Social Justice Issues
As we learned in a previous lesson, people experience risk and vulnerability to hazards differently. Quite often this is based on characteristics of social class, race, gender, and age. Hurricane Katrina brought this home to the American people as never seen before. The news media played a major role in highlighting the inequities and social justice issues Katrina made evident.
My experience as a human geographer who is also a GIScience faculty member is that many GIScience students are unaware of the social justice implications of GIS&T. These students often times see the technology as a neutral tool that supports good decision making. This impression is wrong. Every time a geospatial analyst makes a decision about what data or technique to use, there are potential social justice issues. At best, the non-critical geospatial analysts may make choices without thinking about the implications for traditionally disadvantaged groups. At worst, the analysts may make conscious choices to use data sets and methods that will discriminate against certain groups to the benefit of others for reasons of profit, power, influence, or favor with policy makers. My challenge to you is to recognize the implications in your choice of data, methods, and your analytical outcomes in regards to social justice issues. The technology may be value free and neutral, but the humans behind the technology are not.
Susan Cutter on Hurricane Katrina
The Social Science Research Council responded to Hurricane Katrina with an online project called "Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences." As the SSRC puts it:
As analyses and "spin" of the Katrina crisis grow, we confront the sort of public issue to which a social science response is urgently needed. Accordingly, the SSRC has organized this forum addressing the implications of the tragedy that extend beyond "natural disaster," "engineering failures," "cronyism" or other categories of interpretation that do not directly examine the underlying issues-political, social and economic-laid bare by the events surrounding Katrina.
The SSRC believes the underlying failures of Katrina go far deeper than weather, bad levees, or good old boy government. The social science scholars involved seek to understand the deeper implications of underlying issues.
Dr. Susan Cutter, whom you will recall from the previous lesson, contributed the Understanding Katrina project with the essay "The Geography of Social Vulnerability: Race, Class, and Catastrophe". See reading below.
Reading
Read Dr. Cutter's essay on "The Geography of Social Vulnerability: Race, Class, and Catastrophe", and then examine the Understanding Katrina website and peruse any other essays that interest you.
In the Wake of the Storm
The Russell Sage Foundation was established in 1907 by Mrs. Margaret Olivia Sage to foster the improvement of social and living conditions in the US. The foundation does this by fostering the development and dissemination of knowledge about US political, social, and economic problems. In the wake of Katrina, the foundation sponsored research on the social justice implications of Katrina. The resulting report entitled "In the Wake of the Storm: Environment, Disaster, and Race after Katrina" is a major contribution in understanding the social justice issues related to hazards, risks, and vulnerability.
Reading
Read the Executive Summary and scan the rest of "In the Wake of the Storm: Environment, Disaster, and Race after Katrina".
