Under the guidance of our Department Head, Bob Anemone, the Department of Anthropology at UNCG initiated a brown bag lecture series entitled "How I spent my 'summer vacation'," with summer vacation in quotations because we (the anthropology faculty) are active researchers who conduct much of our field work and data collection during the summer months.
On April 1, our colleague Art Murphy presented on his work in Mexico on human responses to disasters. For the last few years, he has been working on the ABC Day Care Center Fire, a tragic event that eventually resulted in the death of 49 children. He is currently on a Fulbright in Mexico and, while there, he was asked to work on a more recent disaster, the chemical spill at the Buena Vista del Cobre mine. There is a lot going on in both cases, not the least of which is politics, but there is one point that Art made that resonated with me. It is often assumed that disasters−take Hurricane Katrina or the Haiti Earthquake−highlight social inequalities and are thus movers of social change. While the former is true, Art pointed out that the latter is typically not: as things calm down, people try to recreate and preserve the system of inequality that existed before the disaster.
On April 1, our colleague Art Murphy presented on his work in Mexico on human responses to disasters. For the last few years, he has been working on the ABC Day Care Center Fire, a tragic event that eventually resulted in the death of 49 children. He is currently on a Fulbright in Mexico and, while there, he was asked to work on a more recent disaster, the chemical spill at the Buena Vista del Cobre mine. There is a lot going on in both cases, not the least of which is politics, but there is one point that Art made that resonated with me. It is often assumed that disasters−take Hurricane Katrina or the Haiti Earthquake−highlight social inequalities and are thus movers of social change. While the former is true, Art pointed out that the latter is typically not: as things calm down, people try to recreate and preserve the system of inequality that existed before the disaster.
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