Linger, They Did*

Carol B. Stack, Women’s Studies & Social and Cultural Studiesin Education

Introduction

Disasters linger, yet they cannot sit still. They linger amid the tensionsof time and place; they stay in place, but not as equal opportunity destroy-ers. They move from place to place on the shoulders of entire communities,for as long as necessary; they change their course, and out of necessity, theyreinvent what is normal. Scholars, in the wake of Katrina, moved collec-tively and individually, trailing this phenomenal diaspora and exile, as peoplecobbled their lives together. In the wake of Katrina, ethnographic writingcannot sit still. The communities in exile that the researchers came to knowchanged before their eyes; many were moved by traces of their own past.As scholars, writing becomes a continuing search for a way to create textthat follows these paths. The scholars in the Katrina Shelf struggled coura-geously and collaboratively to show the relationships among stories of Hurri-cane Katrina, that in sum, stand in for a dialog that we as a nation are nothaving.

Some of the social scientists in the Katrina Bookshelf entered the frayfrom a point along the periphery, and lingered. Some were exiled researcherswhose place of origin was inside, but they were thrust outside. Together withan ear and eye on lives in motion, they collaborated. Each of these studiesbends into one another, challenging and inspiring researchers to seek newangles of inquiry and to produce studies that are sharp-edged, detailed, andcomplete. But there are many such sites in the colossal migrations and mistakesof Katrina, none of which fully registers all the elements seared by laser on tolight-sensitive film.

Stand in one place and try to understand the fall out when, “an aversiveagent and a vulnerable society collide,” and it looks as though intractable pov-erty rises out of the landscape of hopelessness. Stand in another place and wesee family trees stretched across the landscape against a moving background oftime. Disasters spread their shock waves, yet at each distant place they take onnew meaning. Move to a third vantage point and you begin to see the waysindividual stories, grounded in particular details, not general patterns, evolvefrom a series of choices made on the ground. Choices that shape the dilemmas

Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 84, No. 3, August 2014, 374–375© 2014 Alpha Kappa Delta: The International Sociology Honor SocietyDOI: 10.1111/soin.12045

of adulthood as individual biographies and collective fates are surrounded byupheaval, inequities, and controversy.

Like a hologram, our picture of Katrina, seen through these achinglyrazor-sharp studies, shimmers into new focus every time we change the line ofsight. Politicians and policymakers almost always station themselves outsidethe boundaries of poor neighborhoods and communities. From their observationposts (it’s tempting to say watchtowers), the choices some people make arouseindignation. From the many cities across the nation where families in the Kat-rina Bookshelf gathered, and in local Bayou communities where some returnedhome, stories of individual attempts to carry out their responsibilities to othersare likely to invite admiration. Each project in the Katrina Bookshelf quietlyworks through the structural elements of racism and restricted economic oppor-tunities, and each attempts to understand the practices that shape individual andcollective lives.

In the hands of these scholars, collaborative inquiry takes on new mean-ing. The image of a hologram that discloses itself differently from every angleof approach has special resonance for the Katrina Bookshelf, a project that fol-lows many truths, however, risky, and wherever they may seem to lead.

ENDNOTE

*Please direct correspondence to Carol B. Stack, Women’s Studies & Social and CulturalStudies in Education, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA; e-mail: carolstack24@gmail.com

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