Making and Scheduling Citizens: Political Time and the Democratic Potential of Hurricanes

ABSTRACT

This article supplements the one-sided diet of spatial concepts, metaphors, and case studies used by scholars to feed our thinking on how everyday people become collective political agents. Drawing from interviews and ethnographic observations of a post-Hurricane Sandy relief effort, I highlight how people’s understanding of time is an important, but often neglected resource for political mobilization. To examine this dimension, I excavate from Sheldon Wolin’s work two concepts for thinking about political time and how events such as hurricanes can instigate extraordinary acts of political participation. I argue that insofar as a natural disaster is perceived as a crisis, it can break the boundaries of “time zones” in which we are normally isolated, and the established “rhythms” that schedule and limit citizen participation. Such a process helps spread concern for our common fate, and the need for people to act on its behalf in unscripted ways.

Acknowledgments

For their time and insights, I thank the participants in Occupy Sandy. I received helpful suggestions on earlier drafts from members of the Tahrir Moments Research Group, participants at the York University conference, “Vision(s) of Politics: The Thought of Sheldon Wolin,” as well as participants in the Political Theory Workshop at UMass Amherst. For their individual help, I also thank Amel Ahmed, Yuna Blajer de la Garza, Adam Dahl, Robert Darrow, Jeffery S. Juris, Frederic C. Schaffer, Wendy Wolford, Nicholas Xenos, and the editors and two anonymous reviewers for New Political Science.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ For an example on public space and democracy, see Susan Bickford, “Constructing Inequality: City Spaces and the Architecture of Citizenship,” Political Theory 28:3 (2000), pp. 355–76. For an example on public space and activism, see Jeffery S. Juris, “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social Media, Public Space, and Emerging Logics of Aggregation,” American Ethnologist 39:2 (2012), pp. 259–79.

² This period of Wolin’s work spans the mid-1990s to his final publications in the 2000s, which I analyze in detail below.

³ Much of the field of disaster studies grew out of a critique of the notion that disasters are natural, but maintains an understanding of disasters as hazards to be mitigated for humanitarian ends. For example, see Louise K. Comfort, et al., “Reframing Disaster Policy: The Global Evolution of Vulnerable Communities,” Environmental Hazards 1:1 (1999), pp. 39–44.

⁴ Michalis Diakakis, et al., “Hurricane Sandy Mortality in the Caribbean and Continental North America,” Disaster Prevention Management 24:1 (2015), pp. 132–48; FEMA, “FEMA Fact Sheet: Mitigation Assessment Team Results – Hurricane Sandy” Department of Homeland Security (June 19, 2018), available online at: https://www.fema.gov/mat-results-hurricane-sandy.

⁵ One study shows that Obama actually gained popularity because of Hurricane Sandy, though not in key swing- states. Yamil Velez and David Martin, “Sandy the Rainmaker: The Electoral Impact of a Super Storm,” Political Science & Politics 46:2 (2013), pp. 313–23.

⁶ In response, Rupert Murdoch and other major campaign donors made it clear to Christie that his bipartisan approach to crisis management was undermining his potential as a national candidate in the Republican Party. Michael Barbaro, “After Obama, Christie Wants a G.O.P. Hug,” The New York Times (November 19, 2012), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/us/politics/after-embrace-of-obama-chris-christie-woos-a-wary-gop.html.

⁷ Ed O’Keefe, “Hurricane Sandy Highlights how Obama and Romney Respond to Disasters,” The Washington Post (October 29, 2012), available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/hurricane-sandy-highlights-how-obama-and-romney-respond-to-disasters/2012/10/29/85ae66a2-21db-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_story.html.

⁸ Max Liboiron, “Interview with Occupy Sandy Volunteer,” Superstorm Research Lab (July 24, 2013), available online at: https://superstormresearchlab.org/2013/07/24/interview-with-occupy-sandy-volutneer/.

⁹ For the survey results, see e-mail, “Re: [OS] Volunteer Experience Survey Prelim Results,” Occupy Sandy Coordination Listserve (December 5, 2012).

¹⁰ Alan Feuer, “Occupy Sandy: A Movement Moves to Relief,” The New York Times (November 9, 2012), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/nyregion/where-fema-fell-short-occupy-sandy-was-there.html?pagewanted=all.

