Public Catastrophes, Private Losses

From COVID to climate-change-induced wildfires and hurricanes, we live in an era when catastrophes have become the new normal. But even though these events affect us all, some members of society are more vulnerable to harm than others.

This essay collection explores how the definition of catastrophe might be expanded to include many forms of large-scale structural violence on communities, species, and ecosystems. Using feminist methodologies, the contributors to Public Catastrophes, Private Losses trace the connections between seemingly unrelated forms of violence such as structural racism, environmental degradation, and public health crises. In contrast to a news media that focuses on mass fatalities and immediate consequences, these essays call our attention to how catastrophes can also involve slow violence with long-term effects.

The authors also consider how these catastrophes are profoundly shaped by government action or inaction, offering a powerful critique of how government neglect has cost lives and demonstrating how vulnerable populations can be better protected. The essays in this collection examine how public catastrophes imprint themselves on lives, as individuals and communities narrate, process, and grapple with legacies of loss. The book is thus a feminist intervention that challenges the binary between public and private, personal and political.

SARAH TOBIAS is the executive director of the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University, where she also serves as affiliate faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department. She is the coeditor of The Perils of Populism (Rutgers University Press) and Feeling Democracy: Emotional Politics in the New Millenium (Rutgers University Press).

ARLENE STEIN is a distinguished professor of sociology at Rutgers University and serves on the graduate faculty of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department. She was the director of the Institute for Research on Women from 2016-2022. She is the author or editor of nine books, including Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness, The Perils of Populism (Rutgers University Press), and Feeling Democracy: Emotional Politics in the New Millenium (Rutgers University Press).