ABSTRACT
Many chapters in this volume help locate the Katrina disaster within the broader context of disaster studies, both ‘natural’ and anthropogenic. This chapter contributes to that effort, but also aims more fundamentally to move the conversation out of what might be termed the intellectual ghetto of disaster/ risk studies. Whether it is the 1998 train derailment in Eschede, Germany, the sovereign debt crisis roiling European financial circles in 2010, or the avoidable suffering associated with Hurricane Katrina or the Haitian earthquake, I argue that events known as ‘disasters’ are caused by many of the same precursor conditions that lead to less obvious outcomes in everyday life, outcomes which cumulatively may be even more destructive than the headline events.
