Studying Up House Moves
This ethnography focuses on homeowners who are in the position of being able to move their homes rather than on homeowners who are unable to because of prohibitive costs and have to pursue other options, namely inaction. The reason for this is mainly because the event of moving a home, particularly within the National Seashore is much more predominant than finding examples of homeowners who negligently leave their home to fall because of a lack of means or investment in the property. For this reason, I have studied the process of moving since it is more informative about the more common response of residents who have beachfront property, who generally fall into a higher social and economic class than is typically of focus in anthropology.
Drawing upon Laura Nader’s argument for the need to ‘study up’ more in anthropology, the examination of moving a house is a way to “study the culture of affluence rather than the culture of poverty”[i]. The culture of affluence is synonymous with the identity of the Cape and continues to be reinforced by the seasonal nature of the economy that is reliant upon the influx of summertime vacationers and the money they spend while visiting. The economy of the Cape is driven largely by tourism and the service industry and is dependent upon the input of resources from outsiders since without it the economy could not sustain itself. Parallel to this, many towns’ economies are reliant upon property taxes derived from upper class outsiders who have purchased second homes, often on prime beachfront property that is susceptible to erosion. Paradoxically these houses, which are typically only lived in for a small percentage of the year can be moved readily if need be because the homeowner is financially in a position to be able to do so. That is not to say that all homes directly on the beach are owned by the upper class, or that all upper class residents are always financially able to afford moving a house. This scenario is pervasive enough however that studying it rather than the opposite scenario of not moving a house provides a more revealing analysis of the economic and social stratifications of home ownership on the Cape.
The ethnographic focus is on a category of residents who have the luxury to be able to relocate their house to a safer location as opposed to residents, such as those living in New Orleans, who are without the means to move their houses, let alone rebuild them after Hurricane Katrina. While the later has been popularly covered in anthropology, the former needs further investigation in order to be able to provide a scholastic comparison of homeowner responses to coastal processes in this country. Providing a narrative about houses being moved allows us to study up so that we can study down. As Nader confirms:
The consequences of not studying up as well as down are serious in terms of developing adequate theory and description…At least posing the problems in a comparative frame would help improve our chances for understanding the forces that generate excessive poverty or affluence and the origin of those forces.[ii]
Evaluating the relocation of Cape Cod houses because of a natural ocean process provides a valuable framework with which to compare the experience of residents whose homes are subjected to similar processes like hurricanes, yet are in a different socioeconomic position to respond. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, countless homes were lost because they were vulnerable to the destructive forces of the ocean. Many of these homes, which were built at the lowest elevation points of the city belonged to poor, black residents, drawing clear lines in the racial geography of the city:
As the catastrophe made headlines worldwide, observers remarked openly about the overwhelming preponderance of the African American poor among those stranded within the city. Many explained the disproportion as a product of historical spatial correlations between class and topography. The New York Times editorialized that “it is not a coincidence that many of those hard-hit, low-lying areas have had poor and predominantly African-American residents.” A local activist commented that “black people only moved [to low-lying Gentilly and eastern New Orleans] because all the good high ground had been taken.”[iii]
A natural disaster can be very revealing about a community’s ability to respond in the event of a catastrophe and its social hierarchies. In the case of New Orleans where homes could not be relocated like on the Cape, residents had to be. The following image shows where displaced residents traveled to within the US, in the days following the hurricane.
Map depicting cities where displaced New Orleanians went after Hurricane Katrina. The above map was based on more than 40,000 postings on Internet "safe lists" by Katrina survivors. ePodunk analyzed messages containing both the person's hometown and the location after fleeing the storm.
These two case studies of Cape Cod and New Orleans differ in one crucial way, which is choice. Affluent Cape Codders living directly on the ocean do so willingly and typically have the resources to relocate their homes if need be. Contrastingly New Orleanians living in low-lying areas did not have the same option. Both cases are the result of oceanic vulnerability but by studying up the former, we can become better equipped to understand the latter.
[i] Nader, Laura. “Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained from Studying Up.” Reinventing Anthropology. Dell Hymes, ed. N.Y.: Pantheon Books. 1972. Pg. 284-311.
[ii] Nader, Laura. “Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained from Studying Up.” Reinventing Anthropology. Dell Hymes, ed. N.Y.: Pantheon Books. 1972. Pg. 284-311. Pg. 292
[iii] “Richard Campanella | An Ethnic Geography of New Orleans | The Journal of American History, 94.3 |.” The History Cooperative. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/94.3/campanella.html>.
