Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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