Generació de trajectòries

Conceptualising the ‘other’ as a system of symbolically and socially constructed boundaries is a fruitful lens through which to understand the positioning of local people within the post-disaster landscape of Plaquemines Parish (particularly when it comes to understanding locally delineated ‘races’). Authors who have utilised such a model have been able to offer insight into the positioning of locally understood ‘races’ in a given context, but also how such ‘races’ regulate the dynamic boundaries erected which surround such constructions as they relate to ideas of ‘morality’ and ‘cultural norms’. As has been pointed out, there is nothing inherent or intrinsic about a ‘race’; such a term exists primarily as a social and cultural construction, and should thus be understood by

researchers with this in mind (Wilson 2002). With this said however, this positioning of the term as a cultural construction must be balanced with an understanding of how such constructions are often intimately tied to skin colour and other physical attributes, and acknowledging the centrality that ‘the body’ can take in any discourse related to race is

3 Data from the 2010 US Census suggests that almost 70% of the local population identify as White, while 23% identify as African American.

crucial (Wiegman 1995). Bourgois and Schonberg (2007) analyse this dynamic using the term ‘ethnicized habitus’ to critically examine how norms of everyday interaction can be structured on the basis of skin colour as it intersects with particular formative power dynamics. This is of course doubly relevant after a catastrophe, where recovery (in the sense of material reconstruction) has been shown to be impacted by variables such as race (Cutter et al. 2014).

By examining the idea of ‘race’ within a framework of power dynamics, inequality, and moralistic boundaries authors such as Wray (2006) and Wilson (2002) have

demonstrated that by actively constructing and maintaining the boundaries of ‘otherness’

associated with the notion of other races, a person is simultaneously positioning themselves within a complex social structure. Within the construction of ‘Whiteness’

(which reflects much of the content of this chapter) this process of ‘othering’ and self-construction is often intended to implicitly (and perhaps unintentionally) protect and reinforce the position of ‘White’ as the more powerful and privileged category within any social hierarchy (Hage 2000). Within this understanding of race it is important to

acknowledge that White people are also racialised within society (Frankenberg 1999). As many writers have noted however, understanding the construction of social inequality with reference to only one cultural dynamic can lead to an incomplete picture of social relations (Lindisfarne and Neale 2013) and, rather, that we should recognise that a plurality of factors often combine to structure the lived experience of social inequality and the generation of the ‘other’. In this case, the role of class, adherence to a particular code of morality, and on-going relationships with disasters are of relevance to our understanding.

As such, it has been noted that the designator ‘White trash’ or ‘trailer trash’ should be understood as a complex cultural othering mechanism intended to diminish the target upon which the label in conferred, distance the speaker from this ‘other’, and additionally, reinforce the superiority of the speaker within the locally understood social hierarchy (Hartigan 1997). The designator ‘white trash’ is itself an interesting – and arguably contradictory – label. Wray’s Not Quite White (2006) charts the lexicological usage of the term over time, and observes the juxtaposition of ‘White’ (a term usually synonymous with

cleanliness and purity) with ‘trash’ (a term which symbolises dirt and that which is unwanted). By combining these ideas, Wray argues, the speaker creates a category of person suspended outwith the system of mainstream cultural values, a tainted ‘other’ which must be distinguished from oneself. This is not to say that attaching these particular

meanings to these terms is unproblematic, particularly when considering the history of racial (and to a lesser extent class-based) domination present in the Deep South of America. As with many comparable labels both the definition and application of such terms is suspended within a network of power relations, which can offer insight into the way language can be co-opted to implicitly reinforce a particular worldview, as associating

‘White’ with ‘purity’ aptly demonstrates.