¹¹ The exact number of participants is unknown. An Occupy Sandy bookkeeper reported to me that the number is as high as eighty-thousand, while the organization’s website reports a figure of fifty-thousand. Author’s field notes at “People’s Recovery Summit,” (February 1, 2013); Occupy Sandy, “Support our Ongoing Work,” available at: http://occupysandy.net/2013/10/support-our-ongoing-work/; as cited by Allison Kilkenny, “Occupy Sandy: One Year Later,” The Nation (October 28, 2013), available online at: https://www.thenation.com/article/occupy-sandy-one-year-later/.

¹² These phrases appear to be adaptations from similar activist and recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina, such as the Common Ground Collective and the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund. See Scott Crow, Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2014); and Rachel Luft, “Beyond Disaster Exceptionalism: Social Movement Developments in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,” American Quarterly 61:3 (2009), pp. 499–527.

¹³ Justin Wedes quoted in Max Liboiron, “Interview with Justin Wedes, Occupy Sandy Volunteer, 1/10/13,” Superstorm Research Lab (July 24, 2013), available online at: https://superstormresearchlab.org/2013/07/24/interview-with-justin-wedes-occupy-sandy-volunteer/.

¹⁴ See Crow, Black Flags and Windmills; and Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs (Mosinee, WI: Yellow Jack Distro, 2003).

¹⁵ For example, Alan Feurer, “Occupy Sandy: A Movement Moves to Relief,” The New York Times (November 9, 2012), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/nyregion/where-fema-fell-short-occupy-sandy-was-there.html.

¹⁶ Justin Wedes, interview.

¹⁷ Other theorists similarly critique the ubiquity of spatial metaphors at the expense of temporal ones in political analysis, and they provide a more comprehensive account of the prevalence of spatial language than I do here. For examples, see Joan Tronto, “Time’s Place,” Feminist Theory 4:2 (2003), pp. 119–38; and Chad Lavin, “Escaping the Spatial Imaginary, or, Politics as an Occupation,” New Political Science 39:4 (2017), pp. 538–53.

¹⁸ Timothy Garton Ash, “The Revolution of the Magic Lantern,” The New York Review (January 18, 1990).

¹⁹ Jeffery S. Juris, “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere.”

²⁰ See Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); and David Harvey, “The Party of Wall Street Meets its Nemesis,” Verso Blog (October 28, 2011), available online at: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/777-davidharvey-the-party-of-wall-street-meets-its-nemesis.

²¹ Author’s field notes at “People’s Recovery Summit” (February 1, 2013).

²² OccupySandy Coordination Listserve thread, “Democracy in Control of Occupy Sandy Funds” (December 4, 2012).

²³ Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities (London, UK: Verso, 1991).

²⁴ Sheldon Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” in Seyla Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 31–45; and Sheldon Wolin, “What Time is it?” Theory & Event 1:1 (1997).

²⁵ For Wolin’s account of the spatial characteristics of democracy in ancient Athens and its eventual loss, see Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 66–85. For a discussion of his misgivings of the nation-state scale of politics, see Nicholas Xenos, “Momentary Democracy,” in Aryeh Botwinick and William E. Connolly (eds.), Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 33.

²⁶ Thus, Chad Lavin’s otherwise thoughtful essay on the importance of time in political theory mistakenly claims that, “[Wolin’s] discussions of anti-politics … are entirely spatial.” Lavin, “Escaping the Spatial Imaginary, or, Politics as an Occupation,” p. 550.

²⁷ For an early example, see E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past & Present 38 (1967) pp. 56–97. For a more recent example, Elizabeth F. Cohen, The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

²⁸ Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008); David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1990); Hartmut Rosa and William E. Scheuerman, High-Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power, and Modernity (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009); Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 206–45; Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (New York, NY: Continuum, 2004).

²⁹ Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).

³⁰ See Sheldon Wolin, “Hannah Arendt: Democracy and the Political,” Salmagundi (Spring-Summer, 1983), pp. 3–19.

³¹ Sheldon Wolin, “Norm and Form: The Constitutionalizing of Democracy,” in J. Peter Euben, John R., Wallach, and Josiah Ober (eds), Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 34. See also Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 557.

³² Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” p. 31.

³³ Sheldon Wolin, “Hannah Arendt and the Ordinance of Time,” Social Research 44:1 (1977), p. 94.

³⁴ Wolin, “Hannah Arendt: Democracy and the Political,” pp. 3–19.

³⁵ This focus on political action sets Wolin’s attention to “rhythm” apart from those scholars who use the term to discuss how ecological seasons or capitalism order the time of everyday life, especially labor. On rhythms and seasons, see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 97–109; on rhythms and capitalism, see Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis; and Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity.

³⁶ For example, see Jennet Kirkpatrick, “Democracy on the 1am: Crisis, Constitutionalism, and Extra-legality,” Contemporary Political Theory 11:3 (2012), pp. 264–84.

³⁷ Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” pp. 31–45.

³⁸ Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 238–58.

³⁹ In a later writing, Wolin uses the metaphor of “tempo” to the same effect. He contrasts the “frantic, disruptive tempos” of activists with fascist propaganda that depicts order, predictability, marching in unison. Sheldon Wolin, “Agitated Times,” Parallax 11:4 (2005), pp. 2–11.

⁴⁰ I am thankful to Nicholas Xenos and Frederic C. Schaffer for their suggestion to switch my original analogy from a dancer to a music ensemble in order to better illustrate the collaborative nature of Wolin’s concept of “democracy.”

⁴¹ Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” p. 42.

⁴² Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. 602.

⁴³ This includes his two articles, “What Time is it?”; and “Agitated Times,”; as well as his book chapter, “Political Theory: From Vocation to Invocation,” in Jason A. Frank and John Tambornino (eds), Vocations of Political Theory (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 3–24.

⁴⁴ Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 22–4; Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (London, UK: Fontana, 1973).

⁴⁵ Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 52–8.

⁴⁶ Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space: 1880–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 78.

⁴⁷ As she put it, we often react to these stories with sympathy, rendering us spectators to other people’s suffering, and thus exonerating us from responsibility, whether as perpetrators or allies. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), p. 42.

⁴⁸ Jeffery Isaac, “The Strange Silence of Political Theory,” Political Theory 23:4 (1995), pp. 636–52.

⁴⁹ Wolin, “What Time is it?”

⁵⁰ Wolin, “What Time is it?” No page numbers. Emphasis added.

⁵¹ Note the overlap here with David Harvey’s account of time-space compression of postmodernism; Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, pp. 284–307.

⁵² Wolin, “What Time is it?”

⁵³ Wolin, “Agitated Times,” p. 10.

⁵⁴ William Connolly, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), pp. 140–75.

⁵⁵ This includes David McIvor, “The Politics of Speed: Connolly, Wolin, and the Prospects for Democratic Citizenship in an Accelerated Polity,” Polity 43:1 (2011), pp. 58–83; Massimiliano Tomba, “Clash of Temporalities: Capital, Democracy, and Squares,” South Atlantic Quarterly 113:2 (2014), pp. 353–66; Mario Feit, “Wolin, Time, and the Democratic Temperament,” Theory & Event 15:4 (2012); Filip Vostal, “Slowing Down Modernity: A Critique,” Time and Society 28:3, (2017), pp. 1–22; and Lavin, “Escaping the Spatial Imaginary, or, Politics as an Occupation.” A more unique response was Michael Shapiro’s focus on Wolin’s concern with how nation-states monopolize narratives; see his “Time, Disjuncture, and Democratic Citizenship,” in Democracy and Vision, pp. 232–55.

⁵⁶ On the multiplicity of time-consciousness, see Barbara Adam, Time and Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1990).

⁵⁷ Wolin, Democracy, p. 289.

⁵⁸ Feit, “Wolin, Time, and the Democratic Temperament,”.

⁵⁹ When discussing agitated tempo, Wolin describes demonstrations that occur outside of political institutions: they “d[o] not follow a calendar or hold prescribed session … The aim is to disrupt the ordinary tempos of the political process either by demanding a halt or a change in direction or a redoubled effort” (Wolin, “Agitated Times,” p. 2).

⁶⁰ Wolin, “Agitated Times,” p. 8.

