Free public lecture examines class, place, and hurricane recovery
Humanities council sponsors talk about disaster recovery in Bend.
22 June 2008 | Permalink
How do disasters like Hurricane Katrina reveal social inequalities and failings by the American government? How do these inequalities and failings shape communities before environmental disasters strike and reshape them in the aftermath?
James Elliott, associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, examines class, natural disasters, and social inequalities at a free public lecture, “The Second Disaster: Class, Place, and Hurricane Recovery” at the Oregon State University, Cascades Campus, Cascades Hall, 2600 NW College Way, Bend, on Saturday, July 19, 2008, at 7:30 p.m. This lecture is offered in conjunction with the Oregon Council for the Humanities (OCH) teacher institute, “Decoding Class: Money, Mobility, and the American Dream.”
Elliott and his coauthor Jeremy F. Pais, in their study “Places as Recovery Machines: Vulnerability and Neighborhood Change after Major Hurricanes,” write that sociologists and kindred scholars have come to conceptualize natural disasters, in part, as the intersection of environmental hazards and vulnerable people. “This attention to social vulnerability implies that natural disasters do not just happen,” he writes. “Rather, they unfold through historical processes that generate social inequalities in the capacity to anticipate, resist and recover from hazards when they occur.”
Elliott’s scholarship has focused on urban development and social inequalities in the United States, ranging from research on native- and foreign-born migration, racial and gender inequalities in the labor market, struggles over public housing, and social vulnerabilities to environmental hazards. His research has employed a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods and has received funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the National Science Foundation.
OCH Teacher Institutes offer Oregon teachers the chance to study, under the direction of leading scholars, issues that are important to public life and in their work in classrooms. Teacher Institutes are offered free of charge thanks to the generous support of individuals, foundations, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