By considering such a term within a wider framework of the study of race and boundary theory, writers have been able to better understand the conceptualisation of

‘White’ as an ‘invisible’ race within social hierarchy (Wilson 2002). Here, understanding the construction of inequality more generally becomes crucial, as the terms ‘White trash’

and ‘trailer trash’ often have strong class, cultural, and moral connotations (Hartigan 1997, Hurley 2001, Wray 2006). Thus by confining multiple negative assertions regarding poverty, immoral behaviour, and deviance from cultural ‘norms’ to a group separated from so-called ‘White’ culture the speaker is able to maintain an illusion of moral and cultural hegemony and superiority. This process is equally applicable to the designation and production of any derided group within a given context.

Although the term ‘White trash’ was initially coined by Black slaves in the

antebellum deep south to refer to the poorest white farmers of Celtic origin (Wilson 2002), it has, since the Great Depression and World War 2 gradually come to be synonymous with trailer park living, and living in mobile homes more generally (Hurley 2001). These two events established that trailer parks could provide cheap living environments for those on low incomes, but as a result would irrevocably connect the idea of poverty with that of mobile homes. During this period, mobile home manufacturers divided their product line between their more traditional roles as a temporary recreational vehicle, and a new focus on permanent, affordable housing aimed at lower middle-class returnees from World War

2 (Hurley 2001). Over the next two decades however it became apparent that residents of trailer parks were not able to maintain the normative middle-class lifestyle which emerged in the post-war period (Hurley 2001). As a result, trailer parks (and those resident in them) came to be associated with deviant, immoral, and alternative lifestyles.

This connection of trailer park residents with notions of moral impropriety is a major factor in the positioning of the residents of such places outwith the ‘mainstream’ of cultural norms. Like other derogatory labels such as ‘redneck’ or ‘hillbilly’ these

stereotypes are presented as a homogenous group (Darling 2009a), which can often spread to engulf any resident of a rural, agricultural community, which are often presented as being culturally homogenising (Darling 2005). Traditionally, these homogenous stereotypes (whether they be trailer park residents, ‘rednecks’, or ‘White trash’) are

presented as lacking a sense of rootedness, being transitory, and lacking in a sense of pride relating to the maintenance of their homes and properties (Counts and Counts 2001, Hurley 2001).

Unlike terms such as ‘redneck’ however – which has undergone something of a reimagining in recent years (Brooks 2000, Darling 2009b) – the terms ‘white trash’ or

‘trailer trash’ remain almost universally terms of derision. In popular media they form shorthand reference points for any number of social ills, from carelessness and

drunkenness, high levels of illiteracy, to even include the murderous antagonists of the 1972 film Deliverance and other horror or action films (Hartigan 1992). This is reflected in news reporting whereby one of the negative side-effects of Hurricane Katrina has been an individual’s ‘decline’ from a fixed property to a mobile home (Dewan 2007) or a piece covering voters who were both supporting the election of Barrack Obama while also (to the writer’s surprise) displaying symbols commonly associated with these ‘redneck’ labels such as the Southern Cross (Burkeman 2008). While Dewan’s (2007) piece does offer a somewhat more nuanced and in-depth analysis of the lived experience of his interviewees post-Katrina it still (along with the rather sensationalised Burkeman article) maintains the positioning of the trailer park lifestyle as backward and undesirable.

The above discussion of the creation and maintenance of White privilege through the cultural ‘othering’ of socially defined stereotypes provides the framework for the remainder of this chapter. By examining how this privilege is seen to be threatened by the social and material changes in the Parish over the past half century, and in particular since the Hurricane and oil spill, we can track the increasingly perceived feeling of

precariousness which is felt by those possessing this privileged identity (which as shall be shown, is used as the baseline for an un-problematic ‘American’ identity). This chapter shall therefore focus primarily on the experience of White identity in relation to the ingress of ‘White trash’, and also by the de-segregation and equality activism utilised by African-Americans within wider American politics. Throughout, what becomes clear is that the

‘recovery’ from Katrina and the oil spill is woven within processes already

well-established within Parish life, processes which these catastrophes have influenced within the wider on-going relationship local people have with normalised disaster-processes.