Confronting Katrina: Socioculturally divergent models of agency shape responses to disaster

面对卡特里娜飓风：机构应对灾难的社会文化差异模式

• 批准号: 0555157
• 负责人: Hazel Markus
• 金额: $ 1.88万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-12-01 至 2006-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0555157&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Confronting; Katrina; Socioculturally; divergent; models

Coping with a disaster like Katrina requires a framework of meaning, a set of shared understandings about what happened and why. The prevailing assumption of many journalists, responders, and observers, was that any sensible person--taking appropriate personal responsibility, making choices based on official warnings, and acting to control the situation--would evacuate. This understanding of how to act reflects a particular model of agency, one especially prevalent in European American middle class contexts (Kitayama & Uchida, 2005; Markus & Kitayama, 2003). Notably, however, the marked variation associated with social class, race, and ethnicity in U.S. sociocultural contexts has given rise to multiple models of how a person should act. Many who did not evacuate lived in largely working class and African American contexts where other models of agency, models that diverge from those invoked by the media and most observers and responders, were prevalent. The failure to understand that people engaged in different sociocultural contexts may have had different understandings of what they should have been doing and why, and that they may have needed different types of relief, is likely to have been a critical element in the system failure that accompanied Katrina. A team of interviewers from diverse racial and social class backgrounds will interview Katrina survivors, contrasting the perspectives of those who stayed and those who fled prior to the disaster. The interviews will consist of a series of open-ended and multiple-choice questions designed to capture participants' models of agency-implicit ideas about how to be a normatively appropriate person. In explaining their behavior, those who evacuated prior to Katrina are expected to draw on a model of agency that is prevalent in middle class European American contexts, one that emphasizes independence, choice, personal control, and future-mindedness. In contrast, those who stayed are expected to be relatively more likely to explain their own behavior in terms of a model of agency prevalent in working class contexts, one that emphasizes interdependence with one's community and kin, staying tough and enduring hardship, maintaining integrity, and making the best of difficult circumstances. The goal of this research is not just to document differences among people, but rather to focus on a catastrophic event to demonstrate that differences in how people understand action can have profound consequences for their lived experiences, as well as for the policies and institutions that regulate relief efforts. Applying a models-of-agency perspective to emergencies provides a basis for predicting why people respond differently to a call to evacuate. These differences in models of agency are not just of theoretical interest. Such knowledge is crucial for emergency preparedness. Preparing for disaster and effectively responding to it requires understanding the different meanings of the events and actions for those affected by the disaster. Without acknowledging these differences, it becomes difficult to formulate an effective response. Understanding that other models of agency organize behavior should allow emergency management to better prepare people for future situations, and to anticipate potential divergence in their response to emergency guidelines and aid.

应对像卡特里娜这样的灾难需要一个意义框架，一套关于发生了什么和为什么发生的共同理解。许多记者、应急人员和观察员的普遍假设是，任何明智的人-承担适当的个人责任，根据官方警告作出选择，并采取行动控制局势-都会撤离。这种对如何行动的理解反映了一种特殊的能动性模型，这种模型在欧美中产阶级背景下尤其普遍（Kitayama Uchida，2005; Markus Kitayama，2003）。然而，值得注意的是，在美国社会文化背景下，与社会阶级、种族和民族相关的显著差异已经产生了一个人应该如何行事的多种模式。许多没有撤离的人主要生活在工人阶级和非裔美国人的背景下，在那里，其他代理模式，与媒体和大多数观察员和回应者所援引的模式不同，是普遍存在的。不了解处于不同社会文化环境中的人们可能对他们应该做什么和为什么做有不同的理解，以及他们可能需要不同类型的救济，可能是伴随卡特里娜飓风而来的系统失败的关键因素。一个由不同种族和社会阶层背景的采访者组成的小组将采访卡特里娜飓风的幸存者，对比那些留下来的人和那些在灾难发生前逃离的人的观点。访谈将包括一系列开放式和多项选择题，旨在捕捉参与者关于如何成为一个规范上适当的人的代理模型-隐含的想法。在解释他们的行为时，那些在卡特里娜飓风之前撤离的人应该借鉴一种在欧洲中产阶级背景下普遍存在的代理模式，一种强调独立性，选择，个人控制和未来意识的模式。相比之下，那些留下来的人预计相对更有可能解释自己的行为，在工人阶级背景下普遍存在的代理模式，强调与社区和亲属的相互依赖，保持坚韧和忍受困难，保持正直，并充分利用困难的情况。这项研究的目的不仅仅是记录人与人之间的差异，而是关注一个灾难性事件，以证明人们如何理解行动的差异可能对他们的生活经历以及管理救援工作的政策和机构产生深远的影响。将代理模型的视角应用于紧急情况，为预测人们对疏散呼叫的反应为何不同提供了基础。代理模式的这些差异不仅仅是理论上的兴趣。这种知识对于应急准备至关重要。备灾和有效应对灾害需要了解事件和行动对受灾者的不同意义。 如果不承认这些差异，就很难制定有效的应对措施。理解其他机构组织行为模式应使应急管理能够更好地为人们应对未来情况做好准备，并预测他们对应急指南和援助的反应可能出现的分歧。