While media commentators were bemoaning the looting and showing the same
footage over and over, not a word about the oil companies. There are an
obvious number of points to be made here. Barbara Chasin
Del Thomas Ph. D. wrote:
You can see the structural "isms" in the coverage of this disaster.
Who is trapped in the super dome and who has their picture taken looting.
Poverty is as natural as Katrina.. The poor will always be with us
because we insist on it.
Del
Brian Copp wrote:
In suggesting the contrast between the obvious causation of
problems (homelessness) due to natural disasters vs the often cited
individual failure causes for problems, I did not mean to neglect
the other, and more difficult for the public to accept/understand
models of causation, the so-called "structural" explanations.
Disaster might be termed an immediate and obvious structural
explanation to which the public shows sympathy and action, but the
more subtle and complicated structural issues of class inequality,
prejudice and discrimination (the isms), etc. do not receive popular
public responses because, unless it is obvious (natural disaster),
the public is much more comfortable with psychological
(individualistic) explanation than sociological (structural). BEC
"Live an active not a reactive life."
Carl Rogers
Brian E. Copp, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice
University of Wisconsin-River Falls
KFA 330
410 S. Third St.
River Falls, WI 54022
(715) 425-3992 or 3260, FAX (715) 425-0657
