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Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina
Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith is an ethnographic account of long-term recovery in post-Katrina New Orleans. It is also a sobering exploration of the privatization of vital social services under market-driven governance. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, public agencies subcontracted disaster relief to private companies that turned the humanitarian work of recovery into lucrative business. These enterprises profited from the very suffering that they failed to ameliorate, producing a second-order disaster that exacerbated inequalities based on race and class and leaving residents to rebuild almost entirely on their own. Filled with the often desperate voices of residents who returned to New Orleans, Markets of Sorrow , Labors of Faith describes the human toll of disaster capitalism and the affect economy it has produced. While for-profit companies delayed delivery of federal resources to returning residents, faith-based and nonprofit groups stepped in to rebuild, compelled by the moral pull of charity and the emotional rewards of volunteer labor. Adams traces the success of charity efforts, even while noting an irony of neoliberalism, which encourages the very same for-profit companies to exploit these charities as another market opportunity. In so doing, the companies profit not once but twice on disaster.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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February 3, 2021
If you want to know how neoliberalism infests disaster recovery often detrimentally, read this book. I was part of Adams' longitudinal and ethnographic study that took place over the course of a few years after Katrina related to the prolonged recovery. Reading this book which uses a variety of case studies to illustrate the devastating and even deadly effects on New Orleanians post-Katrina due to corporate (insurance companies shortshrifting people in despicable ways) and government malfeasance (relying mainly on outsourcing programs/monies/labor to those who were left destitute). All the programs that were outsourced were ineffective except in that they destroyed many people's lives for years if not forever.
What made this a hard read but also essential to Adams' theories about the reliance on an affective economy that drew from the private and faith-based sectors to replace government aid were the very detailed narratives or case studies that follow people through the course of several years. The struggles they endured were heartbreaking and familiar sounding especially if you lived here at the time and observed friends and colleagues going through similar experiences of hopelessness, depression, and physical illness. I still know people who have not completely recovered psychically from having their home destroyed and their finances, however little they had, devastated by poaching contractors fleecing primarily older people to insurance companies that undercut policyowners to the horrors of programs such as Road Home whose purpose seemed to be profit-making rather than getting people back into their homes and neighborhoods.
Another important feature of relying on a neoliberal affective recovery framework is the reliance on voluntary labor which at the end of the day saved New Orleans more than any other program or aid. In fact, Adams makes it clear that volunteers and their labor have replaced government funding for disaster recovery programs. To a certain extent, it all sounds great if you're a fiscally minded conservative or embrace austerity. I don't and find it repulsive. This all started, as Adams points out, with the first Bush's speech on a thousand points of light in the early 1990s that opened the door for faith-based initiatives and NGOs to provide human capital to various disaster zones or areas of need rather than government. Instead these varied organizations are funded by private sector or they create an umbrella corporation that houses multiple non-profits. The unfortunate consequence of this policy is eventually charities, NGOs, religious organizations, and non profits end up becoming a part of a capitalist system in which profits must be made and certain results achieved in order to continue getting funded. Accountablity becomes more important than boots on the ground and can determine who receives help and what kind rather than asking those affected what they need.
So there's the rub of using an affective neoliberal political economy for disaster recovery--volunteers and the varied non-profits that recruited them were often the only way for people to recover some semblance of their pre-Katrina lives (at least in terms of rebuilding their homes) but those very volunteers signal a shift in how government deals with disaster recovery, absconding from their own responsibility to take care of their own and not leave them to the vagaries of corporate- or non-profit run programs that usually resulted in massive profits and almost by happenstance actually helped the people suffering massive psychic and physical loss.
What made this a hard read but also essential to Adams' theories about the reliance on an affective economy that drew from the private and faith-based sectors to replace government aid were the very detailed narratives or case studies that follow people through the course of several years. The struggles they endured were heartbreaking and familiar sounding especially if you lived here at the time and observed friends and colleagues going through similar experiences of hopelessness, depression, and physical illness. I still know people who have not completely recovered psychically from having their home destroyed and their finances, however little they had, devastated by poaching contractors fleecing primarily older people to insurance companies that undercut policyowners to the horrors of programs such as Road Home whose purpose seemed to be profit-making rather than getting people back into their homes and neighborhoods.
