Understanding the Culture of Markets by Storr Virgil Henry

Author:Storr, Virgil Henry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

For example, it is possible to use this approach to describe the attitudes toward work in St Bernard Parish

In Chamlee-Wright and Storr (2011b), my co-author and I argue that residents of St Bernard Parish think of themselves as “blue-collar” and that a definite spirit of hard work and independence exists in that community.29 For instance, both Michael Fontana† and Al Delaney† described St Bernard as “a blue-collar community.” Barbara Chase† , likewise, described St Bernard as “a good parish” comprised of “people not afraid of hard work.” Similarly, Frank Williams† states, “You know, we’re not lazy people. We work.” Residents of St Bernard also tend to think of themselves as “self-reliant” (ibid.). David Belacose† , for instance, remarked that “people down here are just a very self-sufficient, industrious sort of people. And, if they can’t get something done, they’re just gonna do it themselves.” Similarly, Doris Voitier described St Bernard residents as “a very resilient self-aligned people. It’s not a community that has a sense of entitlement, always looking for a handout or something.” And, Michael Fontana† claimed that “we in the Parish, we are a self-sufficient type of community.” Comments along these lines dominated the interviews that were conducted by our team. When asked to describe their parish, residents of St Bernard Parish tended to emphasize that theirs is a “working class,” “middle class,” community populated by “independent,” “self-reliant,” “hard working” people who “pay their bills” and are “not afraid to get their hands dirty.” “The key thrust of these comments,” ChamleeWright and Storr (ibid.: 278) conclude, “was not to emphasize a particular socioeconomic status or to offer a demographic description of the community but to suggest a particular orientation toward life and work that tends to characterize them and their neighbors.”

These attitudes toward work, arguably, shaped economic life in St Bernard Parish. Our purpose in that study was to explore how those attitudes toward work shaped the response of St Bernard residents to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina devastated this community. The storm, which left most of the parish under eight feet of standing water for nearly three weeks, caused almost $3 billion in property damage. And, as a result of Katrina and its aftermath, 163 residents of the community died. “In response to this disaster,” Chamlee-Wright and Storr (ibid.: 274) argue, “community members who returned within two years of Katrina tended to adopt a self-reliant strategy depending primarily on their own efforts and informal support from kin and other community members rather than formal support from external sources.”

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