Denaturalizing disaster: A social autopsy of the 1995 Chicago heat wave

Theory and Society

Volumn 28, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 239-295

  Klinenberg, Eric ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0033239656     PISSN: 03042421     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006995507723     Document Type: Review

References (165)

1. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Heat-Related Illnesses and Deaths - United States, 1994-1995," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 44/ 25 (1995): 465-468.
2. The heat index measures both temperature and humidity, which together determine how a typical person experiences the heat. It is analogous to the wind-chill factor, which measures experienced cold during the winter. Scientists have long associated high temperatures in cities with the urban "heat island" phenomenon, but only recently have some environmental scientists found that much of the modern warming of the earth takes place at night
3. Excess death rates measure the number of deaths for a given period of time in relation to the baseline death rate. The Chicago Department of Public Health reported 739 excess deaths during the week of the heat wave, 696 excess deaths for the month of July. Note furthermore that Chicago's mortality rates did not dip in the months following the heat wave; the heat, then, did not (as some initially conjectured) simply kill people who would have died soon thereafter anyway. According to Whitman and his colleagues, heat-related death rates measure the absolute number of cases in which examiners attributed mortality to one of these criteria: "1) a measured body temperature of > 105°F (> 40.6°C) before or immediately after death; 2) evidence of high environmental temperature at the scene of death, usually greater than 100°F; or 3) the body was decomposed and investigation disclosed that the person was last seen alive during the heat wave and that the environmental temperature at the time would have been high.° Steven Whitman et al., "Mortality in Chicago Attributed to the July 1995 Heat Wave," American Journal of Public Health 87/9 (September, 1997): 1515-1518.
4. Here I use "logic" to refer to the structure and course of the disaster as well as to the social order of the city, since it is the latter that largely determined the former.
5. Among the major statements in this discussion are Peter Marcuse, "What's So New About Divided Cities?" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17/3 (1993): 355-365; Peter Marcuse, "The Enclave, the Citadel, and the Ghetto: What Has Changed in the Post-Fordist U.S. City," Urban Affairs Review 33/2 (1997): 228-264; Loïc J. D. Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on its Nature and Implications," Acta Sociologica 39 (1996): 121-139; Douglas Massey, "The Age of Extremes: Concentrated Affluence and Poverty in the Twenty-First Century," Demography 33/4 (1996): 395-412; and Manuel Castells, End of Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
6. Among the major statements in this discussion are Peter Marcuse, "What's So New About Divided Cities?" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17/3 (1993): 355-365; Peter Marcuse, "The Enclave, the Citadel, and the Ghetto: What Has Changed in the Post-Fordist U.S. City," Urban Affairs Review 33/2 (1997): 228-264; Loïc J. D. Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on its Nature and Implications," Acta Sociologica 39 (1996): 121-139; Douglas Massey, "The Age of Extremes: Concentrated Affluence and Poverty in the Twenty-First Century," Demography 33/4 (1996): 395-412; and Manuel Castells, End of Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
7. Among the major statements in this discussion are Peter Marcuse, "What's So New About Divided Cities?" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17/3 (1993): 355-365; Peter Marcuse, "The Enclave, the Citadel, and the Ghetto: What Has Changed in the Post-Fordist U.S. City," Urban Affairs Review 33/2 (1997): 228-264; Loïc J. D. Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on its Nature and Implications," Acta Sociologica 39 (1996): 121-139; Douglas Massey, "The Age of Extremes: Concentrated Affluence and Poverty in the Twenty-First Century," Demography 33/4 (1996): 395-412; and Manuel Castells, End of Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
8. Among the major statements in this discussion are Peter Marcuse, "What's So New About Divided Cities?" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17/3 (1993): 355-365; Peter Marcuse, "The Enclave, the Citadel, and the Ghetto: What Has Changed in the Post-Fordist U.S. City," Urban Affairs Review 33/2 (1997): 228-264; Loïc J. D. Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on its Nature and Implications," Acta Sociologica 39 (1996): 121-139; Douglas Massey, "The Age of Extremes: Concentrated Affluence and Poverty in the Twenty-First Century," Demography 33/4 (1996): 395-412; and Manuel Castells, End of Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
9. Among the major statements in this discussion are Peter Marcuse, "What's So New About Divided Cities?" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17/3 (1993): 355-365; Peter Marcuse, "The Enclave, the Citadel, and the Ghetto: What Has Changed in the Post-Fordist U.S. City," Urban Affairs Review 33/2 (1997): 228-264; Loïc J. D. Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on its Nature and Implications," Acta Sociologica 39 (1996): 121-139; Douglas Massey, "The Age of Extremes: Concentrated Affluence and Poverty in the Twenty-First Century," Demography 33/4 (1996): 395-412; and Manuel Castells, End of Millennium (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
10. There are several reasons to think that these conditions are not unique to Chicago, and in fact the heat wave provided some of them Milwaukee, about one-hundred miles away, experienced 91 heat-related deaths during the week. As in Chicago, this mortality level cannot be explained by the heat alone.
11. Whitman et al., "Mortality in Chicago Attributed to the July 1995 Heat Wave," 1517.
12. City of Chicago, Mayor's Commission on Extreme Weather Conditions (November, 1995).
13. See the list of participants in the Mayor's Commission on Extreme Weather Conditions, 38.
14. The most significant and impressive scholarly study of the heat wave, authored by a team of researchers from such prestigious public health research centers as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Epidemic Intelligence Service and published in the July 11, 1995 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, clarifies many of the crucial public health lessons from the event but does little to show the social and political processes that made some areas of the city more vulnerable than others. The well-funded case-control study, conducted by a large team of researchers, matches 339 relatives, neighbors, or friends of heat wave victims with 330 controls according to neighborhood and age to determine the major risk factors for dying during a heat wave. The results of the study are important for helping public health workers and policy makers identify and assist vulnerable populations: they found that there were fewer deaths among people who had a working air conditioner, access to an air-conditioned lobby, or ability to visit another place with air conditioning; and a higher risk of deaths among people who lived alone, on the top floor of a building, in apartment houses, in single room occupancy dwellings, in homes with a small number of rooms, who had less access to public transportation, and who were socially isolated. The study, which opens with the claim that "Hot summer weather cannot be prevented; however, morbidity and mortality related to summer heat can be reduced," no doubt makes a great contribution to the effort to achieve this. What it does not do, though, is illustrate the conditions that make communities, rather than individuals, susceptible to health disasters. In focusing on individuals and finding controls for each subject within his or her own neighborhood, the authors of the study provide only a partial analysis of the heat wave's effects. Their methodological approach leaves the differences between "community areas" invisible, displaces social inequality from the center of the story, and shows only implicitly the relationships among poverty, race, neighborhood conditions, political power, and death. See Jan Semenza et al., "Heat-Related Deaths During the July 1995 Heat Wave in Chicago," The New England Journal of Medicine 335/2 (1996): 84-90.
