Analysis Of Klinenberg's Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy Of Disaster In Chicago

In the book Heat Wave A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, by Eric Klinenberg expose how a number of social, political, and economical factors created one of the largest and most traumatic events in recent history. The Chicago heat wave in 1995 was a disaster, which led to over 700 heat-related deaths in Chicago over a five days period creating. Most of the victims of the heat wave were poor elderly residents of the city, who didn’t have any relative or were neglected by the public officials and was unable to purchase air-conditioning units for their home. Most of the elderly isolated themselves and refused to open windows or sleep outside in fear of crime. Alot of lives were loss or in destress because of isolation, poverty and media who played a major role by portraying the countless deaths on the natural disaster and highlighting of negative activities especially in the urban area

according to klinenberg, which we will be focusing on throughout the report on.
Summary
Isolation was caused due to a significant amount of reasons, According to the text “In recent years a number of studies have shown that older people living in violent and deteriorated urban areas tend to be more isolated and afraid of crime than those in more robust region.” The elderly individuals are more home bound naturally especially when they are within the age brackets of 70-80 years of age, also they pay close attention to the news and what is going on within the community. When the heat wave occur it had an alarming effect on the elderly people and mostly criminals within the lower income neighborhood because the crime rate drastically went up and the elderly believe that their home would of been a safe heaven with all the chaos that was going on outside.
Isolation was not only caused due to crime, but the older generation always wanted to have a great sense of independence to remain visible within society especially the males, even if that means not asking or accepting help from anyone as stated in the text. As the saying goes “once a man, twice a child” some senior citizens don’t believe in that saying. Also most of them didn’t have any relative that live with them to help harbor the isolation, which also lead to such a high death toll.
Poverty had a major part to play with the high death toll, social inequality and segregation between races especially between the black and the whites. The text talked about how the upper class was being attended to better that the low incomes community and they were more likely to live because they had funds to provide themselves with the resources like the air conditioned units and fans. If any family member happened to get sick they were likely to get taken cared of faster than someone within the low-income community.
Media was portrayed very misleading in the text because of how they carried out their information, to gain more views.

According to the text “ there were relatively few stories or images focusing on aging, poverty, isolation, crime and fear, and the ethno racial, or gender distribution of mortality, morbidity, and access to care.” They went to the extreme by looking for more information and pictures with people in body bags to put on their front page. People use the media as their information source to guide them on what is going on in their countries and around the world. What is portrayed in the media is often taken as true even if it actually is not completely accurate. Throughout the text it was clear to see that there is pressure when it comes to the media. News reporter often think about what they are going to present to the public because it has to be brain washing and appealing, but they also want to keep their connections to sources such as public officials. This means what they end up reporting is effected by what public officials will approve of, to make them look

good.
Discussion
Conflict theory derived from the works of Karl Marx who believes society fights for social and economic resources. In society social order is maintained by domination, with power by political, economic and social resources. With conflict theory, inequalities exist because those in control of proportion share in society tend to advantage their status. Conflict theory played a major role especially during the heat wave as we spoke in class because the people in the lower class community were attracting most of the attention other than the upper. There was no equal treatment for everyone because those with the most resources exercise their power over others with inequality and power struggles. Poor people in the urban community were not fortunate as other to purchase the resources to survive or had anyone to attend to them if they were ill.
Symbolic interactionism is developed by people perception on what they was thought growing up and believe. For example in class we talk about race and where it came about, society created it. Also gender is tied to one by interactions between male and female along with external influences. Symbolic interactionism was definitely shown during the heat wave because there was inequality, race, and racial issues mainly because of power and the actions that come behind it.