Katrina was not just a hurricane. The death, destruction, and misery wreaked on New Orleans cannot be blamed on nature's fury alone. This volume of essays locates the root causes of the 2005 disaster squarely in neoliberal restructuring and examines how pro-market reforms are reshaping life, politics, economy, and the built environment in New Orleans.

The authors--a diverse group writing from the disciplines of sociology, political science, education, public policy, and media theory--argue that human agency and public policy choices were more at fault for the devastation and mass...