Task Force on the Social Issues Emerging From Hurricane Katrina

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there has been intense media exploration of social issues revealed by the disaster (e.g. local racial inequalities), social issues produced by the disaster (e.g. the displacement of evacuees) and social issues that contributed to the disaster (e.g. difficulties in coordinating relief agencies and different levels of government). Some journalistic treatments of these issues have been thoughtful and important; others have been tendentious and politically motivated. As the nation’s effort to understand the social crisis brought on by the hurricane continues, it will be important to supplement the immediacies of journalistic accounts with evidence-based assessments that employ the analytic tools of social science. To this end, the Foundation has provided funding to help launch a task force at the Social Science Research Council, which will coordinate social research on the disaster and recovery process.

Chaired by Yale sociologist Kai Erikson, the task force has a very ambitious roster of initial goals. These include (1) making a package of baseline data on the affected areas available from the Census and other sources, (2) creating a central registry of interview and survey data about individuals displaced by the storm, (3) creating a detailed socio-economic map of New Orleans and the affected region, before and after the storm, (4) developing a longitudinal study of affected people and neighborhoods, (5) undertaking an environmental history of the Gulf coast, including accounts of environmental interventions, such as the levee system, and (6) developing a collegial support system for connecting experts on disasters with those whose primary focus is on other relevant social issues, from policing and urban planning to race, social inequality, and gender issues.