Masculinity and Disaster in Southern Louisiana
Thursday 12 December 2019, 5.00-6.30pm, RH1.20, Rowan House
Anthropology Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Maynooth University
Abstract
By conceptualising the recovery from Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill as forming part of ongoing processes of “becoming” and the everyday, this seminar shall explore how the relative power of a historically privileged group of white males in rural Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, faced significant challenge. Firstly, through the breakdown of informal racial segregation in local social institutions, and through the newly ubiquitous nature of mobile homes threatening their rejection of “trailer trash” culture. While secondly, through the impact of ongoing changes across wider American society, where a locally valorised ideal of normative 1950s culture conflicted with the civil rights and feminist movements of the late twentieth century, and has manifested in support for the political rhetoric of Donald Trump.