Another important feature of relying on a neoliberal affective recovery framework is the reliance on voluntary labor which at the end of the day saved New Orleans more than any other program or aid. In fact, Adams makes it clear that volunteers and their labor have replaced government funding for disaster recovery programs. To a certain extent, it all sounds great if you're a fiscally minded conservative or embrace austerity. I don't and find it repulsive. This all started, as Adams points out, with the first Bush's speech on a thousand points of light in the early 1990s that opened the door for faith-based initiatives and NGOs to provide human capital to various disaster zones or areas of need rather than government. Instead these varied organizations are funded by private sector or they create an umbrella corporation that houses multiple non-profits. The unfortunate consequence of this policy is eventually charities, NGOs, religious organizations, and non profits end up becoming a part of a capitalist system in which profits must be made and certain results achieved in order to continue getting funded. Accountablity becomes more important than boots on the ground and can determine who receives help and what kind rather than asking those affected what they need.
So there's the rub of using an affective neoliberal political economy for disaster recovery--volunteers and the varied non-profits that recruited them were often the only way for people to recover some semblance of their pre-Katrina lives (at least in terms of rebuilding their homes) but those very volunteers signal a shift in how government deals with disaster recovery, absconding from their own responsibility to take care of their own and not leave them to the vagaries of corporate- or non-profit run programs that usually resulted in massive profits and almost by happenstance actually helped the people suffering massive psychic and physical loss.
April 3, 2023
Read for school! Very good very interesting, some ties to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. Really appreciated the use of firsthand perspectives and interview transcripts. Neoliberal governance is fkn bonkers
July 12, 2025
Thinking about how awful this publication is has raised my blood pressure many times. I lived in New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. I am also an anthropologist. This book deeply disappointed me, and I am saddened that there are no ethics review mechanisms in our field of study to check on the methodology used.
I was so dismayed when I read this book shortly after its publication, that I contacted a mentor of mine. This anthropology professor mentor of mine, who lives and works in New Orleans, said she regretted having helped this author; she told me the author had called her once and asked for contacts in New Orleans. The same handful of contacts provided are the only ones in the book. The author did minimal fieldwork; it seems like, based on the description in the book, she only attended one event.
And then extrapolated an elaborate web of interpretation, a web that did not help me as a resident and Katrina survivor understand a thing I had experienced. I don't understand how anthropology can be considered scholarly if there is no or only minute, mere amounts of empirical evidence collected. There were serious methodological problems with this book; I would not consider it anthropology and definitely not ethnography. I think the test of a quality ethnography is if it helps people themselves understand their circumstances; this book was just page after page of invented stories in the mind of the author, and I guess that constitutes what some call "theory." (Not my definition of “theory.”)
It seems theory can live separately from evidence in a discipline where there are no standards for how deep one goes into local culture. This publication (I hesitate to call it a "book;" it read more like a long and repetitive term paper) was not based on evidence, for sure, and certainly only limited knowledge of a special and unique city. I believe in collaborative research and meaning-making, in which interlocutors get to have input on which topics are relevant to them; I did not see this in this book. It seems like the author imposed a whole interpretive framework.
Her participation in one event in the suburbs was a strange choice of event to attend. The author probably attended this one event because she didn't really know anyone, and definitely was not close to anyone and did not spend the time to observe how people actually rebuilt. There was so much to the rebuilding of New Orleans that she missed, and I can only shake my head at the loss. (An event in the suburbs... and this book claims to address "race" and "class?" Really?!)
It seemed like the author really had not lived in New Orleans; this is contrary to my understanding of how to study culture, people, place, what anthropologists study. In my training, we had to live in another culture at least one year to experience different seasons before we could write anything. I entered the field of anthropology because I have always had to navigate profoundly deep levels of cultural and linguistic difference, and I wonder if the superficiality of the methodology in this publication has to do with a North American author who just never had to deal with difference and therefore cannot see how deep difference can be. It did not seem like this author studied nor put any time or much effort into knowing New Orleans. How can someone be considered an expert in culture if they can't dive deep into difference?
The research design could also have been that the author spent time working at some of the entities that she portrays as profiting off of disaster assistance. That would have generated original data and been real anthropological fieldwork. It also would have supported her argument such that people might have been held accountable. I did not learn from this book the exact mechanisms or why or how disaster assistance entities I was frustrated with did what they did. This book just contains an abstract argument, which does little for accountability or reform.
