Negotiating Political and Moral Economies in the U.S. Caribbean after Hurricanes Irma and María

Abstract

Disasters, such as hurricanes, often stimulate moral economic sentiments and behaviors in line with those practiced by artisanal fishers, peasant farmers, and others whom economic anthropologists have been interested in for decades. In some cases, these behaviors are not new following a disaster, but merely more visible, as if they lay dormant between crises. Whether or not such behaviors are sustainable for long periods after disasters or stimulate increased public attention to the uneven and unequal impacts of disasters across different segments of populations, depends on a variety of factors, including predatory capitalist behaviors, state responses, cultural values of affected populations, and, in the case of societies experiencing high levels of migration, the involvement of people of diasporas in the crisis. This paper explores these issues in the context of recovery efforts from Hurricanes Irma and María in Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas.