Katrina was such a big and complex disaster that it will be a long time before its many different manifestations are fully documented and understood. How the social science research community makes sense of this event will tell us as much about social science as it does about the human significance of Katrina; and how researchers set the boundaries of the task will be among the most indicative clues. Will we mainly focus on identifying the flaws of the existing disaster management system with a view to making it function more effectively in the future? Or, will we address the deeper problem of an inadequate fit between what the research community knows about the human dimensions of uncertain environmental hazards and what society chooses to do with that knowledge? Or, will we push even further, across largely uncharted intellectual territory, to consider how different systems of knowledge about our ambiguous physical environment, and competing systems of action within our fractious society, can be brought together in pursuit of survival, security, sustainability and the other diverse goals that humans wish to obtain?