S&S Scholars Award: Heat and Death in France: History and the Social Ecology of Catastrophe

S

• 批准号: 0647266
• 负责人: Richard Keller
• 金额: $ 6.73万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-07-01 至 2010-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0647266&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: S& Scholars; Award; Heat; Death

IntroductionDescribed as a meteorological catastrophe, the heat wave that struck France in August 2003 brought the nation to a state of extremity, resulting in nearly 15,000 unanticipated deaths. Yet to frame the crisis in the language of natural disaster misses a crucial point. Privileging temperature over human society and the built environment as the decisive variable in shaping mortality grants a sense of inevitability to the disaster, and thus overlooks the critical role played by a social landscape that was itself ravaged by the heat wave. Significant disparities in mortality -- the disproportional selection of the elderly, the poor, and city-dwellers for death -- indicate patterns of risk that resulted as much from the social ecology of modern France as from the "natural" causes of disaster, calling attention to the intersection of society, nature, and environmental security. The experience of Paris and its environs, which bore the brunt of excess mortality during the crisis, opens a window on issues central to the relationship between science and society, including the historical production of vulnerability, the implications of demographic change for the welfare state, and the sustainability of the built environment in the postindustrial era. Central to this project is an analysis of the political, social, and cultural factors that placed France, and particularly Paris, at such inordinate risk. The heat wave provoked a series of fierce debates over the influence of the August vacation -- viewed by many French as an inherent right of citizenship since its institution in the 1930s -- on the abandonment of the vulnerable and the understaffing of hospitals during the crisis. The project scrutinizes the place of the elderly in modern society by questioning social, political, and scientific representations of the elderly and their effects on social citizenship. A powerful animosity toward air conditioning in modern France -- with roots in resistance to American-style cultural homogenization -- offers another area of inquiry. Finally, the project explores the rise of a voluble discourse of "insecurity" since the 1980s and its role in shaping an urban landscape of vulnerability. Linked to uneasiness around immigration and social disorder, a climate of fear has contributed to an elevation of risk by encouraging many elderly French city-dwellers to remain in their apartments, at heightened danger for heat stroke, but spared from the perceived dangers of urban public space. This project will examine these and other phenomena that played essential roles in the shaping of the 2003 catastrophe via multiple axes of research, including fieldwork in central and periurban Paris and targeted research in archives, libraries, and government collections. Interviews with citizens in hard-hit areas, government officials, epidemiologists, and social scientists, along with close analysis of media coverage of the heat wave as it unfolded and in its aftermath, will illuminate the critical social dimensions of this crisis of environmental health and social ecology.Intellectual meritThere has as yet been no humanistic or social-scientific study of the French heat wave. This project brings the historian's eye to the study of contemporary environmental crisis, thereby adding to a growing body of STS literatures on risk and vulnerability, environmental justice, and the history of the urban environment. By exploring the historical production of social vulnerability over the course of the twentieth century, this project investigates the intersection of an environmental disaster with the local social worlds of urban France. What social factors shape risk in an environmental crisis? How do these conditions reflect the relationship between science, politics, and society?Broader impactAt its most ambitious, this project aims to contribute to the development of a new framework for studying vulnerability that draws on scientific, social-scientific, and humanistic forms of expertise. Disasters often operate as catalysts highlighting existing social, economic, and cultural divides that predispose a society to catastrophe. Ideally, the finished monograph and articles will contribute to policy debates over hazard management, while pointing to the essential need for the adaptation of the modern welfare state to changing social, political, and environmental climates in the postindustrial era.

前言2003年8月袭击法国的热浪被描述为一场气象灾难，将国家带入了极端状态，导致近1.5万人意外死亡。然而，用自然灾害来描述这场危机忽略了一个关键问题。将温度凌驾于人类社会和建筑环境之上，作为决定死亡的决定性变量，给人一种灾难不可避免的感觉，从而忽视了本身受到热浪蹂躏的社会景观所发挥的关键作用。死亡率的显著差异--老年人、穷人和城市居民不成比例地选择死亡--表明了由现代法国的社会生态以及灾难的“自然”原因造成的风险模式，这促使人们注意到社会、自然和环境安全的交集。巴黎及其周边地区在危机期间首当其冲地承受着过高的死亡率，它的经历为我们打开了一扇窗户，了解科学与社会关系的核心问题，包括脆弱性的历史产生，人口变化对福利国家的影响，以及后工业时代建成环境的可持续性。这个项目的核心是分析将法国，特别是巴黎置于如此巨大风险的政治、社会和文化因素。热浪引发了一系列关于八月假期影响的激烈辩论。自20世纪30年代设立以来，许多法国人认为8月假期是一项固有的公民权利，在危机期间遗弃弱势群体和医院人手不足的影响。该项目通过质疑老年人在社会、政治和科学方面的代表性及其对社会公民的影响来审视老年人在现代社会中的地位。现代法国对空调的强烈敌意--根源于对美国式文化同质化的抵制--提供了另一个调查领域。最后，该项目探讨了自20世纪80年代以来“不安全”这一喋喋不休的话语的兴起及其在塑造脆弱的城市景观中的作用。与对移民和社会混乱的不安有关，恐惧的气氛促使许多年迈的法国城市居民留在自己的公寓里，尽管中暑的危险增加了，但没有受到城市公共空间的影响，从而导致了风险的上升。这个项目将通过多个研究轴线，包括在巴黎市中心和郊区的田野工作，以及在档案馆、图书馆和政府收藏品中的有针对性的研究，来研究在2003年灾难的形成中发挥关键作用的这些现象和其他现象。对受灾严重地区的公民、政府官员、流行病学家和社会科学家的采访，以及对热浪展开时及其后果的媒体报道的密切分析，将阐明这场环境健康和社会生态危机的关键社会层面。智力价值迄今尚未对法国热浪进行人文或社会科学研究。这个项目将历史学家的目光带到了当代环境危机的研究上，从而增加了越来越多的关于风险和脆弱性、环境正义和城市环境历史的STS文献。通过探索二十世纪社会脆弱性的历史产生，这个项目调查了一场环境灾难与法国城市当地社会世界的交集。哪些社会因素决定了环境危机中的风险？这些条件如何反映科学、政治和社会之间的关系？更广泛的影响这个项目最雄心勃勃的是，旨在利用科学、社会科学和人文专业知识的形式，为研究脆弱性的新框架的发展做出贡献。灾难往往是催化剂，突显了现有的社会、经济和文化鸿沟，这些鸿沟使社会容易发生灾难。理想情况下，完成的专著和文章将有助于关于危险管理的政策辩论，同时指出现代福利国家适应后工业时代不断变化的社会、政治和环境气候的基本需要。