When the Center Is on Fire

Diane Harriford is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Women's Studies at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Becky Thompson is Professor of Sociology at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts.

• Acknowledgments Introduction: An Offering ... Can We Talk? Part One. Consciousness: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina Chapter One. Condoleezza Rice, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Double Consciousness Chapter Two. Hurricane Katrina and Historical Memory Part Two. Spirit: The 9/11 Attacks Chapter Three. The 9/11 Attacks and Max Weber Chapter Four. Moments of Grace/Grace Undermined Part Three. Labor: The Abu Ghraib Prison Abuses Chapter Five. Karl Marx and Alienation Chapter Six. Looking for Species Being: Trauma and Its Consequences Part Four. Body: The Columbine School Shootings Chapter Seven. Émile Durkheim and Embodiment in the Age of the Internet Conclusion: Regeneration Notes Bibliography Index

"When the Center Is on Fire is a much-needed contribution to sociological understandings of contemporary U.S. society as shaped by global capital and imperialism. The authors reanimate social theory and put it to the test in imaginative and innovative ways... Their readings of classical social theory help us recover a humane, life-giving, and connective social ethic that can fruitfully counteract the dehumanization, atomization, and emptiness uncovered by events that have shaken the United States in the new millennium." Monisha Das Gupta, University of Hawai'i, author of Unruly Immigrants: Rights, Activism and Transnational South Asian Politics in the United States