![]() 1981), income ( Wagnild 2003), and extended family networks ( Young 1954). Successful recovery is often directly proportional to pre-existing social status ( Oliver-Smith 1990 Logue et al. Community ability to recover varies by geographic location, class, race, ethnicity, gender and age (Tierney 2006a, 2006b Hartman and Squires 2006 Pelling 2003), highlighting social inequalities, physical vulnerabilities ( Fjord and Manderson 2009), or the trouble with the language of vulnerability ( Fjord 2010) and failures in social justice ( Cazdyn 2007).Īlong with evidence that social conditions more than nature are responsible for disasters' impacts, an ample literature explores the long-term pervasive quality of disasters. Disasters reveal social vulnerability, with ramifications for adjustment, recovery and long-term well-being ( Erikson 1976 Wallace 1987 Oliver-Smith 1979, 1992, 1996 Klinenberg 1999, 2002 Hartman and Squires 2006 Brodie 1985). ![]() Oliver-Smith refers to disaster as a crise revelatrice (“a revealing crisis”) in which “the fundamental features of society and culture are laid bare in stark relief by the reduction of priorities to basic social, cultural and material necessities” (1996:304). 2007), there is ample literature on the predictable dimensions of all disasters ( Daniels, Kettle and Kunreuther 2006 Wallace 1987 Erikson 1976, 1995 Congleton 2006 Steinberg 2003), and for Hurricane Katrina particularly ( Cooper and Block 2006 Tierney 2006b Freudenberg et al. Despite a recurring characterization of disasters (especially by journalists) as random natural occurrences and as acute events affecting societies and individuals in socio-spatially limited and unpredictable ways ( Birch and Wachter 2006 Bergal et al. The most thorough reviews for anthropology are by Oliver Smith (1990), and for sociology, by Tierney (2006a), Rosa (2006), Rodriguez and Barnshaw (2006) and Stallings (2006). ![]() Studying disasters is not new to medical anthropologists. Exploring long term recovery helps us to conceptualize disasters as long-term events, requiring ongoing response. We know that disasters precede and exceed the catastrophic events that define them, and this helps us to conceptualize disasters as themselves “aging” as their impacts linger on and continue to affect people in different ways. Secondly, our title suggests that disasters themselves ‘age’ in their human and material dimensions. Our title thus firstly refers to the fact that people experience disasters and their long-term effects differently, depending on their age. First, we explore the uneven mortality of Hurricane Katrina: the elderly were the first and most numerous to die in the first year after the storm ( Knowles and Garrison 2006 Stephens 2007 Spiegel 2006), and recovery differed for people in different age groups. “Aging disaster,” the double entendre of our title, refers to several related lines of analysis. In this essay, we draw from ongoing research among Hurricane Katrina survivors from New Orleans aged 40 to 98 to examine the long-term effects of this calamity and the role that age plays in relation to disaster. Still, we are only beginning to learn about the experiences of people who survived Katrina in relation to long-term displacement and their ability to recover in the face of ongoing challenges, post disaster, based on age and race ( Adams 2009a Button and Oliver-Smith 2008 Igoe 2008 Kaiser Family Foundation 2007). These include the elderly and African Americans, groups disproportionately affected by the hurricane and its aftermath ( Kaiser Family Foundation 2007). Five years later, the most recovered neighborhoods are only 52% -72% rebuilt ( Adams 2009a), and many who have returned have succeeded only partially in adapting to new, often compromised, daily routines. Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding displaced more than 455,000 people from the Greater New Orleans area ( Liu et al.
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