The devastating heat wave of August 2003 killed nearly fifteen thousand people in France, including more than a thousand in Paris alone. The social histories of many of these victims draw attention to the links between place and vulnerability in the urban environment, as well as their historical particularities. Housing conditions influenced a geography of vulnerability during the catastrophe. This essay focuses on this problem with attention to the particular population that, while “housed,” lives on the precipice of homelessness. Investigating the everyday lives and deaths of these victims demonstrates the critical importance of the geographic dimensions of risk in the urban landscape, as well as the historical development of the place-based vulnerabilities that the disaster cast in high relief.
La vague de chaleur meurtrière d’août 2003 a entraîné la mort de presque 15 000 personnes en France, dont plus d’un millier dans la capitale. L’histoire sociale de nombreuses victimes de la canicule découvre les liens étroits entre les lieux de résidence et la vulnérabilité dans l’environnement urbain, ainsi que leurs particularités historiques. Les conditions de logement ont eu une influence profonde sur la géographie de la vulnérabilité pendant la catastrophe. Cet article a pour but de mettre en évidence ce problème grâce à sa focalisation sur une population qui, bien qu’elle soit « logée », vit dans une condition de précarité absolue. Une enquête sur la vie quotidienne et la mort anonyme de ces victimes peut souligner l’importance critique des dimensions géographiques du risque dans le paysage urbain ainsi que le développement historique des vulnérabilités locales que la canicule a montrées.
Author notes
Richard C. Keller is associate professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is author of Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa (2007) and (with Carine Vassy and Robert Dingwall) of Enregistrer les morts, identifier les surmortalités: Une comparaison Angleterre, Etats-Unis et France (2010), as well as editor (with Warwick Anderson and Deborah Jenson) of Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignties (2011).
This article draws on research supported by the National Science Foundation, the Mairie de Paris, the University of Wisconsin Graduate School, the MiRE-DREES program of the French Ministry of Health, the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, and a WARF-H. I. Romnes Award from the University of Wisconsin. The author thanks those institutions for their support. The author also thanks Elinor Accampo, Jennifer Boittin, Bill Cronon, Jeffrey H. Jackson, Gregg Mitman, Roxanne Panchasi, Laura Senier, Tamara Whited, members of the University of Wisconsin Center for Culture, History, and Environment Colloquium, and two anonymous readers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.