw their production of beer as part of an ethical process that created "networked ecologies" of consumption and production. Furthermore, they framed what they do not as a form of resistance against the dominance of corporate beer producers, but as a concerted effort to educate or help transition mainstream beer drinkers to the world of craft beer.
A new seal began to appear on bottles and cans of American craft beer in 2017. It both certifies ... more A new seal began to appear on bottles and cans of American craft beer in 2017. It both certifies that the beer came from one of the nation's independently owned and small-scale breweries and signals that these upstarts are fighting back against the corporations trying to co-opt their authenticity and craftiness.
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