Nan Lin, Nan Sancha Medwinter Duke University
This dissertation research is an innovative multi-method qualitative field study of two post-disaster neighborhoods in New York City, after Hurricane Sandy. Although these neighborhoods are similarly impacted by a natural disaster and receive similar types of aid through a large NGO (non-governmental organizations) and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), the racial and economic characteristics of these neighborhoods are quite different. The researcher will examine the social processes through which race and class shape whether and how residents strike close and informal connections with disaster responders. The research in particular focuses on how the type and quality of relationships formed, affects sharing of non-official disaster support and information. This focus on these newly formed connections is particularly important in this environment, where people's usual social connections were severely compromised. The research adopts a theory of network resources, social capital, which expects that assistance in the form of information or resources are informally and indirectly accessed through these interpersonal connections and that social position of one's connections and the quality of their relationship matter in this process.
The co-PI will conduct fieldwork in disaster relief and warming centers and surrounding devastated areas of two urban neighborhoods that are proximate to each other. Beginning only ten days after the hurricane and through 8 subsequent visits to the field site over the course of several months, the researcher interviewed 120 participants, including impacted residents, local community and out-of-town responders and volunteers. The data for this project is collected in three ways: (1) in-depth unstructured interviews, (2) semi-structured follow-up interviews, (3) and ethnographic participant observation. These are substantiated with documentary evidence of material culture including video and photographs of devastation, signs, flyers, and other print informational materials at relief sites. Through interviews and observations, the research will examine how cross-race and cross-class interactions, and community racial and class dynamics, impact the extent and kind of disaster support residents receive. Observations and inquiry will be used to first identify, then explain the relationships among (1) the types and strength of relationships forged among impacted-residents and disaster responders and volunteers; (2) the types of disaster-related information and resources shared across these connections; (3) the racial and class content of resident and volunteer conversations, accounts and interactions and (4) the aspects of local disaster response that structure interpersonal relations and resident participation.
Ultimately, the project contributes to four fields of sociological research: social capital theory, race relations, poverty, and disaster research. The unique design of the study allows for distinguishing the mechanisms linking the entire process of social capital to pinpoint at what stage (creation, access, activation and returns) social capital inequality occurs in the non-routine context of disaster. This emphasis differs from current research in this tradition, which explores one leg (e.g. activation) of the process in routine contexts such as job-finding. The research also addresses a key substantive debate on how urban poor Blacks and other minorities end up in the "wrong networks" whether it is through choice or opportunity. Or as explored here, to what extent is this phenomenon a network level process?
Broader Impacts: Beyond its theoretical contribution of examining social capital and social inequality outside routine contexts, this research has tremendous social significance as it informs practitioners of the interracial and inter-class dynamics of "networking" in devastated neighborhoods and the consequence for accessing available resources. This project will also enable a minority female qualitative researcher to establish and organize a substantial qualitative dataset and launch an independent-research agenda on racial-ethnic social capital inequalities within diverse populations in non-routine contexts. The qualitative dataset, will be used to train both undergraduate and graduate students in qualitative analytical methods, race and class inequalities, and the consequence of disasters for vulnerable populations. Findings from this project will be published in peer reviewed journals, and presented at academic and public conferences. The insights gained from this project, will also spur extension of similar analyses to other environments that are racially and socioeconomically diverse.
