“Before the Storm”: Hurricane Katrina, the BP Oil Spill, and the Challenges to Racial Hierarchies in Rural Louisiana

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-85
Author(s):  
Seumas Bates
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Bp Oil Spill ◽  
White Males ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
American Society ◽  
Feminist Movements ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

By conceptualizing the recovery from Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill as forming part of ongoing processes of “becoming” and the everyday, this article explores how the relative power of a historically privileged group of White males in rural Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, faced significant challenge. First, through the breakdown of informal racial segregation in local social institutions, and through the newly ubiquitous nature of mobile homes threatening their rejection of “trailer trash” culture. Second, however, this impact must be understood within ongoing changes across wider American society, where a locally valorized ideal of normative 1950s culture was seen to be in conflict with the civil rights and feminist movements of the late twentieth century. This imagined cultural hegemony was therefore in serious decline long before these catastrophes, yet has now been confined to the time “before the Storm.”

Strategic Sisterhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tuuri
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Council ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Feminist Movements ◽  
Radical Activism ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

When women were denied a major speaking role at the 1963 March on Washington, Dorothy Height, head of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), organized her own women's conference for the very next day. Defying the march's male organizers, Height helped harness the womanpower waiting in the wings. Height’s careful tactics and quiet determination come to the fore in this first history of the NCNW, the largest black women's organization in the United States at the height of the civil rights, Black Power, and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Offering a sweeping view of the NCNW's behind-the-scenes efforts to fight racism, poverty, and sexism in the late twentieth century, Rebecca Tuuri examines how the group teamed with U.S. presidents, foundations, and grassroots activists alike to implement a number of important domestic development and international aid projects. Drawing on original interviews, extensive organizational records, and other rich sources, Tuuri’s work narrates the achievements of a set of seemingly moderate, elite activists who were able to use their personal, financial, and social connections to push for change as they facilitated grassroots, cooperative, and radical activism.

“Land! Hold On! Just Hold On!”

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-65
Author(s):  
Gina Caison
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Land Claim ◽  
Bp Oil Spill ◽  
Single Thread ◽  
Ecological Disaster ◽  
Indigenous Land

This essay interrogates William Faulkner’s “Old Man” section of The Wild Palms (1939), with its depiction of the 1927 flood, alongside Houma filmmaker Monique Verdin’s documentary My Louisiana Love (2012), which recounts Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill, to examine the ways that the two texts present ecological disaster in the Native South. In many cases, Faulkner takes liberties and makes mistakes in his use of Native history, but to catalogue his successes or failures means to remain fixed upon Faulkner’s tapestry alone, imagining that the “Native” runs through his fictional Yoknapatawpha like a single thread. Rather, this essay examines the ways in which Faulkner’s work forms part of a larger fabric of a region still deeply imbued with the concerns of indigenous land claim and how contemporary Indigenous artists represent this landscape.

A New Denominational Historiography?

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263
Author(s):  
John F. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
General Factor ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
Religious Institution ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
American Society ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Over the last decade, a noteworthy number of published studies have, in one fashion or another, been defined with reference to religious denominations. This is an arresting fact, for, coincidentally, the status of religious denominations in the society has been called into question. Some formerly powerful bodies have lost membership (at least relatively speaking) and now experience reduced influence, while newer forms of religious organization(s)—e.g., parachurch groups and loosely structured movements—have flourished. The most compelling recent analysis of religion in modern American society gives relatively little attention to them. Why, then, have publications in large numbers appeared, in scale almost seeming to be correlated inversely to this trend?No single answer to this question is adequate. Surely one general factor is that historians often “work out of phase” with contemporary social change. If denominations have been displaced as a form of religious institution in society in the late twentieth century, then their prominence in earlier eras is all the more intriguing.

The 1970s

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Borstelmann
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Retirement Plans ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Oil Crisis ◽  
American Society

This book looks at an iconic decade when the cultural left and economic right came to the fore in American society and the world at large. While many have seen the 1970s as simply a period of failures epitomized by Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, global unrest, and disillusionment with military efforts in Vietnam, this book creates a new framework for understanding the period and its legacy. It demonstrates how the 1970s increased social inclusiveness and, at the same time, encouraged commitments to the free market and wariness of government. As a result, American culture and much of the rest of the world became more—and less—equal. This book explores how the 1970s forged the contours of contemporary America. Military, political, and economic crises undercut citizens' confidence in government. Free market enthusiasm led to lower taxes, a volunteer army, individual 401(k) retirement plans, free agency in sports, deregulated airlines, and expansions in gambling and pornography. At the same time, the movement for civil rights grew, promoting changes for women, gays, immigrants, and the disabled. And developments were not limited to the United States. Many countries gave up colonial and racial hierarchies to develop a new formal commitment to human rights, while economic deregulation spread to other parts of the world, from Chile and the United Kingdom to China. Placing a tempestuous political culture within a global perspective, this book shows that the decade wrought irrevocable transformations upon American society and the broader world that continue to resonate today.

Changing Patterns of Politicization and Partisanship Among Women in France

1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia B. Bashevkin
Keyword(s):  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Political Involvement ◽  
North American Society ◽  
Social Activists ◽  
The Past ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
American Society ◽  
Feminist Movements

During the past decade, political researchers have devoted growing attention to women's political involvement and, to a somewhat lesser extent, their political attitudes in Western cultures. This interest has been a response in part to contemporary feminist movements and, more specifically, to the increasingly visible role of women as social activists, partisan elites and governmental decision makers in Western European and North American society.

What Lies Beneath: the BP Oil Spill and the Need for New Response Models

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 587-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priscilla D. Allen ◽  
Christopher F. D’Elia
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Response Models ◽  
Bp Oil Spill

Presidential Confidence in Crisis: Blame, Media, and the BP Oil Spill

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis M. Johnston ◽  
Stephen N. Goggin
Keyword(s):  
Oil Spill ◽  
Bp Oil Spill

scholarly journals Lessons from the Twin Mega-Crises: The Financial Meltdown and the BP Oil Spill

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hershey H. Friedman ◽  
Linda W. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Business And Society ◽  
Bp Oil Spill ◽  
Twin Crises ◽  
Excessive Risk

This paper explores the synchronicity of two mega-crises we are now facing: The BP oil spill and the repercussions of the 2008 financial meltdown. It examines some key common threads in both of these crises. The overarching message is that firms must maintain a culture of social responsibility, must behave in an ethical manner, and must do everything possible to avoid societal harm. The three key lessons to be learned from the twin crises are to consider and mange risk in decision making; minimize conflicts of interest in the hope that executives will then not engage in actions that involve excessive risk to stakeholders; and that government regulation can be beneficial, rather than harmful to business and society – as long as it does not stifle innovation and growth.

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