TY - JOUR
T1 - Church-based social capital, networks and geographical scale
T2 - Katrina evacuation, relocation, and recovery in a New Orleans Vietnamese American community
AU - Airriess, Christopher A.
AU - Li, Wei
AU - Leong, Karen
AU - Chen, Angela
AU - Keith, Verna M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by National Science Foundation SGER Grants 0555135 and 0555086. The authors also thank Father The Vien Nguyen, Cyndi Nguyen, Thu Nguyen, Vietnamese Initiative in Economic Training and Mary Queen of Vietnam Church for their patience and support throughout the research process.
PY - 2008/5
Y1 - 2008/5
N2 - This research examines the role of social capital and networks to explain the evacuation, relocation, and recovery experiences of a Vietnamese American community in New Orleans, Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As the single largest community institution, the parish church's complex bonding and bridging social capital and networks proved particularly critical in part because of its historically based ontological security. The process of evacuation, but especially relocation and recovery, was dependent on deploying co-ethnic social capital and networks at a variety of geographical scales. Beyond the local or community scale, extra-local, regional, and national scales of social capital and networks reproduced a spatially redefined Vietnamese American community. Part of the recovery process included constructing discursive place-based collective-action frames to successfully contest a nearby landfill that in turn engendered social capital and networks crossing ethnic boundaries to include the extra-local African American community. Engaging social capital and networks beyond the local geographical scale cultivated a Vietnamese American community with an emergent post-Katrina cultural and political identity.
AB - This research examines the role of social capital and networks to explain the evacuation, relocation, and recovery experiences of a Vietnamese American community in New Orleans, Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As the single largest community institution, the parish church's complex bonding and bridging social capital and networks proved particularly critical in part because of its historically based ontological security. The process of evacuation, but especially relocation and recovery, was dependent on deploying co-ethnic social capital and networks at a variety of geographical scales. Beyond the local or community scale, extra-local, regional, and national scales of social capital and networks reproduced a spatially redefined Vietnamese American community. Part of the recovery process included constructing discursive place-based collective-action frames to successfully contest a nearby landfill that in turn engendered social capital and networks crossing ethnic boundaries to include the extra-local African American community. Engaging social capital and networks beyond the local geographical scale cultivated a Vietnamese American community with an emergent post-Katrina cultural and political identity.
KW - Community
KW - Geographical scale
KW - Hurricane Katrina
KW - Social capital and networks
KW - Vietnamese Americans
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U2 - 10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.11.003
DO - 10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.11.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:42649124311
SN - 0016-7185
VL - 39
SP - 1333
EP - 1346
JO - Geoforum
JF - Geoforum
IS - 3
ER -