Community Revival in the Wake of Disaster: Lessons in Local Entrepreneurship

by Virgil Henry Storr, Stefanie Haeffele-Balch, Laura E. Grube

Rebounding after disasters like tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods can be daunting. Communities must have residents who can not only gain access to the resources that they need to rebuild but who can also overcome the collective action problem that characterizes post-disaster relief efforts. Community Revival in the Wake of Disaster argues that entrepreneurs, conceived broadly as individuals who recognize and act on opportunities to promote social change, fill this critical role. Using examples of recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Hurricane Sandy on the Rockaway Peninsula in New York, the authors demonstrate how entrepreneurs promote community recovery by providing necessary goods and services, restoring and replacing disrupted social networks, and signaling that community rebound is likely and, in fact, underway. They argue that creating space for entrepreneurs to act after disasters is essential for promoting recovery and fostering resilient communities.

Genres: Economics

205 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2015

Reviews

[Michael Wu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent research and a strong case for more civil society and less government intervention in times of crisis. A must read for social scientists and policy makers.

[Gregory Dolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think this book is necessarily bad, but I would find it very hard to recommend this book to anyone. The first third of this book does an alright overview of current research and understanding of entrepreneurship though at times it feels more like reading a Sears catalogue for different papers rather than a cohesive book as many times a concept will be explained and then two paragraphs will be dedicated to giving a single sentence overview of some papers written on the subject. In this way it was a bit tedious to read as all the papers were cited directly in text and therefore most of these chapters were filled by (Author's Name Year) over and over.
I think the rest of the book (barring the last two chapters) would be something I could see myself recommending to anyone curious of examples of Hurricane Katrina and Sandy. However, apart from the overused phrase "In the language from chapter 3," which was accompanied by a single sentence or maybe two about how these examples related to entrepreneurship, these chapters didn't feel like they were tied correctly to the first part of the book.
The second to last chapter which was on policy proposal suffered from trying to give too much background or examples and maybe a paragraph to actually proposals and the final chapter just summarized the entire book. I'd say overall this book felt more like a very long academic paper you'd find in a journal than a book covering the subject but then again I believe that much of this book was parts reproduced from academic papers.

[Emma Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this in a research project and it was very informative. There were a lot of examples and references to other papers. The last half did get a bit repetitious because, quite frankly, the lessons about entrepreneurship were mentioned at the very beginning and it was really only the examples that acted as expansions on these.

[Cody Moser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting ethnographies/case studies of entrepreneurship for thinking about models