15. In this article, I draw upon several months of field work in Chicago; over forty interviews with city residents, public officials, social service providers, and journalists who covered the disaster; statistical studies and reports from the census, the Chicago and Illinois Departments of Public Health as well as from the Cook County Office of the Medical Examiner; a survey of television and newspaper accounts of the week; and historical studies of the city's low-income neighborhood to analyze the heat wave deaths.
16. As the Chicago Public Health Department study notes, the less dangerous weather does not alone account for the differences in mortality rates. The new forms of marginality I discuss, however, had become more severe by 1995 than they were in the 1980s, when the isolation of seniors (see discussion below, especially the analysis of senior public housing), the changes in the public health system (especially the privatization of service providers), the density of poverty, and the rate of homelessness, which in turn changed the environment in the hotel residences (see below), had not reached the levels that they would by 1995. See Massey, "The Age of Extremes: Concentrated Affluence and Poverty in the Twenty-First Century," and Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on its Nature and Implications."
17. As the Chicago Public Health Department study notes, the less dangerous weather does not alone account for the differences in mortality rates. The new forms of marginality I discuss, however, had become more severe by 1995 than they were in the 1980s, when the isolation of seniors (see discussion below, especially the analysis of senior public housing), the changes in the public health system (especially the privatization of service providers), the density of poverty, and the rate of homelessness, which in turn changed the environment in the hotel residences (see below), had not reached the levels that they would by 1995. See Massey, "The Age of Extremes: Concentrated Affluence and Poverty in the Twenty-First Century," and Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on its Nature and Implications."
18. The most widely known sociological account of a disaster, Kai Erikson, Everyting in Its Path: the Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976) , points toward but does not establish the structure of vulnerability that determined the deaths from the Buffalo Creek flood. Erikson's more recent book is more explicit about the importance of vulnerability in disasters, but again it focuses on the experience of disasters and does not systematically establish the human precariousness that makes them so damaging. Kai Erikson, A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience if Modern Disasters (New York: WW Norton, 1994).
19. The most widely known sociological account of a disaster, Kai Erikson, Everyting in Its Path: the Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976) , points toward but does not establish the structure of vulnerability that determined the deaths from the Buffalo Creek flood. Erikson's more recent book is more explicit about the importance of vulnerability in disasters, but again it focuses on the experience of disasters and does not systematically establish the human precariousness that makes them so damaging. Kai Erikson, A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience if Modern Disasters (New York: WW Norton, 1994).
20. Perhaps the most familiar case in which the political economy and structural morphology of vulnerability determined disaster mortality is the Titanic accident. First class passengers, whose wealth allowed them to obtain positions at the higher (and in this case safer) levels of the ship and gave them priority in the rescue, survived at a much higher rate than passengers seated in lower class positions. Passengers with the lowest class tickets suffered the highest mortality rates. Yet wealth does not always protect against disaster damage. Note, for example, that earthquakes in modern cities might be most disastrous for wealthy home-owners who accept the risk of building expensive homes on mountain cliffs, or that forest fires might affect only residents wealthy enough to build homes in expensive, greener areas, such as the Oakland and Berkeley hills. In these crises, however, the order of assistance, organization, and reconstruction is often determined by the wealth and political power of the communities affected: more elite areas are rebuilt and repaired much more quickly than disadvantaged areas. See William Cronon, "Introduction: In Search of Nature," Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York, NY: WW Norton, 1995).
21. See Emile Durkheim, Suicide (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1951); and Marcel Mauss, "A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of a Person, the Notion of a Self."
22. See Emile Durkheim, Suicide (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1951); and Marcel Mauss, "A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of a Person, the Notion of a Self."
23. Durkheim, Suicide, 105-121, see especially 107-131; Mauss, Seasonal Variation of the Eskimo.
24. Durkheim, Suicide, 105-121, see especially 107-131; Mauss, Seasonal Variation of the Eskimo.
25. Mauss, "A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of a Person, the Notion of a Self," reprinted in M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes, editors, The Category of the Person (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1-25.
26. Robert Park, "The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment," reprinted in Richard Sennett, editor, Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1969), 130.
27. For a theoretical appraisal of the Chicago school, see Andrew Abbott, "Of Time and Space: The Contemporary Relevance of the Chicago School," Social Forces 75/4 (1997): 1149-1182; Ulf Hannerz, Exploring the City (New York: Columbia, 1980).
28. For a theoretical appraisal of the Chicago school, see Andrew Abbott, "Of Time and Space: The Contemporary Relevance of the Chicago School," Social Forces 75/4 (1997): 1149-1182; Ulf Hannerz, Exploring the City (New York: Columbia, 1980).
29. For a useful overview of the political economy paradigm, see John Walton, "Urban Sociology: The Limits and Contributions of Political Economy." Annual Review of Sociology 19 (1993): 301-320.
30. Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 112.
31. For his most recent analysis of the hidden effects af the state, see Pierre Bourdieu, The State Nobility (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996).
32. See Pierre Bourdieu, Sur la Télévision (Paris: Liber Editions, 1996); the collection of essays on the media in Pierre Bourdieu, editor, La Misere du Monde (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1993); Patrick Champagne, Faire L'Opinion (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1990); Serge Halimi, Les Nouveaux Chiens du Garde (Paris: Liber Editions, 1997); and the special edition of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 101-102, (1994), which is devoted to the journalistic field.
33. See Pierre Bourdieu, Sur la Télévision (Paris: Liber Editions, 1996); the collection of essays on the media in Pierre Bourdieu, editor, La Misere du Monde (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1993); Patrick Champagne, Faire L'Opinion (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1990); Serge Halimi, Les Nouveaux Chiens du Garde (Paris: Liber Editions, 1997); and the special edition of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 101-102, (1994), which is devoted to the journalistic field.
34. See Pierre Bourdieu, Sur la Télévision (Paris: Liber Editions, 1996); the collection of essays on the media in Pierre Bourdieu, editor, La Misere du Monde (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1993); Patrick Champagne, Faire L'Opinion (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1990); Serge Halimi, Les Nouveaux Chiens du Garde (Paris: Liber Editions, 1997); and the special edition of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 101-102, (1994), which is devoted to the journalistic field.
35. See Pierre Bourdieu, Sur la Télévision (Paris: Liber Editions, 1996); the collection of essays on the media in Pierre Bourdieu, editor, La Misere du Monde (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1993); Patrick Champagne, Faire L'Opinion (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1990); Serge Halimi, Les Nouveaux Chiens du Garde (Paris: Liber Editions, 1997); and the special edition of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 101-102, (1994), which is devoted to the journalistic field.
36. See Pierre Bourdieu, Sur la Télévision (Paris: Liber Editions, 1996); the collection of essays on the media in Pierre Bourdieu, editor, La Misere du Monde (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1993); Patrick Champagne, Faire L'Opinion (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1990); Serge Halimi, Les Nouveaux Chiens du Garde (Paris: Liber Editions, 1997); and the special edition of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 101-102, (1994), which is devoted to the journalistic field.
37. See Andrew Szasz and Michael Meuser, "Environmental Inequalities: Literature Review and Proposals for New Directions in Research and Theory," Current Sociology 45/3 (1997): 99-120.
38. Major early statements of this positions include US General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, GAO/RCED-85-75 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983); Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites (New York: Public Data Access, 1987); for a more recent sociological study, see Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, 2nd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993); and for overviews of the literature, see Szazs and Meuser (1997); Racquel Pinderhughes, "The Impact of Race on Environmental Quality: an Empirical and Theoretical Discussion." Sociological Perspectives 39/2 (1996): 231-239; and Eric Klinenberg, "La Gauche Américaine Découvre la 'Justice Ecologique,'" Le Monde Diplomatique, February, 1998.
39. Major early statements of this positions include US General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, GAO/RCED-85-75 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983); Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites (New York: Public Data Access, 1987); for a more recent sociological study, see Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, 2nd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993); and for overviews of the literature, see Szazs and Meuser (1997); Racquel Pinderhughes, "The Impact of Race on Environmental Quality: an Empirical and Theoretical Discussion." Sociological Perspectives 39/2 (1996): 231-239; and Eric Klinenberg, "La Gauche Américaine Découvre la 'Justice Ecologique,'" Le Monde Diplomatique, February, 1998.
40. Major early statements of this positions include US General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, GAO/RCED-85-75 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983); Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites (New York: Public Data Access, 1987); for a more recent sociological study, see Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, 2nd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993); and for overviews of the literature, see Szazs and Meuser (1997); Racquel Pinderhughes, "The Impact of Race on Environmental Quality: an Empirical and Theoretical Discussion." Sociological Perspectives 39/2 (1996): 231-239; and Eric Klinenberg, "La Gauche Américaine Découvre la 'Justice Ecologique,'" Le Monde Diplomatique, February, 1998.
41. Major early statements of this positions include US General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, GAO/RCED-85-75 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983); Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites (New York: Public Data Access, 1987); for a more recent sociological study, see Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, 2nd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993); and for overviews of the literature, see Szazs and Meuser (1997); Racquel Pinderhughes, "The Impact of Race on Environmental Quality: an Empirical and Theoretical Discussion." Sociological Perspectives 39/2 (1996): 231-239; and Eric Klinenberg, "La Gauche Américaine Découvre la 'Justice Ecologique,'" Le Monde Diplomatique, February, 1998.
42. Major early statements of this positions include US General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, GAO/RCED-85-75 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983); Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites (New York: Public Data Access, 1987); for a more recent sociological study, see Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, 2nd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993); and for overviews of the literature, see Szazs and Meuser (1997); Racquel Pinderhughes, "The Impact of Race on Environmental Quality: an Empirical and Theoretical Discussion." Sociological Perspectives 39/2 (1996): 231-239; and Eric Klinenberg, "La Gauche Américaine Découvre la 'Justice Ecologique,'" Le Monde Diplomatique, February, 1998.
43. Major early statements of this positions include US General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, GAO/RCED-85-75 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983); Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites (New York: Public Data Access, 1987); for a more recent sociological study, see Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, 2nd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993); and for overviews of the literature, see Szazs and Meuser (1997); Racquel Pinderhughes, "The Impact of Race on Environmental Quality: an Empirical and Theoretical Discussion." Sociological Perspectives 39/2 (1996): 231-239; and Eric Klinenberg, "La Gauche Américaine Découvre la 'Justice Ecologique,'" Le Monde Diplomatique, February, 1998.
44. Historian William Cronon has noted the possibility of doing this kind of work. He argues that "Every environmental disaster, all the way up to global warming, stands as a potential indictment of the ignorant or culpable human actions that contributed to it." William Cronon, "Introduction: In Search of Nature."
45. See Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on its Nature and Implications,"and Castells, End of Millennium.
46. See Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on its Nature and Implications,"and Castells, End of Millennium.
47. Thomas Noguchi and Joseph DiMona, Coroner at Large (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985).
48. The Washington Post, April 12, 1996, A17.
49. U.S. Centers for Disease Control, "Heat-Related Mortality - Chicago, 1995."
50. The Chicago Tribune, July 17, 1995, p. (2)5.
51. Chicago's concept of a "community area" was established more than fifty years ago through the work of the Social Sciences Research Committee of the University of Chicago, with the cooperation of local agencies and the United States Bureau of Census. According to the authors of the Local Community Fact Book, the community areas were originally drawn on the basis of consideration such as: "(1) the settlement, growth, and history of the area: (2) local identification with the area: (3) the local trade area; (4) distribution and membership of local institutions; and (5) natural and artificial barriers such as the Chicago River and its branches, railroad lines, local transportation systems, and parks and boulevards." The community areas do not correspond precisely with Chicago's neighborhood and community structure. In fact they are artificial constructions of social scientists and bureaucrats more than they are organic categories known and used by city residents. Community areas are useful for comparing areas of the city mostly because statistical data for them goes back several decades and allows for comparative and historical analysis, and because census track data are sometimes too small to reveal trends and tendencies in aggregated communities. There are now 77 community areas in the City of Chicago, with 1990 populations ranging from 6,828 (Near South Side) to 114, 079 (Austin), and averaging around 36,000.