It saddens and angers me that she seemed to profit off the suffering of others because she probably received career promotion due to this publication. I can't see the value of this publication beyond her personal gain. It does not seem like she built any lasting relationships nor was even interested in what people who really had known New Orleans before Katrina, survived Katrina, and were rebuilding had experienced. It does not seem like she gave anything back to the people she met nor to the place. It didn't even seem to cross her mind that she might have any ethical obligations or considerations like these; there was a complete lack of reflexivity.
It is a sad reflection of how anthropology today lacks rigorous methods or any kind of ethical check on methodology. It's also sad for the field of anthropology that grants were not accessible to scholars in the city who knew the circumstances and the way the local world worked; I vividly remember scholars from New Orleans holding a renegade session at the American Anthropological Association during this time period protesting how people calling themselves "scholars" with little knowledge of the city came to profit off of its tragedy simply because it was the latest news item. There are many so-called “anthropologists” who just run after the latest trendy news item, swoop in on an airplane or in a car, make something up, and leave like a tourist shortly thereafter,... and then claim they are an expert. (That they can't see why swooping in for a short visit on privileged modes of transportation would be problematic is also problematic.)
Much was lost in terms of the true scholarship that could have been written; scholars with actual knowledge of the unique culture of New Orleans would have written a really different book, perhaps a book that spoke to the human condition and lessons learned. This book teaches nothing of the sort because it is based on pure imagination in the mind of the author. I can't even give it one star, because neither the study methodology nor the publication brought any benefit to real people who suffered through the Katrina disaster and aftermath. Nor did it bring any insight for readers into the unique culture of New Orleans. Like so much about New Orleans, the true and real experiences remain hidden. New Orleans is a city of secret societies, and a very private city; it could not be studied in a short visit. I'm sorry for the author that she was not intrigued by the city more; she certainly had little to no connection to it or the people there. It's strange to me how one could find the depth and uniqueness of New Orleans uninteresting. There's something wrong with a scholarly discipline, anthropology, that allows such superficial methods and interpretation to claim to represent people.
Her premise could have been said in one sentence, and when I searched the book for evidence, I could not really find any. The author is basically claiming disaster help was conducted in a for-profit way. While this may be true, this publication was not presented in a way that convinced me the reader. In reality, the author was the one who profited off of the rebuilding by portraying herself to Northern audiences as involved in the trendy news item of the moment at the time, without really engaging in her brief visit to the city and then moving on. I can only shake my head. Excuse me while I find a way to lower my blood pressure; it just seems so ethically wrong. There is really no reason to read this book; watch the movie "Beasts of the Southern Wild," a collaborative project, instead if you are interested in learning about Katrina times in N'awlins.
I was so dismayed when I read this book shortly after its publication, that I contacted a mentor of mine. This anthropology professor mentor of mine, who lives and works in New Orleans, said she regretted having helped this author; she told me the author had called her once and asked for contacts in New Orleans. The same handful of contacts provided are the only ones in the book. The author did minimal fieldwork; it seems like, based on the description in the book, she only attended one event.
And then extrapolated an elaborate web of interpretation, a web that did not help me as a resident and Katrina survivor understand a thing I had experienced. I don't understand how anthropology can be considered scholarly if there is no or only minute, mere amounts of empirical evidence collected. There were serious methodological problems with this book; I would not consider it anthropology and definitely not ethnography. I think the test of a quality ethnography is if it helps people themselves understand their circumstances; this book was just page after page of invented stories in the mind of the author, and I guess that constitutes what some call "theory." (Not my definition of “theory.”)
It seems theory can live separately from evidence in a discipline where there are no standards for how deep one goes into local culture. This publication (I hesitate to call it a "book;" it read more like a long and repetitive term paper) was not based on evidence, for sure, and certainly only limited knowledge of a special and unique city. I believe in collaborative research and meaning-making, in which interlocutors get to have input on which topics are relevant to them; I did not see this in this book. It seems like the author imposed a whole interpretive framework.
Her participation in one event in the suburbs was a strange choice of event to attend. The author probably attended this one event because she didn't really know anyone, and definitely was not close to anyone and did not spend the time to observe how people actually rebuilt. There was so much to the rebuilding of New Orleans that she missed, and I can only shake my head at the loss. (An event in the suburbs... and this book claims to address "race" and "class?" Really?!)
