Urban Emergency (Mis)Management and the Crisis of Neoliberalism (Paperback)

This volume places the Flint, Michigan, water contamination disaster in the context of a broader crisis created by neoliberal governance in the United States. Authors from a range of disciplines (including sociology, criminal justice, anthropology, history, communications, and jurisprudence) examine the failures in Flint, with an emphasis on comparison. Their analysis calls attention to similar trajectories for cities like Detroit and Pontiac, in Michigan, and Stockton, in California. While the studies collected here emphasize policy failures, class conflict, and racial oppression, they also attend to the resistance undertaken by Flint residents, Michiganders, and U.S. activists, as they fought for environmental and social justice.

Contributors include: Terressa A. Benz, Jon Carroll, Graham Cassano, Daniel J. Clark, Katrinell M. Davis, Michael Doan, David Fasenfest, A.E. Garrison, Peter J. Hammer, Ami Harbin, Shea Howell, Jacob Lederman, Raoul S. Lievanos, Benjamin J. Pauli, and Julie Sze.

Terressa A. Benz received her Ph.D in Criminology, Law and Society from the University of California, Irvine. She is the author, most recently, of Black Femininity and Stand Your Ground: Controlling Images and the Elusive Defense of Self-Defense (Critical Sociology, forthcoming).

Graham Cassano received his Ph.D in Sociology from Brandeis University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on social theory, racial and ethnic history, and the sociology of culture, including A New Kind of Public: Community, Solidarity, and Political Economy in New Deal Cinema, 1935-1948 (Haymarket, 2015).