Trinkets Left By Katrina: How Changes to New Orleans' Landscape Have Led to Personal Attachment
type: CreativeWork
description: Humans have an innate tendency to attach themselves to objects on their cultural landscape. After a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, people seem to hold on to objects left behind by the disaster. This paper examines several of the concepts and reasons as to why attachments may have formed to objects left on New Orleans' landscape after Hurricane Katrina. I explored human reactions after a natural disaster, and discussed how memories, collective and individual, often lead to personal attachment to objects. In an attempt to get a better understanding of this phenomenon, 250 surveys were distributed to residents in the New Orleans metro area. The surveys were used as a tool to discover if attachments were formed and if so, what led to the attachment. The results from the survey revealed that 38% of the people surveyed formed an attachment to an object left by Hurricane Katrina.
abstract: Humans have an innate tendency to attach themselves to objects on their cultural landscape. After a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, people seem to hold on to objects left behind by the disaster. This paper examines several of the concepts and reasons as to why attachments may have formed to objects left on New Orleans' landscape after Hurricane Katrina. I explored human reactions after a natural disaster, and discussed how memories, collective and individual, often lead to personal attachment to objects. In an attempt to get a better understanding of this phenomenon, 250 surveys were distributed to residents in the New Orleans metro area. The surveys were used as a tool to discover if attachments were formed and if so, what led to the attachment. The results from the survey revealed that 38% of the people surveyed formed an attachment to an object left by Hurricane Katrina.
author: Mitchell, Brandie Shauntelle
keywords: Cultural landscape, natural disaster, Hurricane Katrina, memories, personal attachment
date published: 2009-05-15T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:28:56Z
provider: University of New Orleans
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of New Orleans