It seemed like the author really had not lived in New Orleans; this is contrary to my understanding of how to study culture, people, place, what anthropologists study. In my training, we had to live in another culture at least one year to experience different seasons before we could write anything. I entered the field of anthropology because I have always had to navigate profoundly deep levels of cultural and linguistic difference, and I wonder if the superficiality of the methodology in this publication has to do with a North American author who just never had to deal with difference and therefore cannot see how deep difference can be. It did not seem like this author studied nor put any time or much effort into knowing New Orleans. How can someone be considered an expert in culture if they can't dive deep into difference?
The research design could also have been that the author spent time working at some of the entities that she portrays as profiting off of disaster assistance. That would have generated original data and been real anthropological fieldwork. It also would have supported her argument such that people might have been held accountable. I did not learn from this book the exact mechanisms or why or how disaster assistance entities I was frustrated with did what they did. This book just contains an abstract argument, which does little for accountability or reform.
It saddens and angers me that she seemed to profit off the suffering of others because she probably received career promotion due to this publication. I can't see the value of this publication beyond her personal gain. It does not seem like she built any lasting relationships nor was even interested in what people who really had known New Orleans before Katrina, survived Katrina, and were rebuilding had experienced. It does not seem like she gave anything back to the people she met nor to the place. It didn't even seem to cross her mind that she might have any ethical obligations or considerations like these; there was a complete lack of reflexivity.
It is a sad reflection of how anthropology today lacks rigorous methods or any kind of ethical check on methodology. It's also sad for the field of anthropology that grants were not accessible to scholars in the city who knew the circumstances and the way the local world worked; I vividly remember scholars from New Orleans holding a renegade session at the American Anthropological Association during this time period protesting how people calling themselves "scholars" with little knowledge of the city came to profit off of its tragedy simply because it was the latest news item. There are many so-called “anthropologists” who just run after the latest trendy news item, swoop in on an airplane or in a car, make something up, and leave like a tourist shortly thereafter,... and then claim they are an expert. (That they can't see why swooping in for a short visit on privileged modes of transportation would be problematic is also problematic.)
Much was lost in terms of the true scholarship that could have been written; scholars with actual knowledge of the unique culture of New Orleans would have written a really different book, perhaps a book that spoke to the human condition and lessons learned. This book teaches nothing of the sort because it is based on pure imagination in the mind of the author. I can't even give it one star, because neither the study methodology nor the publication brought any benefit to real people who suffered through the Katrina disaster and aftermath. Nor did it bring any insight for readers into the unique culture of New Orleans. Like so much about New Orleans, the true and real experiences remain hidden. New Orleans is a city of secret societies, and a very private city; it could not be studied in a short visit. I'm sorry for the author that she was not intrigued by the city more; she certainly had little to no connection to it or the people there. It's strange to me how one could find the depth and uniqueness of New Orleans uninteresting. There's something wrong with a scholarly discipline, anthropology, that allows such superficial methods and interpretation to claim to represent people.
Her premise could have been said in one sentence, and when I searched the book for evidence, I could not really find any. The author is basically claiming disaster help was conducted in a for-profit way. While this may be true, this publication was not presented in a way that convinced me the reader. In reality, the author was the one who profited off of the rebuilding by portraying herself to Northern audiences as involved in the trendy news item of the moment at the time, without really engaging in her brief visit to the city and then moving on. I can only shake my head. Excuse me while I find a way to lower my blood pressure; it just seems so ethically wrong. There is really no reason to read this book; watch the movie "Beasts of the Southern Wild," a collaborative project, instead if you are interested in learning about Katrina times in N'awlins.
January 22, 2024
Terse academic work that challenges the neo-liberal alignment of government social programs and corporate opportunists, with digs at a former employer that shall remain nameless.
September 15, 2016
I liked what Adams is trying to do in this work. There's a large degree to which this work seems unambitious--just doling out neoliberal critique without offering anything new.
October 8, 2021
URBP 200 Reading
If you thought the hurricane was the bad part, you don't know anything about Katrina. In a two-part study, Vincanne Adams dissects the Katrina recovery efforts and leaves us all with this warning: what happened in New Orleans can happen anywhere there's a disaster.
Unbeknownst to most of us, the 1990s brought in a new type of economy - the disaster economy. The Federal Government's delegation of disaster recovery to subcontractors (some of us will remember the names Blackwater and Haliburton) that blatantly disregarded the need of those they were chartered to serve, creating a crisis far greater than the hurricane and its immediate aftermath. The myriad ways in which all Katrina victims were marginalized is unconscionable.
