- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
This week I used the sources I had as jumping off points for finding more literature that would prove helpful in my research. The three works I describe below offered excellent bibliographies that were focused on Hurricane Katrina specifically and the creation of a neoliberal carceral-security state.
I spent valuable time this week reading these articles and starting to develop a more detailed outline with quotations and points I want to emphasize. In doing this, I realized that my argument might be better suited for writing an essay instead of a podcast. I will formalize this decision in the coming week.
Some challenges that presented itself was finding another instance that I would use to compare to Hurricane Katrina. After reading these sources, I feel confident that I will be able to write a strong paper focused solely on Hurricane Katrina rather than trying to compare and contrast two catastrophes.
I feel like this natural disaster and response can provide enough information to delve deep into the understanding of how the state criminalized the racialized poor in order to serve their own agenda of counterinsurgency. This topic is something that really interests me, and I am excited about exploring some of the other sources I have found.
Below is my annotated bibliography of some of the sources I have read so far, and a list of other sources I hope to read this coming week.
Camp, Jordan T. Incarcerating the Crisis (American Crossroads) . University of California Press.
Camps book lays groundwork for my understanding of Hurricane Katrina and the basis of my argument. He argues that by defining domestic enemies in terms of race and class, the government was able to deploy military security forces and create a successful neoliberal carceral-security state. This book does a good job of setting the tone of New Orleans and delving deeper into the makeup of the city. Looking at my research on a more holistic level, this work helps lay the groundwork for understand neoliberalism and how it relates to Hurricane Katrina. A key part of this chapter is the missed opportunity that Hurricane Katrina represented for New Orleans, and a defining moment in our nation’s history, as the government resorted to military control in order to tame the city.
Kochems, Alane. “Military Support to Civilian Authories: An Assessment of the Resposne to Hurricane Katrina.” The Heritage Foundation. November 28, 2005.
This article analyzes the governments response to Hurricane Katrina. The intended audience of this piece was recipients of the Backgrounder at this time. Key points of this article emphasize the US lack of a comprehensive, national system to respond to catastrophic events, the military is not adequately organized and prepared to respond to these types of events, and the Defense Department needs to be better equipped in reviewing in order to send the right force size to respond to these events. The article outlines a timeline of what usually happens during catastrophic events and the process the government goes through in determining what to do. This article is very important in understanding the response time to Hurricane Katrina.
Camp, Jordan T. “‘We Know This Place’: Neoliberal Racial Regimes and the Katrina Circumstance.” American Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 3, 2009, pp. 693–717. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27735014.
In this work, Camp argues that all too often, governments criminalize the racialized poor in order to justify the warfare used. He coins the term, “neoliberal racial regimes of security” in order to help understand this pattern. Similarly, he argues that the mass-mediated rhetoric of counterinsurgency relies on the construction of race and crime to disrupt the liberal state. This work is similar to the chapter from Camps book, but adds valuable insight into my argument and discussion about New Orleans and the creation of a neoliberal state.
Stuart Hall- policing the crisis: mugging, the state, and law and order
Ranajit Guha- “the prose of counter-insurgency”
Jared Sexton-“the obscurity of black suffering” in what lies beneath: Katrina, Race, and the state of a nation.
Foucalt – Security, territory, population.
Comments:
Thanks for this, Gaby. I am glad to see that you now have a more clear focus for your paper. My only concern regarding your project is that it should not simply repeat what Camp said in his book. Even if you make a similar argument, try to focus on those aspects of the disaster that Camp did not analyze.
Also, I do not think that you would find Foucault’s book particularly helpful for your project.