Hyperlocal Organizing: Collaborating for Recovery Over Time

(Hardback)

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Hyperlocal Organizing: Collaborating for Recovery Over Time explores the difficult work of post-disaster recovery. The author, Jack Harris, demonstrates that after disaster, broad interorganizational landscapes are needed to unite the grassroots, neighborhoods, communities, and institutions to solve problems of recovery and bring people home. Yet all too often, government disaster policy and institutions ignore the critical role of local knowledge and organizing. Exploring the organizational landscape of the Mid-Atlantic United States after Hurricane Sandy, Harris reveals how participation and collaboration open multiple pathways to recovery after disaster by building resilience and democratizing governance. Using powerful theories of communicating and organizing, this book develops a new frameworkhyperlocal organizingto address the grand challenge of community survivability in the twenty-first century. Achieving community survivability requires robust organizational partnerships and interorganizational collaboration to solve collective problems. The lessons Harris presents are important not just for post-disaster recovery, but for addressing grand challenges such as climate change, environmental justice, and equitable community development. Scholars of environmental communication, disaster studies, and emergency management, will find this book of particular interest.

Reviews

"Hyperlocal Organizing deftly walks readers through moment-by-moment analyses of material and human challenges in disaster recovery as neighbors, families, and volunteers first help and emergent groups form into local institutions. Rich examples and quotes from interviews and transcripts abound. Readers experience the boat flotillas that rescued workers stranded during 9-11, local restaurants and faith-based relief efforts that offered food and connection, and continuing struggles in New Orleans from Katrina and recurring storms. Details from the Hurricane Sandy long-term case study offer insights into communication management, social resilience, and democratic governance with transferrable applications to ever-emerging disruptions."

-- Patrice M. Buzzanell, University of South Florida

Hyperlocal Organizing is a significant contribution to the literature on long-term recovery after disasters, especially from extreme natural events. The volume is conceptually rich, draws careful lessons from the response to Hurricane Sandy, and provides valuable guidance for community involvement in recovery from future events.

-- Stan Deetz, University of Colorado at Boulder

Hyperlocal Organizing is a rich tour of the emergent actors, institutional players, and policies that shapes disaster response in the United States. This is a must-read for anyone interested in building social impact networks that support resilient communities.

-- Michelle Shumate, Northwestern University

Jack Harris draws upon an interdisciplinary body of theory and his own extensive experience working with long-term recovery following Hurricane Sandy to develop the concept of hyperlocal organizing. In the process, he foregrounds and contributes to groundbreaking theories of organizational communication and interorganizational collaboration, and their connections with stakeholder theories and theories of democratic governance. With a theoretically compelling yet accessible voice, Jack Harris offers an inspiring example of how love of place motivates participation in long-term disaster research and recovery, and leadership for how to improve both.

-- Kathleen J. Krone, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Author Bio

Jack L. Harris is assistant professor of communication and summer internship director at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.