Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social and Political Impacts of Flooding in the Tensas Basin of Louisiana, 1865-1930

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

When people hear the term "natural disaster," emphasis usually is given to the natural processes that have produced an extreme event like a flood, earthquake, or severe storm. What makes these events disasters, however, often is not simply the physical damage resulting from natural processes but the harm caused to vulnerable social and economic systems. This doctoral dissertation research project examines the role of the environment in the reconfiguration of political and social relations in the U.S. South after the Civil War through an analysis of the experience of flooding from 1865 to 1930 in the Tensas River Basin of Louisiana. The Tensas Basin consists of all or a portion of six parishes in the northeastern part of the state, and until the early-twentieth century, Mississippi River flooding was a common occurrence there. Today we have a good sense of how flooding shaped and reshaped the physical terrain in the lower Mississippi River valley, but the social and political repercussions of the repeated flooding remain largely unexplored. This study brings environment and politics together by focusing on three interrelated sets of questions. Those questions have to do with the construction and enforcement of social relationships, the restructuring of relations among government institutions, and the local implementation of social policy. This project involves analysis of written texts, a statistical analysis of a small portion of the basin's residents and landowners, and a reading of the physical landscape. The written primary sources consist of government documents, newspapers, manuscript collections, maps, photographs, and published books, scientific reports, and articles. Statistics will be collected from census, tax, conveyance, and plantation records. An underlying assumption of this project is that flooding created another arena for human conflict. Rather than communities being united as they resisted and recovered from floods, this study will show that flood policies (both prevention and relief) divided people, that flooding upset social relations so that people struggled over how to reorder their world, and that how people experienced nature and what they thought about it were affected by race, class, and gender. This project will advance our understanding of the social construction of natural disaster, the process of social categorization through public policy, and the place of environment in U.S. political history. In addition, a study of the Tensas Basin of Louisiana will provide insights that might frame studies in other places, providing valuable new insights into the ways that human actors and institutions anticipate and respond to extreme natural events. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.