{"id":4554,"date":"2013-04-11T14:24:04","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T19:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=4554"},"modified":"2013-04-11T14:29:58","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T19:29:58","slug":"elite-panic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2013\/04\/11\/elite-panic\/","title":{"rendered":"Elite panic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThis Bombsite<\/cite> interview with Rebecca Solnit<\/a> is interesting just for the following extract:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nAT One of the most interesting ideas in the book is the concept of \u201celite panic\u201d\u2014the way that elites, during disasters and their aftermath, imagine that the public is not only in danger but also a source of danger. You show in case after case how elites respond in destructive ways, from withholding essential information, to blocking citizen relief efforts, to protecting property instead of people. As you write in the book, \u201cthere are grounds for fear of a coherent insurgent public, not just an overwrought, savage one.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nRS The term \u201celite panic\u201d was coined by Caron Chess and Lee Clarke of Rutgers. From the beginning of the field in the 1950s to the present, the major sociologists of disaster\u2014Charles Fritz, Enrico Quarantelli, Kathleen Tierney, and Lee Clarke\u2014proceeding in the most cautious, methodical, and clearly attempting-to-be-politically-neutral way of social scientists, arrived via their research at this enormous confidence in human nature and deep critique of institutional authority. It\u2019s quite remarkable.\n<\/p>\n

\nElites tend to believe in a venal, selfish, and essentially monstrous version of human nature, which I sometimes think is their own human nature. I mean, people don\u2019t become incredibly wealthy and powerful by being angelic, necessarily. They believe that only their power keeps the rest of us in line and that when it somehow shrinks away, our seething violence will rise to the surface\u2014that was very clear in Katrina. Timothy Garton Ash and Maureen Dowd and all these other people immediately jumped on the bandwagon and started writing commentaries based on the assumption that the rumors of mass violence during Katrina were true. A lot of people have never understood that the rumors were dispelled and that those things didn\u2019t actually happen; it\u2019s tragic.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut there\u2019s also an elite fear\u2014going back to the 19th century\u2014that there will be urban insurrection. It\u2019s a valid fear. I see these moments of crisis as moments of popular power and positive social change. The major example in my book is Mexico City, where the \u201985 earthquake prompted public disaffection with the one-party system and, therefore, the rebirth of civil society.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Bombsite interview with Rebecca Solnit is interesting just for the following extract: AT One of the most interesting ideas in the book is the concept of \u201celite panic\u201d\u2014the way that elites, during disasters and their aftermath, imagine that the public is not only in danger but also a source of danger. You show in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4556,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554\/revisions\/4556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}