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Space and Culture
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Death on the Roof

Race and Bureaucratic Failure

Harvey Molotch

New York University

The inadequacy of response to the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina should not be attributed to "bureaucracy." Real bureaucracies, as opposed to idealized Weberian models of them, often deal effectively with changing or even unique circumstance. The failure was not in a mode of social organization but in the perverse priorities, inflected with racism, that allowed "work to rule" as default practice. Given the situation at hand, this was pathological bureaucracy, not normal bureaucracy.

Key Words: New Orleans • Hurricane Katrina • bureaucracy • "work to rule" • racism

Space and Culture, Vol. 9, No. 1, 31-34 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1206331205283993
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?