A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community [Hardcover]

Kai Erikson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1994

Sociologist Kai Erikson visited seven man-made disasters around America including a mercury spill which displaced a Native American tribe from its homeland; Three-Mile Island, where nearby residents feared exposure to radiation; and Yucca Mountain, Nevada, where the American government proposes to build a vast nuclear waste dump. He discovered that all these communities had in common a chronic dread and helplessness caused by radiation and other toxic substances. The author argues that this is a new and insidious type of trauma and this book is his plea that we do more to protect people from it.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For the past 20 years Erikson, a sociology professor at Yale University, has studied comunities stunned by recent disasters. His first subject, Buffalo Creek, W. Va., which suffered from the break of an earthen dam in 1972, led him to write Everything in Its Path. Among the seven communities examined here are an Indian reserve in Canada whose water supply was contaminated by mercury, a Colorado neighborhood threatened by gasoline seeping from storage tanks, the towns near the Three Mile Island nuclear plant that faced the possibility of radiation contamination. Erikson found a consistent pattern: loss of self-esteem and faith in institutions, and heightened senses of dread and vulnerability. He finds similar responses among the homeless. Describing this kind of trouble as the product of human error, he reviews the decision to deploy the atomic bomb in WW II and addresses the plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. In the epilogue to these gripping case studies, Erikson advances the illuminating suggestion that communities can experience trauma just as individauls can. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Erikson (Sociology/Yale) expands his earlier examination of communities under stress (Everything in Its Path, 1977) in an attempt to define a new kind of trauma that those victimized by man-made disasters now face. According to Erikson, what happens after a disaster such as a dam break or an oil spill is often at least as traumatic as the primary event itself. He highlights the plight of the Grassy Knoll Indians in Ontario, who faced both relocation by the Canadian government and the discovery that mercury was contaminating their river; the mercury poisoned their bodies, and being uprooted from their ancestral lands shattered their culture. Erickson examines a Ft. Collins, Colorado, suburb threatened by an underground gas leak caused by a Royal Petroleum service station; he then revisits the nuclear disaster at Three-Mile Island and the potential consequences of a proposed nuclear waste-disposal site in California's Yucca Mountains. Among other cases he discusses are the homeless, the victims of Hiroshima, and the subject of his original book, the victims of the Buffalo Creek Flood. In all these instances, Erikson is heading toward a distinction between natural and unnatural disasters, arguing that while natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes and hurricanes) can sometimes build a sense of community, unnatural disasters usually destroy it along with any collective feeling of trust and security. These points have been previously made by sociologists Michael Edelstein and Phil Brown. Unfortunately, Erikson, who often testifies in litigation cases involving trauma, leaves the reader frustrated and ultimately dissatisfied by his failure to bring up to date his report and conclusions on the communities examined. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1st edition (April 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393035948
• ISBN-13: 978-0393035940
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #540,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cultural integrity, core of community structure ia at risk., February 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community (Hardcover)

Each of the case examples given has thoroughly been researched and studied to provide compelling evidence of the social relationship between community, impact and the blow which begins the troubles for each community visited.

Correctly characterized by Erikson as, "A New Species of Trouble", gives our society an opportunity to understand the force and impact of contemporary technology on very real human beings. Mandatory reading for anyone interested in better understanding and maintaining their humanity in our very troubled world.

4.0 out of 5 stars Adam's Review, October 19, 2004

By 

Adam Schumaker (Madison, WI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community (Hardcover)

Kai Erikson has compiled an excellent view of human suffering in his book A New Species of Trouble. Erikson is able to bring out the deepest effects that tragedy has on people with his meaningful narratives and the numerous excerpts from people involved in these tragedies. What makes Erikson's stories so powerful is that the suffering experienced by the various people was from human causes. As Erikson states, "It is clear...that people who are victimized by such events feel a special measure of distress when they come to think that their affliction was caused by other human beings." (p. 129)
Erikson writes two stories, "The Ojibwa of Grassy Narrows" and "The View from East Swallow," in which careless companies created environmental damage that resulted in human suffering. The reservation of Grassy Narrows was affected by high amounts of mercury being dumped into the nearby river from a paper and pulp plant. "The View from East Swallow" is about a petroleum leak under a neighborhood created by a gas company's incompetence. Although these are inherent environmental problems, Erikson focuses on the psychological and social effects of the catastrophes on their victims. These effects are also the theme in the rest of the accounts.
In "The Haitians of Immokalee," Erikson incorporates the outcry of recent immigrants who had their earnings stolen from them by the company they worked for. Erikson also has three stories, "Three Mile Island," "Hiroshima" and "Yucca Mountain," that deal with the dangers of nuclear power, bombs and waste. Although all these previous stories are of great importance, the one that struck me deepest was "Being Homeless."
I would like to expand on Erikson's ideas about homelessness because it is a worldwide epidemic that we know the cure for and therefore should be cured. I also think it deserves more attention since it is a problem that affects Madison. I was thankful that Erikson brought up homelessness in A New Species of Trouble, because it allows for the message to be sent out that homelessness is not a problem that can be looked over by those fortunate enough to have shelter.
Erikson writes about how the face of homelessness is changing in the US by saying that "Almost 40 percent of the new homeless...are women and children, a striking change." (p. 162) He also states that the current cause of people becoming homeless is "Because they lose out in the competition for a shrinking supply of low-income housing." (p. 165)
I have some elementary experience with both of these ideas from a class I took my freshman year. In African-American Contemporary Society, the professor Michael Thornton made the theme of the class affordable housing. It was also a service-learning class in which we were required to help out at a local organization that aided homeless people. The experience and knowledge I gained from the class allows me to analyze the problem of homelessness in Madison.
I did my service at CASPER, which is an after school program for homeless and at-risk children. CASPER runs programs at four elementary schools which in itself shows that homelessness is not a minor problem in Madison. I saw some of the suffering that Erikson writes about in the children at CASPER. It was common for children to fall asleep amidst high activity because they were exhausted from the stress created by not having constant shelter. The children were given breakfast and a snack after school each day because it was known that some might not eat enough otherwise. There were obvious psychological effects of their situations seen in their behavior. I found myself wondering who was to blame for their situations. In a sense, the problems of these children can be attributed to our society since we do not do enough to help them.
As Erikson stated, the main cause of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. In Madison, the 2003 housing wage (the amount of money a person must earn in order to afford a two bedroom apartment at fair market rent while not paying more than 30% of their income) was $13.77/hour for a forty hour work week. (McCormack) This is the equivalent of working 107 hours per week at minimum wage. Some people may be skeptical of this number since a single person does not need a two bedroom apartment. However, as Erikson talks about in "Being Homeless," a much higher percentage of homeless people today are women with children who cannot easily fit into a one bedroom or efficiency apartment.
Obvious solutions to this problem are to raise the minimum wage and to create more affordable housing units. Unlike Erikson's other stories in which specific parties are responsible, our entire society is responsible for not helping to stop homelessness. In this case, we all are the cause of human suffering. We know how to solve the problem and with some changes in policy a higher minimum wage and more affordable housing units are within this nation's grasp.

McCormack, Kate. The Daily Cardinal. September 29, 2003.

4.0 out of 5 stars Loosely linked case studies, but eloquently written., December 17, 1995

By A Customer

This review is from: A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community (Hardcover)

Erikson brings together several tangentially related case studies, as well as a diatribe on homelessness and Hiroshima to make up an eclectic read. The book, however, is worth reading for its attempt to explore human reactions to a "new species of trouble"­toxic waste and other threatening consequences of modern industrial society