The second half discusses how faith-based organizations seemingly came to the rescue. But, there's more to that story too. In order to receive government funding, these smaller organizations were encouraged/forced to merge with larger for-profit charities (kind of oxymoronic wouldn't you think?) and structure their efforts toward meeting the targets of their larger partners over the needs of the people they set out to serve. Can you smell mess?
While there were some success stories, there were far more tragedies. It's made me reconsider my perspectives the last time I visited New Orleans and *still* saw neighborhoods that had not been rebuilt.
If you thought the hurricane was the bad part, you don't know anything about Katrina. In a two-part study, Vincanne Adams dissects the Katrina recovery efforts and leaves us all with this warning: what happened in New Orleans can happen anywhere there's a disaster.
Unbeknownst to most of us, the 1990s brought in a new type of economy - the disaster economy. The Federal Government's delegation of disaster recovery to subcontractors (some of us will remember the names Blackwater and Haliburton) that blatantly disregarded the need of those they were chartered to serve, creating a crisis far greater than the hurricane and its immediate aftermath. The myriad ways in which all Katrina victims were marginalized is unconscionable.
The second half discusses how faith-based organizations seemingly came to the rescue. But, there's more to that story too. In order to receive government funding, these smaller organizations were encouraged/forced to merge with larger for-profit charities (kind of oxymoronic wouldn't you think?) and structure their efforts toward meeting the targets of their larger partners over the needs of the people they set out to serve. Can you smell mess?
While there were some success stories, there were far more tragedies. It's made me reconsider my perspectives the last time I visited New Orleans and *still* saw neighborhoods that had not been rebuilt.
November 29, 2024
I read this book for my second year anthropology, it really gave depth to the concept of capitalism. How even in humanitarian crises people got disadvantaged whilst huge economic capital was thrown to salvage the damages. The concept “disaster capitalism” was tossed and gave my rookie anthropologist mind a shift in how capitalism truly operates. A must read for everyone.
December 19, 2023
topping the list for one of the most important books i’ve read in my undergrad career— this is what the work is about. this is why planning matters. i do wish it was more futurist but it was also written a decade ago
March 19, 2024
Clearly written and informative. A deep dive into the processes of recovery (and lack there-of) surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Highly recommend if you are questioning the efficacy of neoliberal capitalism.
January 28, 2025
Beautiful, but also extensive. To save you the time: American capitalism is committing class genocide.
February 11, 2025
A little dense at times, but an excellent depiction of structural violence and neoliberalism. Don’t read if planning a trip to NOLA.
January 3, 2017
My Review for Library Journal [Library Journal 138, no. 4 (March 2013): 83]:
Areas devastated by natural disasters, as recently seen since Hurricane Sandy, will suffer through years of recovery. In fact, getting through the storm itself can be the easy part, claims Adams (anthropology, history, and social medicine, Univ. of California, San Francisco). Picking up the pieces long after the storm has passed and the media have gone home is the real struggle. Adams focuses here on the years following Hurricane Katrina. She shows how what Katrina left behind was ravaged even more by subsequent inept programs. Her book serves as an important analysis of what went wrong in the recovery and provides an in-depth look at what New Orleans experienced, including victims' personal stories of heartbreak and frustration. As a result, although the title is academic in approach, it will enable readers to understand the issues intellectually and viscerally.
VERDICT This work helpfully describes how not to handle a recovery. Recommended not only for Gulf Coast collections, but also for academic libraries supporting programs in public administration or emergency preparedness.
Areas devastated by natural disasters, as recently seen since Hurricane Sandy, will suffer through years of recovery. In fact, getting through the storm itself can be the easy part, claims Adams (anthropology, history, and social medicine, Univ. of California, San Francisco). Picking up the pieces long after the storm has passed and the media have gone home is the real struggle. Adams focuses here on the years following Hurricane Katrina. She shows how what Katrina left behind was ravaged even more by subsequent inept programs. Her book serves as an important analysis of what went wrong in the recovery and provides an in-depth look at what New Orleans experienced, including victims' personal stories of heartbreak and frustration. As a result, although the title is academic in approach, it will enable readers to understand the issues intellectually and viscerally.
VERDICT This work helpfully describes how not to handle a recovery. Recommended not only for Gulf Coast collections, but also for academic libraries supporting programs in public administration or emergency preparedness.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews