Reproducing poverty and inequality in disaster: race, class, social capital, NGOs, and urban space in New York City after Superstorm Sandy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New York City on 29 October 2012 triggering an urban disaster. The city coordinated a massive disaster response operation with large NGOs and local nonprofits to mobilize 12,000 volunteers within the first 8 months of the disaster. This paper draws on 70 conversational interviews conducted in and around Large NGO and Local CBO (pseudonyms) disaster response centers on the Rockaway peninsula, Westville, and Eastville (pseudonyms). I present a multi-site, multi-scalar, ethnographic analysis that shows how and why NGO-volunteers and Westvillers create affective bonds, molecules, and conduits of post-disaster, social capital. This process leads survivors of the majority-White, high-SES Westville to access an informally relayed stream of unofficial, pertinent disaster information and resources. Survivors of Majority-nonWhite and impoverished Eastville are simultaneously crowded out. The paper contributes to critical environmental justice, stratification, social capital theory, and disaster management.