In the case of post-Katrina New Orleans, levee breaches and flooding were caused by the privatization of the Army Corps of Engineers and the oil industry’s erosion of protective wetlands. Is the COVID-19 pandemic a disaster? If it is, how does it compare to other disasters that anthropologists have written about? Might the lessons learned from other disasters, like the Hurricane Katrina recovery in New Orleans, be useful in understanding the current pandemic? Looking at COVID-19 through the lens of disaster capitalism, for instance, we could explore its roles in the causes, impacts and responses to COVID-19 in the US.ĭisaster capitalism is described by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine (2007) as the architectures of post-war neoliberal economics that both create and respond to disasters in ways that promote free-market, for-profit corporate solutions that may succeed in creating company profits but ultimately fail in terms of democracy, fairness and justice.
I recently participated in a radio talk show on the topic of disaster capitalism and the current COVID-19 pandemic.
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