Post-Katrina New Orleans; The Capitalist Personality
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2014
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Post-Katrina New Orleans: how disaster recovery became a lucrative business. Laurie Taylor talks to Vincanne Adams, US Professor of Medical Anthropology, about her account of market failure after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She discovered private companies profiting from the misery they sought to ameliorate and a second order disaster that intensified inequalities based on race and class. Why were residents left to re-build their lives and homes almost entirely on their own, save for the contribution of churches and charities? Phil O'Keefe, Professor of Economic Development, joins the discussion.
Also, 'The Capitalist Personality' - Laurie Taylor explores interpersonal bonds in the post communist world. Christopher Swader, Assistant Professor of Sociology in Moscow, argues that successful people in countries as diverse as China and Russia adjust to the market economy at a social cost, compromising moral values in pursuit of material gain. Is anti social behaviour in new capitalist economies a by-product of their communist pasts or does the individual ambition released by economic development also have a part to play in threatening human relationships?
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, |
| 0:06.0 | the Science of Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.7 | This is a Thinking Loud Podcast from the BBC and for more details in our terms of use and |
| 0:37.0 | much, much more about Thinking aloud, go to our website at BBC.co. UK. |
| 0:44.0 | Hello. My first visit to New Orleans was back in the |
| 0:48.0 | back in the late 70s and I was a delegate then |
| 0:50.0 | to the American Sociological Association's annual conference. |
| 0:53.1 | It didn't really begin well. |
| 0:55.6 | The American Reception Committee had misinterpreted my gender, |
| 0:58.5 | and for a complete day I wandered from session to session unknowingly sporting a large badge that announced me as Ms Laurie Taylor. |
| 1:06.9 | But what was worse really was the feeling that as long as I attended the conference I was |
| 1:10.5 | missing out on the street life outside the hotel. So I promptly gave up my |
| 1:15.0 | comfortable room and went out on town and my luck was in. I found a great bar full |
| 1:20.2 | of wonderful characters who laughed at my accent, told me the best jazz venues, |
| 1:24.1 | plied me with Dixie Beer at the end of the evening, even found me a sofa bed in a house |
| 1:29.7 | in South Rampart Street. Well I live like that for the rest of my three or four days |
| 1:34.1 | stay. I came to love the sheer variety of the people who'd made New Orleans |
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