http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/31/AR2005083102681.htmlCarried Away
Looting Has Its Roots in the Chaos Of Catastrophe
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 1, 2005; Page C01
We fear the anarchy, the feral fanaticism and, at the heart of it, the primeval bugbear of someone coming after our homes, our stores, our stuff.
To follow the news on television the past couple of days, looters have pretty much taken over the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "The fear, of course," said talk show host Tucker Carlson, who is less breathy and sensationalist than most, "is that looting contributes to the sense that things are out of control, and that lawlessness begins to snowball, and that stealing becomes murder."
It's among the scariest and nastiest of nightmares. One person breaks a store window, others seem to gain courage and storm the establishment. In the popular mind, we are watching mob psychology in dangerous action.
But, as we are also learning from the post-Katrina chaos, what we think of as looting may be more complicated than it seems.
Benigno E. Aguirre of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware has been watching and reading about looters in Louisiana. "It may look from the outside as if they are stealing or breaking the law," says Aguirre, "when in fact some of them are trying to survive."
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