How Community Emerges Across Disaster Phases: The Production of Disaster Social Capital in Hurricane Harvey

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 15: Disaster, Risk, and Recovery

Abstract

This study examines how a sense of community develops through the production of disaster social capital across the preparedness, response, and recovery phases of disaster. While existing sociological disaster research highlights the importance of social capital and community ties for resilience, less attention has been given to the social mechanisms through which these ties are activated, negotiated, and sustained over time. Rather than treating sense of community as a pre-existing resource or an automatic outcome of crisis, this study conceptualizes it as an emergent and interactional process shaped through reciprocal exchange, moral evaluation, and shifting relational boundaries.
Drawing on 100 conversational interviews from the Hurricane Harvey Oral Narratives on Record (HONOR) dataset, this research analyzes survivors’ retrospective accounts of preparation, response, and recovery stages of the disaster. The findings show that sense of community is not a pre-existing sentiment or static resource but a relational and temporally unfolding process. This process is sustained through the production of disaster social capital, including interaction-based ties, reciprocal exchanges, and evolving moral commitments. Acts of mutual aid fostered belonging, shared responsibility, and collective identity, with survivors frequently describing a “restoration of humanity.” However, solidarity remained ambivalent and negotiated. Emotional attachment to personal belongings, particularly when discarded by well-intentioned helpers, complicated experiences of gratitude and revealed tensions during response and recovery stages.
By foregrounding the relational and temporally unfolding nature of disaster social capital, this study advances a process-oriented understanding of community resilience and offers insights for community-centered disaster response and recovery strategies.

Author

• Minh-Anh Ly, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder