Heatwave I

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Heatwave I

• September 2006

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Goals/Objectives Today

• Meet some subfields of sociology
• Lay foundations for analyzing the arguments of
  Heat Wave

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Race, Place, and VulnerabilityUrban
Neighborhoods and the Ecology of Support

• Individual epidemiology vs. sociological study
• Matching Pairs
• Identify Variations in Soc Env of Pov

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Two Purposes in Book

• Social Autopsy of heat wave how was
  vulnerability socially produced
• How was heat wave symbolically constructed as
  public phenomenon?

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Legacy I The Chicago School

• Early 20th century University of Chicago
• Case Studies
• Physical and social space
• Community/neighborhood
• Ethnoracial differences
• Examine city as complete system

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Legacy II Disaster Research

• Eriksons Everything in Its Path as model
• Making the invisible, visible you dont know
  what youve got til its gone
• Disasters compress social processes into short
  time and small space can fit into our lens

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First The Other Way
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CDC Model
Individual Factors Living alone medical
problems not leaving home confined to bed lack
of transportation lack of air conditioners lack
of nearby social contacts
Different Mortality Rates
Vulnerability
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Aside Epidemiology

• The study of factors affecting the health and
  illness of individuals and populations.
• Provides a basis for public health and medical
  research.
• Etymology
• epi demo? logo? upon the people science

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Social Epidemiology

• Would seem to be the same thing, but
• distinguished by its insistence on explicitly
  investigating social determinants of population
  distributions of health, disease, and wellbeing,
  rather than treating such determinants as mere
  background to biomedical phenomena
• http//jech.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/55/10
  /693

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Klinenbergs Model
Place Specific Ecology Abandoned buildings
commercial depletion, violence, degraded
infrastructure, low density, family dispersion,
fragile networks
Cultural Practices
Isolation
Different Mortality Rates
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Want to Study This Stuff?

• Consider a career in public health
• Study social science, natural science, and
  mathematics
• Pursue a masters or Ph.D. in EPH (epidemiology
  and public health).
• Work ranges from studying urban health in US to
  categorical group studies (why so much X among
  group Y?) to health and development work.
• Seek internships UCSF, Berkeley, etc.

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Could be said, then

• Structural Production
• What concrete behaviors, practices, relationships
  give rise to position of isolation occupied by so
  many elderly people in Chicago in 1995?
• Symbolic Production
• What concrete behaviors and rhetorical tactics
  give rise to how this historical phenomenon was
  understood?

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What happens in first chapter, The City of
Extremes?

• Establish that something unusual happened.
• Note heat waves kill more than other disasters
• Recognize patterns that give rise to questions
• Neighborhood, ethno-racial, gender and age
  variations in mortality

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Why fuss about age adjusted rates?

• Too easy to lie or just misread or misinterpret
  or misunderstand numbers
• Distortion based on limited perspective we all
  have
• Distortion of absolute numbers in the absence of
  a way to know is that high or low

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Examples

• New SATs
• Grading by a new teacher
• 60 people in Intro!!!
• Only one student from Guam in entering class at
  Yale
• Only 1/3 units in this neighborhood are owner
  occupied

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First Line of Attack Denominators

• First always ask of how many?
• Logic
• Emotional reaction to a number is generally based
  in idea that something is going on here (and if
  it werent the numbers would be different)
• Thus, we should try to establish what the numbers
  would be if nothing were going on

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The Most Obvious
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73 of victims were over 65 years old

• What question does this make you want to ask?

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What of population as a whole is over 65 years
old?
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Chicago Population 2000 Census
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300,000 out of 2.9 million or 10 of Chicagoans
are 65

• So, that 73 is a high number

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But back to our other variable race/ethnicity

• What if these groups have different age profiles?
  If older folks are dying disproportionately, we
  cant know whats going on across groups until we
  know whether they have different proportions of
  older members.

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Conclusion, I hope

• A little bit of math can be really important

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Aside Demography

• Demography is the scientific study of human
  population dynamics. It encompasses the study of
  the size, structure and distribution of
  populations, and how populations change over time
  due to births, deaths, migration and ageing.
• (http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography)

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Basic Demographic Social Facts

• Crude birth rate, annual number of live births
  per 1000 people.
• General fertility rate, annual number of live
  births per 1000 women of childbearing age.
• Age-specific fertility rates, annual number of
  live births per 1000 women in particular age
  groups
• Crude death rate, the annual number of deaths per
  1000 people.
• Infant mortality rate, the annual number of
  deaths of children less than 1 year old per 1000
  live births.
• Life expectancy, the number of years which an
  individual at a given age can expect to live

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The Demographic Equation

• Population Population Births - Deaths
  Immigration - Emigration

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You Want to Study Demography?

• International fertility, over-population
  studies
• Effects of changes in birth rates on retirement
  of current workers
• Movements of groups within countries and between
  countries
• Effects of proportions in populations
• HOW? Get a PhD in demography

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Social Facts in Need of Study

• Mortality rates differed by age, race/ethnicity,
  neighborhood, sex
• Shall we explain it by constitutional
  differences (biology, culture, etc.) in the types
  of people?
• Or can we look for structural, ecological
  explanations.
• Where (broadly understood) you are, not who you
  are, influences the risk you face from a natural
  disaster.

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In particular, isolation

• Why do so many people die alone?
• Because so many people live alone.
• Why do so many people live alone?
• Why do we care?
• social isolation is cause of numerous social
  problems
• Vulnerability to ordinary life shocks
• Medical care
• Study published this June suggests social
  isolation has increased markedly in last twenty
  years.

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Social Production of Isolation

• First observation its increasing
• Chapter Twos Argument place specific social
  ecology and its effect on cultural practices
  account for much of the disparity in the
  heat-wave mortality rates of the two Lawndales
  (91)

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Demographic Shift

• Rapid change in population
• But biggest story is disappearance of commerce
  places to go and places to work
• Migration and dispersion mean networks are
  stretched.
• Networks matter in crises

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Fear

• Culture of fear refers to the feelings of fear
  and anxiety expressed in contemporary public
  discourse and changing how people relate to one
  another.
• Some commentators argue that fear is constructed
  by scaremongering by those who think that a
  frightened populace is more easily manipulated.
• But, for many, its quite a rational and real
  assessment of a world in which they feel
  powerless and vulnerable.

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Space

• What is a neighborhood like?

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Gender
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SROs
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