186 pages, 5 x 8
1 color photograph, 1 color illustration, 2 B-W il
Paperback
Release Date:14 Jan 2025
ISBN:9781978838758
Public Catastrophes, Private Losses
Rutgers University Press
From COVID to climate-change-induced wildfires and hurricanes, we live in an era where catastrophes have become the new normal. But even though these events affect us all, some members of society are more vulnerable to harm than others.
This essay collection explores how the definition of catastrophe might be expanded to include many forms of large-scale structural violence on communities, species, and ecosystems. Using feminist methodologies, the contributors to Public Catastrophes, Private Losses trace the connections between seemingly unrelated forms of violence such as structural racism, environmental degradation, and public health crises. In contrast to a news media that focuses on mass fatalities and immediate consequences, these essays call our attention to how catastrophes can also involve slow violence with long-term effects.
The authors also consider how these catastrophes are profoundly shaped by government action or inaction, offering a powerful critique of how government neglect has cost lives and demonstrating how vulnerable populations can be better protected. The essays in this collection examine how public catastrophes imprint themselves on lives, as individuals and communities narrate, process, and grapple with legacies of loss. The book is thus a feminist intervention that challenges the binary between public and private, personal and political.
This essay collection explores how the definition of catastrophe might be expanded to include many forms of large-scale structural violence on communities, species, and ecosystems. Using feminist methodologies, the contributors to Public Catastrophes, Private Losses trace the connections between seemingly unrelated forms of violence such as structural racism, environmental degradation, and public health crises. In contrast to a news media that focuses on mass fatalities and immediate consequences, these essays call our attention to how catastrophes can also involve slow violence with long-term effects.
The authors also consider how these catastrophes are profoundly shaped by government action or inaction, offering a powerful critique of how government neglect has cost lives and demonstrating how vulnerable populations can be better protected. The essays in this collection examine how public catastrophes imprint themselves on lives, as individuals and communities narrate, process, and grapple with legacies of loss. The book is thus a feminist intervention that challenges the binary between public and private, personal and political.
Redefining 'catastrophe' not as an unforeseeable or finite event, but as a perpetual unfolding of structural violence and its many afterlives, this collection of essays crackles with fury and possibility. Through their varied experiences and perspectives of loss, the authors allow us to see and feel what is missing from official archives, reminding us that grieving is an act of resistance as much as it is an act of love.
SARAH TOBIAS is Executive Director of the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University. A feminist political theorist, she recently co-edited The Perils of Populism and Feeling Democracy: Emotional Politics in the New Millenium, both from Rutgers University Press.
ARLENE STEIN is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the intersection of gender, sexuality, culture, and politics. She is the author or editor of nine books, including Unbound: Transgender Men and the Transformation of Identity and Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness.
ARLENE STEIN is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the intersection of gender, sexuality, culture, and politics. She is the author or editor of nine books, including Unbound: Transgender Men and the Transformation of Identity and Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness.
Related Titles
From Crisis to Catastrophe
Care, COVID, and Pathways to Change
Edited by Mignon Duffy, Amy Armenia, and Kim Price-Glynn
Public Catastrophes, Private Losses
Edited by Sarah Tobias and Arlene Stein; Introduction by Sarah Tobias and Arlene Stein
