Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina
Vincanne Adams. Duke Univ., $22.95 trade paper (232p) ISBN 978-0-8223-5449-9
While Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and many surrounding areas, an even larger disaster occurred when survivors returned and tried to rebuild their lives. In this sometimes plodding and jargon-filled but still compelling ethnographic account of the recovery process, medical anthropologist Adams recounts the stories of numerous survivors who are rebuilding in an “economy of recovery [that] both responded to and drew on suffering in order to reproduce itself....” Katrina’s aftermath is at once a story of triumph in the midst of disaster, but it also continues to be a story dominated by the tale of private-sector corporations and the federal government acting irresponsibly and creating “vulnerable people who were then made more vulnerable by the recovery machinery deployed to help them... [creating] markets of sorrow in which the production of profits, like the production of indebtedness among the already poor, are integral to the survival of the market itself.” (Mar.)
Details
Reviewed on: 12/17/2012
Genre: Nonfiction
Hardcover - 248 pages - 978-0-8223-5434-5