52. St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 (1945)); Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Thomas Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1978); William Kornblum, Blue-Collar Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Gerald Suttles, The Social Order of the Slum; Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
53. St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 (1945)); Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Thomas Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1978); William Kornblum, Blue-Collar Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Gerald Suttles, The Social Order of the Slum; Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
54. St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 (1945)); Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Thomas Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1978); William Kornblum, Blue-Collar Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Gerald Suttles, The Social Order of the Slum; Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
55. St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 (1945)); Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Thomas Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1978); William Kornblum, Blue-Collar Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Gerald Suttles, The Social Order of the Slum; Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
56. St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 (1945)); Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Thomas Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1978); William Kornblum, Blue-Collar Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Gerald Suttles, The Social Order of the Slum; Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
57. See Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto.
58. See Tiefu Shen et al., "Executive Summary: Conmunity Characteristics Correlated with Heat Related Mortality, Chicago, Illinois, July, 1995," unpublished manuscript.
59. Public health researchers often use census-level data for their studies, but in Chicago it is conventional to use community areas as standard units of measurement and the published studies of the heat wave have been based on community area data.
60. See Steven Whitman, "Mortality and the Mid-July Heat Wave in Chicago," presentation to the Chicago Board of Health (September 20, 1995); and Whitman et al., "Mortality in Chicago Attributed to the July 1995 Heat Wave."
61. See Steven Whitman, "Mortality and the Mid-July Heat Wave in Chicago," presentation to the Chicago Board of Health (September 20, 1995); and Whitman et al., "Mortality in Chicago Attributed to the July 1995 Heat Wave."
62. See, for example, the articles collected in George Peterson and Carol Lewis, Reagan and the Cities (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press, 1986).
63. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce study of the heat wave, "City officials had neither the experience nor emergency response capabilities to translate the physical characteristics of the heat wave into human impact ... While public health officials made efforts to mitigate the impact of the heat wave within their communities, neither [Milwakee or Chicago] was prepared to respond to the heat emergency as a city-wide disaster." U.S. Department of Commerce, National Disaster Survey Report: July 1995 Heat Wave (Silver Spring, Maryland: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1996), viii-ix.
64. See Charles Perrow and Mario Guillén, The Aids Disaster (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), for a discussion of the ways in which the least politically powerful people with AIDS, poor people of cclor who were intravenous drug users, were neglected by the organizations who managed the AIDS crisis. Perrow and Guillen affirm a central claim of urban regime scholars, that lack of resources makes poor and minority communities least able to mobilize the government to support their needs, thus triggering a vicious cycle in which they are deprived further and made even more politically expendable. For statements of this position from urban regime theorists, see, among others, Clarence Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988, (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1989); and Steven Elkin, City and Regime in the American Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
65. See Charles Perrow and Mario Guillén, The Aids Disaster (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), for a discussion of the ways in which the least politically powerful people with AIDS, poor people of cclor who were intravenous drug users, were neglected by the organizations who managed the AIDS crisis. Perrow and Guillen affirm a central claim of urban regime scholars, that lack of resources makes poor and minority communities least able to mobilize the government to support their needs, thus triggering a vicious cycle in which they are deprived further and made even more politically expendable. For statements of this position from urban regime theorists, see, among others, Clarence Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988, (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1989); and Steven Elkin, City and Regime in the American Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
66. See Charles Perrow and Mario Guillén, The Aids Disaster (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), for a discussion of the ways in which the least politically powerful people with AIDS, poor people of cclor who were intravenous drug users, were neglected by the organizations who managed the AIDS crisis. Perrow and Guillen affirm a central claim of urban regime scholars, that lack of resources makes poor and minority communities least able to mobilize the government to support their needs, thus triggering a vicious cycle in which they are deprived further and made even more politically expendable. For statements of this position from urban regime theorists, see, among others, Clarence Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988, (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1989); and Steven Elkin, City and Regime in the American Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
67. City of Chicago, Mayor's Commission on Extreme Weather Conditions.
68. Robin Hambleton, "Future Directions for Urban Government in Britain and America," Journal of Urban Affairs 12/1 (1990): 75-94.
69. On the rise of decentralization and private sector management techniques in local governments, see Hambleton, "Future Directions for Urban Government in Britain and America."
70. "Illinois Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee. Report of the Heat Related Deaths in Cook County," (November, 1995), 3-4.
71. City of Chicago, Mayor's Commission on Extreme Weather Conditions, 4.
72. Interviews with social workers, Metropolitan Family Services, June 1996; and M. Fleming-Moran et al., Illinois State Needs Assessment Survey of Elders Aged 55 and Over (Bloomington: Heartland Center on Aging, Disability and Long Term Care, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, 1991).
73. Interviews with social workers, Metropolitan Family Services, June 1996; and M. Fleming-Moran et al., Illinois State Needs Assessment Survey of Elders Aged 55 and Over (Bloomington: Heartland Center on Aging, Disability and Long Term Care, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, 1991).
74. William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 60.
75. Wilson's use of social isolation is troubling because he employs it to refer to a set of social relations that sociologists can only understand by engaging in ethnographic or detailed survey work, but his conception is in fact a derivation of the spatial relations for which his 1987 book has evidence. "Social isolation," in this formulation, is descriptively inaccurate, as it actually means social contact with the wrong people. Moreover, Wilson does not provide empirical evidence to show that isolation from "mainstream society," as distinct from spatial segregation by race or class, state retrenchment, or corporate abandonment, is responsible for the decline of work in the low-income black communities he studies.
76. Shen, Tiefu, et al., "Executive Summary: Community Characteristics Correlated with Heat Related Mortality, Chicago, Illinois, July, 1995."
77. See Elijah Anderson, "The Code of the Streets," Atlantic Monthly 273/3 (1994): 80-94.
78. See William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996); John Betancur, "The Settlement Experience of Latinos in Chicago: Segregation, Speculation, and the Ecology Model," Social Forces 74/4 (1996): 1299-1324; Carloz Velez-Ibanez, "U.S. Mexicans in the Borderlands: Being Poor without the Underclass." In Joan Moore and Raquel Penderhughes, editors, In the Barrios: Latinos and the Underclass (New York: Russell Sage, 1993); Felix Padilla, Puerto Rican Chicago (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); Susan Keefe and Amado Padilla, Chicano Ethnicity (Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987).
79. See William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996); John Betancur, "The Settlement Experience of Latinos in Chicago: Segregation, Speculation, and the Ecology Model," Social Forces 74/4 (1996): 1299-1324; Carloz Velez-Ibanez, "U.S. Mexicans in the Borderlands: Being Poor without the Underclass." In Joan Moore and Raquel Penderhughes, editors, In the Barrios: Latinos and the Underclass (New York: Russell Sage, 1993); Felix Padilla, Puerto Rican Chicago (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); Susan Keefe and Amado Padilla, Chicano Ethnicity (Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987).
80. See William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996); John Betancur, "The Settlement Experience of Latinos in Chicago: Segregation, Speculation, and the Ecology Model," Social Forces 74/4 (1996): 1299-1324; Carloz Velez-Ibanez, "U.S. Mexicans in the Borderlands: Being Poor without the Underclass." In Joan Moore and Raquel Penderhughes, editors, In the Barrios: Latinos and the Underclass (New York: Russell Sage, 1993); Felix Padilla, Puerto Rican Chicago (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); Susan Keefe and Amado Padilla, Chicano Ethnicity (Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987).
81. See William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996); John Betancur, "The Settlement Experience of Latinos in Chicago: Segregation, Speculation, and the Ecology Model," Social Forces 74/4 (1996): 1299-1324; Carloz Velez-Ibanez, "U.S. Mexicans in the Borderlands: Being Poor without the Underclass." In Joan Moore and Raquel Penderhughes, editors, In the Barrios: Latinos and the Underclass (New York: Russell Sage, 1993); Felix Padilla, Puerto Rican Chicago (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); Susan Keefe and Amado Padilla, Chicano Ethnicity (Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987).
82. See William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996); John Betancur, "The Settlement Experience of Latinos in Chicago: Segregation, Speculation, and the Ecology Model," Social Forces 74/4 (1996): 1299-1324; Carloz Velez-Ibanez, "U.S. Mexicans in the Borderlands: Being Poor without the Underclass." In Joan Moore and Raquel Penderhughes, editors, In the Barrios: Latinos and the Underclass (New York: Russell Sage, 1993); Felix Padilla, Puerto Rican Chicago (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); Susan Keefe and Amado Padilla, Chicano Ethnicity (Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987).
83. See Betancur, "The Settlement Experience of Latinos in Chicago: Segregation, Speculation, and the Ecology Model," and Padilla, Puerto Rican Chicago.
84. See Betancur, "The Settlement Experience of Latinos in Chicago: Segregation, Speculation, and the Ecology Model," and Padilla, Puerto Rican Chicago.
85. See Alejandro Portes and Doug Macleod, "What Shall I Call Myself? Hispanic Identity Formation in the Second Generation," Ethnic and Racial Studies 19/3 (1996), for an illustration of the sociological vacuousness of the category, "Hispanic."
86. The first three parts of this scheme rely heavily on Carlos Vélez-Ibáñaz's work on low-income Mexican Americans in the borderlands, which provides a model against which urban ethnographers can compare their own findings on other communities.
87. See Moore and Pinderhughes, In the Barrios: Latinos and the Underclass.
88. See William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor.
89. The density of poverty, Douglas Massey argues in "The Age of Extremes: Concentrated Affluence and Poverty in the Twenty-First Century," matters because "as the density of poverty rises in the environment of the world's poor, so will their exposure to crime, disease, violence, and family disruption." In another article, Massey shows that the density of poverty has an especially powerful effect on crime rates. According to his estimates, every one point increase in the neighborhood rate of poverty raises the major crime rate by 0.8 points. See Douglas Massey, "Getting Away with Murder: Segregation and Violent Crime in Urban America," University of Pennsylvania Law Review 143 (1995): 1203-1232. Massey also cites a study that uses Columbus, Ohio data to show that the violent crime rate for neighborhoods with a poverty rate of over 40 percent is over three times higher than it is in neighborhoods with a poverty rate below 20 percent. See Laurence Krivo and Ruth Peterson, "Extremely Disadvantaged Neighborhoods and Urban Crime," Social Forces 75/2 (1996): 619-650.
90. The density of poverty, Douglas Massey argues in "The Age of Extremes: Concentrated Affluence and Poverty in the Twenty-First Century," matters because "as the density of poverty rises in the environment of the world's poor, so will their exposure to crime, disease, violence, and family disruption." In another article, Massey shows that the density of poverty has an especially powerful effect on crime rates. According to his estimates, every one point increase in the neighborhood rate of poverty raises the major crime rate by 0.8 points. See Douglas Massey, "Getting Away with Murder: Segregation and Violent Crime in Urban America," University of Pennsylvania Law Review 143 (1995): 1203-1232. Massey also cites a study that uses Columbus, Ohio data to show that the violent crime rate for neighborhoods with a poverty rate of over 40 percent is over three times higher than it is in neighborhoods with a poverty rate below 20 percent. See Laurence Krivo and Ruth Peterson, "Extremely Disadvantaged Neighborhoods and Urban Crime," Social Forces 75/2 (1996): 619-650.
91. For the classic discussion of the politics of neighborhood identification and identity construction, see Albert Hunter, Symbolic Communities: The Persistence and Change of Chicago's Local Communities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). According to Hunter and Gerald Suttles, "Residential identities ... are imbedded in a contrastive structure in which each neighborhood is known primarily as a counterpart to some of the others." Quoted in John Logan and Harvey Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
92. For the classic discussion of the politics of neighborhood identification and identity construction, see Albert Hunter, Symbolic Communities: The Persistence and Change of Chicago's Local Communities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). According to Hunter and Gerald Suttles, "Residential identities ... are imbedded in a contrastive structure in which each neighborhood is known primarily as a counterpart to some of the others." Quoted in John Logan and Harvey Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
93. For classic statements of how street life is the vital link in social networks and the source of community animation, see Suttles, The Social Order of the Slum, and Herbert Gans, The Urban Villagers (New York: The Free Press, 1962).
94. For classic statements of how street life is the vital link in social networks and the source of community animation, see Suttles, The Social Order of the Slum, and Herbert Gans, The Urban Villagers (New York: The Free Press, 1962).
95. The abundance of such visible markings supports Logan and Molotch's argument that the contrastive structure of neighborhoods "means that community resources are desired not just to secure better material conditions, like nice parks, but to display success compared to other neighborhoods seeking the same resources.... [I]t is - in a competitive market society - also a way of gaining access to other rewards by establishing one's credentials, by demonstrating that one comes from a good place." Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes, 107-108.
96. The description here is based on observation as well as the neighborhood summary listed in The Chicago Community Fact Book, 110.
97. The degradation of street life in North Lawndale also represents a change from the sociological account of Chicago's African-American neighborhoods in Black Metropolis, where Drake and Cayton describe an active public sphere. According to Wacquant, the most degraded neighborhoods in both the United States and France have changed "from communal 'places' suffused with shared emotions, joint meanings and practices and institutions of mutuality, to indifferent 'spaces' of mere survival and contest." Wacquant, "The Rise of Advanced Marginality: Notes on its Nature and Implications."
98. Loïc J. D. Wacquant and William Julius Wilson, "Poverty, Joblessness, and the Social Transformation of the Inner City," in Reforming Welfare Policy, edited by David Ellwood and P. Cottingham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 91.
99. See Chicago Fact Book Consorium, 107; and Hirsch, The Making of the Second Ghetto, 185.
100. See Chicago Fact Book Consorium, 107; and Hirsch, The Making of the Second Ghetto, 185.
101. This change in the social life of poor communities is all the more disastrous because, as Logan and Molotch argue, the informal exchange of services and assistance on which poor communities depend is "made possible only by a viable community," and "poor people's use values are particularly damaged when their neighborhood is disrupted." Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes.
102. See Laurie Kaye Abraham, Mama Might be Better off Dead (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
103. See Loïc J. D. Wacquant, "The New Urban Coloi Line: The State and Fate of the Ghetto in PostFordist American," in Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, ed. Craig Calhoun, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994).
104. For the most thorough historical account of hotel residences, see Paul Groth, Living Downtown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). For a recent study of SROs in Chicago, see Charles Hoch and Robert Slayton, New Homeless and Old: Community and the Skid Row Hotel (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).
105. For the most thorough historical account of hotel residences, see Paul Groth, Living Downtown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). For a recent study of SROs in Chicago, see Charles Hoch and Robert Slayton, New Homeless and Old: Community and the Skid Row Hotel (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).
106. Groth, Living Downtown, 9-10.
107. Groth, Living Downtown, 287-290.
108. The conditions in the worst SROs resemble the "cattle-sheds for human beings" described by Frederick Engels. Engels's remark that "such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world," has an ironic resonance for the case of Chicago, America's own "second city" and historical manufacturing center. See Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1984).
109. In the SRO population census they conducted in 1984, Hoch and Slayton found that 38 percent of SRO residents had serious illnesses, but only 42 percent had health insurance. Hoch and Slayton, 127, 134.
110. As the city attracts attention for redeveloping Cabrini-Green, the downtown public housing complex with the most potential to be converted into valuable real estate, thousands of city residents living in unsafe conditions will remain neglected.
111. Interviews with Chicago journalists.
112. Chicago Sun Times, July 25, 1995: 25.
113. Chicago Tribune, July 25, 1995: (7) 1.
114. Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1995: 1; and Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1995: A1.
115. Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1995: 1; and Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1995: A1.
116. New York Times, July 21, 1995: IV, 2.
117. Chicago Sun Times, July 25, 1995: 25; The Washington Post, August 26, 1995: A1; and Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1995: (2) 4.
118. Chicago Sun Times, July 25, 1995: 25; The Washington Post, August 26, 1995: A1; and Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1995: (2) 4.
119. Chicago Sun Times, July 25, 1995: 25; The Washington Post, August 26, 1995: A1; and Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1995: (2) 4.
120. Metro Senior, No. 93, September-October, 1995; Chicago Sun Times, July 18, 1995, 1; Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1995: (2) 4.
121. Metro Senior, No. 93, September-October, 1995; Chicago Sun Times, July 18, 1995, 1; Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1995: (2) 4.
122. Metro Senior, No. 93, September-October, 1995; Chicago Sun Times, July 18, 1995, 1; Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1995: (2) 4.
123. It is important to note that most environmental scientists would, in fact, challenge even the argument that the government, as well as corporations, cannot be held responsible for the heat on the grounds that global warming has produced not only a gradual elevation of the earth temperature but hotter heat waves, more severe droughts, and stronger storm systems. According to a U.S. Government study directed by a member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there is a 90 to 95 percent likelihood that the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide is responsible for the increased incidence of extreme precipitation, over-all precipitation, and above-normal temperatures in many areas of the country from 1980 to 1994. Thomas Karl, leader of the research team at the National Climatic Data Center confirms this in his report that "we seem to be getting these storms of the century every couple of years." These and other scientific studies show that in an era of massive environmental destruction not even the weather is natural, and that government policies toward corporate and private pollution have helped produce the hazardous weather systems that promise to return with greater frequency in the future. See The New York Times, September 18, 1995: A1, and January 14, 1996: (4) 4.
124. It is important to note that most environmental scientists would, in fact, challenge even the argument that the government, as well as corporations, cannot be held responsible for the heat on the grounds that global warming has produced not only a gradual elevation of the earth temperature but hotter heat waves, more severe droughts, and stronger storm systems. According to a U.S. Government study directed by a member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there is a 90 to 95 percent likelihood that the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide is responsible for the increased incidence of extreme precipitation, over-all precipitation, and above-normal temperatures in many areas of the country from 1980 to 1994. Thomas Karl, leader of the research team at the National Climatic Data Center confirms this in his report that "we seem to be getting these storms of the century every couple of years." These and other scientific studies show that in an era of massive environmental destruction not even the weather is natural, and that government policies toward corporate and private pollution have helped produce the hazardous weather systems that promise to return with greater frequency in the future. See The New York Times, September 18, 1995: A1, and January 14, 1996: (4) 4.
125. Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis (New York: Harper Colophon, 1974), 22.
126. Harvey Molotch and Marilyn Lester, "News as Purposive Behavior: On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents, and Scandals," American Sociological Review 39 (1974): 109-110.
127. According to my informants in the local press, many journalists, however, believed the mayor's misleading claims about the deaths even after the medical examiner made his medical attributions.
128. In the rare cases when this frame broke down, the dominant secondary frame -again established by local officials - was what Goffman calls the frame of "fortuitousness," that is, when "An individual [or group], properly guiding his doings, meets with the natural workings of the world in a way he could not be expected to anticipate, with consequential results." Goffman, Frame Analysis, 33. As I noted above, public health officials have long been aware of the risk factors for heat wave deaths as well as of the programs that they can employ to reduce these risks. Yet local officials worked hard to argue that no one could have expected such a strong heat wave (or that it could not be responsible for the heat) and that the state's response was proper. The history of the event thus supports Goffman's argument that the cultural notion of fortuitousness enables "the citizenry to come to terms with events that would otherwise be an embarrassment to its system of analysis," albeit with the important addition that the state is the key agent in the production of this frame. Frame Analysis, 35.
129. In the rare cases when this frame broke down, the dominant secondary frame - again established by local officials - was what Goffman calls the frame of "fortuitousness," that is, when "An individual [or group], properly guiding his doings, meets with the natural workings of the world in a way he could not be expected to anticipate, with consequential results." Goffman, Frame Analysis, 33. As I noted above, public health officials have long been aware of the risk factors for heat wave deaths as well as of the programs that they can employ to reduce these risks. Yet local officials worked hard to argue that no one could have expected such a strong heat wave (or that it could not be responsible for the heat) and that the state's response was proper. The history of the event thus supports Goffman's argument that the cultural notion of fortuitousness enables "the citizenry to come to terms with events that would otherwise be an embarrassment to its system of analysis," albeit with the important addition that the state is the key agent in the production of this frame. Frame Analysis, 35.
130. For a thorough discussion of Bilandic's electoral loss to Jane Byrne, see Paul Kleppner, Chicago Divided: The Making of a Black Mayor (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1985), chapter 5.
131. Some stores and businesses that lost their electricity, particularly those that stocked frozen perishables, and local agriculture were more damaged by the heat wave. Nonetheless, the overall effect of the heat wave on business was less severe than the blizzard.
132. For the best historical account of how business and commercial interests established Chicago's built environment, see William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: WW Norton, 1991).
133. Metro Senior, No. 93: 1-4.
134. See, among others, Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984) , and Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
135. See, among others, Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984) , and Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
136. Newspapers, more than other media, tend to publish a broad set of positions on political and social matters, many of which contrast and conflict with one another. Daily papers do this in part because they produce quantitatively more news than other news media and they have sufficient space and staff to express several kinds of analysis and description; and also because they are more open than other media, particularly more than television, to the contributions of people outside the firm. These contributions generally take the form of editorial pieces, which are prominent parts of the paper, but they may also come in the form of news articles from free-lance reporters. During the heat wave the local papers did present a broader range of coverage than the other local media.
137. For the most known analysis of the political economy of news production, see Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent (New York: Pantheon, 1988); see also Phillip Schlesinger, "From Production to Propaganda?" Media, Culture, and Society II (1989): 283-306. For the best organizational study of the news, see Herbert Gans, Deciding What's News (New York: The Free Press, 1979). Gans claims that most journalists in the major media he studied were apolitical, or at least not politically driven. For other major organizational studies of the news, see William Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces (May 1955): 326-335; Lee Sigelman, "Reporting the News: An Organizational Analysis," American Journal of Sociology 79/1 (1973): 132-151; and Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objctivity," American Journal of Sociology 77/4 (1972): 660-679. Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production," Media, Culture, and Society 11 (1989): 263-282, discusses the weaknesses of the distinct approaches to the media, but he does not go so far as to suggest methods for integrating them.
138. For the most known analysis of the political economy of news production, see Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent (New York: Pantheon, 1988); see also Phillip Schlesinger, "From Production to Propaganda?" Media, Culture, and Society II (1989): 283-306. For the best organizational study of the news, see Herbert Gans, Deciding What's News (New York: The Free Press, 1979). Gans claims that most journalists in the major media he studied were apolitical, or at least not politically driven. For other major organizational studies of the news, see William Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces (May 1955): 326-335; Lee Sigelman, "Reporting the News: An Organizational Analysis," American Journal of Sociology 79/1 (1973): 132-151; and Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objctivity," American Journal of Sociology 77/4 (1972): 660-679. Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production," Media, Culture, and Society 11 (1989): 263-282, discusses the weaknesses of the distinct approaches to the media, but he does not go so far as to suggest methods for integrating them.
139. For the most known analysis of the political economy of news production, see Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent (New York: Pantheon, 1988); see also Phillip Schlesinger, "From Production to Propaganda?" Media, Culture, and Society II (1989): 283-306. For the best organizational study of the news, see Herbert Gans, Deciding What's News (New York: The Free Press, 1979). Gans claims that most journalists in the major media he studied were apolitical, or at least not politically driven. For other major organizational studies of the news, see William Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces (May 1955): 326-335; Lee Sigelman, "Reporting the News: An Organizational Analysis," American Journal of Sociology 79/1 (1973): 132-151; and Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objctivity," American Journal of Sociology 77/4 (1972): 660-679. Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production," Media, Culture, and Society 11 (1989): 263-282, discusses the weaknesses of the distinct approaches to the media, but he does not go so far as to suggest methods for integrating them.
140. For the most known analysis of the political economy of news production, see Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent (New York: Pantheon, 1988); see also Phillip Schlesinger, "From Production to Propaganda?" Media, Culture, and Society II (1989): 283-306. For the best organizational study of the news, see Herbert Gans, Deciding What's News (New York: The Free Press, 1979). Gans claims that most journalists in the major media he studied were apolitical, or at least not politically driven. For other major organizational studies of the news, see William Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces (May 1955): 326-335; Lee Sigelman, "Reporting the News: An Organizational Analysis," American Journal of Sociology 79/1 (1973): 132-151; and Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objctivity," American Journal of Sociology 77/4 (1972): 660-679. Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production," Media, Culture, and Society 11 (1989): 263-282, discusses the weaknesses of the distinct approaches to the media, but he does not go so far as to suggest methods for integrating them.
141. For the most known analysis of the political economy of news production, see Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent (New York: Pantheon, 1988); see also Phillip Schlesinger, "From Production to Propaganda?" Media, Culture, and Society II (1989): 283-306. For the best organizational study of the news, see Herbert Gans, Deciding What's News (New York: The Free Press, 1979). Gans claims that most journalists in the major media he studied were apolitical, or at least not politically driven. For other major organizational studies of the news, see William Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces (May 1955): 326-335; Lee Sigelman, "Reporting the News: An Organizational Analysis," American Journal of Sociology 79/1 (1973): 132-151; and Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objctivity," American Journal of Sociology 77/4 (1972): 660-679. Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production," Media, Culture, and Society 11 (1989): 263-282, discusses the weaknesses of the distinct approaches to the media, but he does not go so far as to suggest methods for integrating them.
142. For the most known analysis of the political economy of news production, see Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent (New York: Pantheon, 1988); see also Phillip Schlesinger, "From Production to Propaganda?" Media, Culture, and Society II (1989): 283-306. For the best organizational study of the news, see Herbert Gans, Deciding What's News (New York: The Free Press, 1979). Gans claims that most journalists in the major media he studied were apolitical, or at least not politically driven. For other major organizational studies of the news, see William Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces (May 1955): 326-335; Lee Sigelman, "Reporting the News: An Organizational Analysis," American Journal of Sociology 79/1 (1973): 132-151; and Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objctivity," American Journal of Sociology 77/4 (1972): 660-679. Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production," Media, Culture, and Society 11 (1989): 263-282, discusses the weaknesses of the distinct approaches to the media, but he does not go so far as to suggest methods for integrating them.
143. For the most known analysis of the political economy of news production, see Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent (New York: Pantheon, 1988); see also Phillip Schlesinger, "From Production to Propaganda?" Media, Culture, and Society II (1989): 283-306. For the best organizational study of the news, see Herbert Gans, Deciding What's News (New York: The Free Press, 1979). Gans claims that most journalists in the major media he studied were apolitical, or at least not politically driven. For other major organizational studies of the news, see William Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces (May 1955): 326-335; Lee Sigelman, "Reporting the News: An Organizational Analysis," American Journal of Sociology 79/1 (1973): 132-151; and Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objctivity," American Journal of Sociology 77/4 (1972): 660-679. Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production," Media, Culture, and Society 11 (1989): 263-282, discusses the weaknesses of the distinct approaches to the media, but he does not go so far as to suggest methods for integrating them.
144. The problem with organizational studies of media production is that the explanation for why journalists report the news the way that they do does not lie completely within the news firms themselves. News reporting, and the journalistic field in general, is deeply affected by the broader social, political, and economic context in which it is located. Failing to recognize this is to fall victim to the internalist fallacy, a trap into which cultural analysts often slip, which political economists and structuralis social scientists often cite as the fatal myopia of ethnographic research and organizational studies of the media. On the other hand, more structuralist accounts of media production often fail to recognize that forces outside the journalistic field affect action in the field only through mediating forces internal to the field itself. Claiming that news content, for example, is determined by conditions in the field of the state or the economic field, is to commit the short-circuit fallacy, the blindness to the intermediary mechanisms and channels through which forces move from one field to another.
145. See Gans, Deciding What's News; Edward Sigal, Reporters and Officials (Boston: Heath, 1973); Phyllis Kaniss, Making Local News (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
146. See Gans, Deciding What's News; Edward Sigal, Reporters and Officials (Boston: Heath, 1973); Phyllis Kaniss, Making Local News (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
147. Kaniss argues that local reporters are particularly incompetent at dealing with numbers and statistical analysis, both of which are essential for establishing patterns of heat wave deaths.
148. For an illustration of this misrepresentation in the French journalistic coverage of the banlieu, see Patrick Champagne, "La Vision d'Etat," La Misère du Monde; and for a discussion of the tendency to exoticize the ghetto, see Loïc J. D. Wacquant, "Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of the American Ghetto," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21/2: 341-353. For the argument that journalists themselves are becoming more elite and professionalized, and therefore less connected to the social lives of average Americans, see James Fallows, Breaking the News (New York: Panthon, 1996). In an interview, one of the Chicago Tribune journalists who covers urban poverty criticized his colleagues for their weak and inaccurate coverage of poor neighborhoods.
149. For an illustration of this misrepresentation in the French journalistic coverage of the banlieu, see Patrick Champagne, "La Vision d'Etat," La Misère du Monde; and for a discussion of the tendency to exoticize the ghetto, see Loïc J. D. Wacquant, "Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of the American Ghetto," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21/2: 341-353. For the argument that journalists themselves are becoming more elite and professionalized, and therefore less connected to the social lives of average Americans, see James Fallows, Breaking the News (New York: Panthon, 1996). In an interview, one of the Chicago Tribune journalists who covers urban poverty criticized his colleagues for their weak and inaccurate coverage of poor neighborhoods.
150. For an illustration of this misrepresentation in the French journalistic coverage of the banlieu, see Patrick Champagne, "La Vision d'Etat," La Misère du Monde; and for a discussion of the tendency to exoticize the ghetto, see Loïc J. D. Wacquant, "Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of the American Ghetto," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21/2: 341-353. For the argument that journalists themselves are becoming more elite and professionalized, and therefore less connected to the social lives of average Americans, see James Fallows, Breaking the News (New York: Panthon, 1996). In an interview, one of the Chicago Tribune journalists who covers urban poverty criticized his colleagues for their weak and inaccurate coverage of poor neighborhoods.
151. Chicago Tribune, "If You Can't Stand the Heat, You Must Be Out-of-Towner," July 13, 1995. The headline for the article on fashion in the heat wave read, "Gimme Swelter! It's the Height of the Steamy Season, But the Heat Doesn't have to Sap Your Style. Here's How to Ward off Wardrobe Wilt and Makeup Meltdown."
152. Interview with Chicago Tribune editor.
153. See Gans, Deciding What's News, and Bourdieu, Sur la Television, where Bourdieu argues that journalists often select the details to include in stories not because they are unusual and interesting in general, but because they are compelling for journalists' themselves.
154. See Gans, Deciding What's News, and Bourdieu, Sur la Television, where Bourdieu argues that journalists often select the details to include in stories not because they are unusual and interesting in general, but because they are compelling for journalists' themselves.
155. Interview with Chicago Tribune editor.
156. Interview with Chicago Tribune copy editor. Note that the headlines serve as marketing tools to hook readers as well as instruments for emphasizing particular angles or aspects of a story. Copy editors produce them through an economic and aesthetic logic that does not necessarily mirror the logic of the stories themselves.
157. The Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1995: (2) 1.
158. Interview with reporter.
159. Interview with reporter.
160. Interview with reporter.
161. The Chicago Tribune. "The Heat Wave Victims: Joined in Death," November 26, 1995.
162. Interview with reporter.
163. Visit the site at: http://www.ci.chi.us/mayor/HotWeather/
164. "Now and for the rest of our lives," says one member of Chicago's severe-weather commission, "we'll be telling our grandchildren about the summer of 1995. People will be talking about this forever."
165. For an analysis of the social and symbolic significance of funeral rituals and burial conditions, see Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).