Coping with a disaster like Katrina requires a framework of meaning, a set of shared understandings about what happened and why. The prevailing assumption of many journalists, responders, and observers, was that any sensible person--taking appropriate personal responsibility, making choices based on official warnings, and acting to control the situation--would evacuate. This understanding of how to act reflects a particular model of agency, one especially prevalent in European American middle class contexts (Kitayama & Uchida, 2005; Markus & Kitayama, 2003). Notably, however, the marked variation associated with social class, race, and ethnicity in U.S. sociocultural contexts has given rise to multiple models of how a person should act. Many who did not evacuate lived in largely working class and African American contexts where other models of agency, models that diverge from those invoked by the media and most observers and responders, were prevalent. The failure to understand that people engaged in different sociocultural contexts may have had different understandings of what they should have been doing and why, and that they may have needed different types of relief, is likely to have been a critical element in the system failure that accompanied Katrina.
A team of interviewers from diverse racial and social class backgrounds will interview Katrina survivors, contrasting the perspectives of those who stayed and those who fled prior to the disaster. The interviews will consist of a series of open-ended and multiple-choice questions designed to capture participants' models of agency-implicit ideas about how to be a normatively appropriate person. In explaining their behavior, those who evacuated prior to Katrina are expected to draw on a model of agency that is prevalent in middle class European American contexts, one that emphasizes independence, choice, personal control, and future-mindedness. In contrast, those who stayed are expected to be relatively more likely to explain their own behavior in terms of a model of agency prevalent in working class contexts, one that emphasizes interdependence with one's community and kin, staying tough and enduring hardship, maintaining integrity, and making the best of difficult circumstances. The goal of this research is not just to document differences among people, but rather to focus on a catastrophic event to demonstrate that differences in how people understand action can have profound consequences for their lived experiences, as well as for the policies and institutions that regulate relief efforts.
Applying a models-of-agency perspective to emergencies provides a basis for predicting why people respond differently to a call to evacuate. These differences in models of agency are not just of theoretical interest. Such knowledge is crucial for emergency preparedness. Preparing for disaster and effectively responding to it requires understanding the different meanings of the events and actions for those affected by the disaster. Without acknowledging these differences, it becomes difficult to formulate an effective response. Understanding that other models of agency organize behavior should allow emergency management to better prepare people for future situations, and to anticipate potential divergence in their response to emergency guidelines and aid.
