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Vincanne Adams , Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina (Durham, NC and London : Duke University Press , 2013, £14.99). Pp. 228. isbn 978 0 8223 5449 9 .
May Joseph , Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination (Durham, NC and London : Duke University Press , 2013, £15.99). Pp. 248. isbn 978 0 8223 5472 7 .
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In June 2012, the Oxford English Dictionary (at www.oed.com/view/Entry/224872, accessed 13 June 2014) added a new sense to its entry on the adjective "vulnerable," designating "a person in need of special care, support, or protection (esp. provided as a social service) because of age, disability, risk of abuse or neglect, etc." That this addition appeared at a time when individual vulnerability to economic forces and ecological crisis has become increasingly evident seems telling. The growing concern in the United States (and elsewhere) about poverty, unemployment (especially among young people), job insecurity, homelessness and climate change, including the wide-ranging debates surrounding "precarity" and the "precariat," suggests that contemporary life might now be defined by a distinct vulnerability.
In their very different ways, two new books published by Duke University Press take vulnerability - in its social, economic and ecological forms - as an essential feature of the contemporary American city. For Vincanne Adams, in Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith, the recovery process in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005 is "a foreshadowing of a future that could belong to anyone, a catastrophic revelation of vulnerability not just of a few Americans but of an American way of life" (181). If the OED highlights "social service" provision for the vulnerable as a vital constituent of the term's meaning, then Adams's book exposes those who now profit from this provision and the devastating consequences this entails. In Fluid New York, May Joseph argues that the impact of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 dramatically changed New Yorkers' perceptions of their own vulnerability, especially on the island of Manhattan, in the face of rapid climate change. "To live in Manhattan is to live vulnerably" (58), she claims, but her bold and expansive reading of the city is also a celebration of...