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

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、救援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，根据官方警告做出选择，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代理模式，这种模式在欧美中产阶级背景下尤为普遍（Kitayama & Uchida, 2005; Markus & Kitayama, 2003）。然而，值得注意的是，在美国社会文化背景下，与社会阶层、种族和民族相关的显著差异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环境中，在这些环境中，其他的代理模式，与媒体和大多数观察者和响应者所援引的模式不同，是普遍存在的。没有认识到身处不同社会文化背景的人们可能对他们应该做什么和为什么做有不同的理解，他们可能需要不同类型的救济，这可能是伴随卡特里娜飓风而来的系统失灵的一个关键因素。一组来自不同种族和社会阶层背景的采访者将采访卡特里娜飓风的幸存者，对比灾前留下的人和逃离的人的观点。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合适的人的代理模式的隐性想法。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美中产阶级背景下普遍存在的代理模式，这种模式强调独立、选择、个人控制和未来意识。相比之下，那些留下来的人被认为更有可能根据工人阶级背景中普遍存在的代理模式来解释自己的行为，这种模式强调与社区和亲属的相互依存，保持坚韧和忍受困难，保持正直，并充分利用困难环境。这项研究的目的不仅仅是记录人与人之间的差异，而是把重点放在灾难性事件上，以证明人们对行动的理解差异会对他们的生活经历产生深远的影响，也会对规范救灾工作的政策和制度产生深远的影响。将代理模型的观点应用于紧急情况，为预测人们对疏散呼叫的不同反应提供了基础。代理模式的这些差异不仅仅是理论上的兴趣。这些知识对应急准备至关重要。为灾难做好准备并有效地应对灾难，需要了解受灾难影响的事件和行动的不同含义。如果不承认这些差异，就很难制定有效的应对措施。了解机构组织行为的其他模式应使应急管理人员能够更好地为未来的情况做好准备，并预测他们对应急准则和援助的反应可能出现分歧。

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.