⁶¹ For an elaboration and defense of this focus on outwardly observable aspects of political culture, see Lisa Wedeen, “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science,” American Political Science Review 96:4 (2002), pp. 713–28.

⁶² Author’s field notes at “People’s Recovery Summit,” (February 2, 2013).

⁶³ OccupySandy Coordination Listserve thread, “Re: [OS] Sandy circle logo?” (December 6, 2012).

⁶⁴ Author’s field notes at “People’s Recovery Summit,” (February 2, 2013).

⁶⁵ Emphasis added. Justin Wedes, interview.

⁶⁶ Author’s field notes at “People’s Recovery Summit,” (February 1, 2013).

⁶⁷ OccupySandy Coordination Listserve thread, “Democracy in Control of Occupy Sandy Funds,” (December 4, 2012).

⁶⁸ As of this writing, some of the neighborhood-level projects continue on their own.

⁶⁹ Wittgenstein uses the “one-sided diet” metaphor to caution against focusing on a narrow set of examples in our thinking. Here, I extend it to caution against a narrow set of metaphors and concepts. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1986), p. 593.

⁷⁰ For exceptions, see Aristide R. Zolberg, “Moments of Madness,” Politics & Society 2:2 (1972), pp. 183–207; and Roxanne Lynn Doty, “States of Exception on the Mexico-U.S. Border: Security, ‘Decisions,’ and Civilian Border Patrols,” International Political Sociology 1 (2007), pp. 113–37.

⁷¹ Adbusters, “Are You Ready for a Tahrir Moment?” Adbusters (July 13, 2011), available online at: https://omeka.colorado.edu/hist4546/exhibits/show/bringtent/item/8.

⁷² David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement (New York, NY: Spiegel & Grau, 2013).

⁷³ Marina Sitrin, “Horizontalism and Territory,” Possible Futures: A Project of the Social Science Research Council (January 9, 2012), available online at: http://www.possible-futures.org/wp-content/plugins/really-static/static/2012/01/09/horizontalism-and-territory/.

⁷⁴ The first formulation is from Hanan Sabea, “A ‘Time out of Time’: Tahrir, the Political and the Imaginary in the Context of the January 25th Revolution in Egypt,” Hot Spots, Cultural Anthropology, (May 9, 2013), available online at: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/a-time-out-of-time-tahrir-the-political-and-the-imaginary-in-the-context-of-the-january-25th-revolution-in-egypt. The latter two are from Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, pp. 66–98.

⁷⁵ Kevin Rozario, The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 131.

⁷⁶ Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2007), pp. 464–66. Her later journalism and advocacy continue to highlight this dynamic between disaster capitalism and the politicization of civilian-run relief efforts. For example, see Naomi Klein, “Puerto Ricans and Ultrarich ‘Puertopians’ are Locked in a Pitched Struggle Over how to Remake the Island,” The Intercept (March 20, 2018), available online at: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/20/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-recovery/.

⁷⁷ Rozario, The Culture of Calamity, p.184.

⁷⁸ However, they do not consider the democratic value of such action, focusing instead on how effectively private citizens perform humanitarian tasks after disaster. For example, see Robert A. Stallings and E.L. Quarantelli, “Emergent Citizen Groups and Emergency Management,” American Society for Public Administration 45 (1985) pp. 93–100.

⁷⁹ On technocracy and for-profit contractors in disaster, see Alex de Waal, “An Imperfect Storm: Narratives of Calamity in a Liberal-Technocratic Age," Social Science Research Council (June 11, 2006), available online at: https://items.ssrc.org/understanding-katrina/an-imperfect-storm-narratives-of-calamity-in-a-liberal-technocratic-age/. On population managers, see Vivian Y. Choi, “Anticipatory States: Tsunami, War, and Insecurity in Sri Lanka,” Cultural Anthropology 30:2 (2015), pp. 286–309. Also relevant here is the vast scholarship which links authoritarianism with perceptions of emergency. For examples, see Didier Fassin and Mariella Pandolfi, Contemporary States of Emergency (New York, NY: Zone Books, 2010); and William Scheurerman, “Survey Article: Emergency Powers and the Rule of Law after 9/11,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 14:1 (2006), pp. 61–84. For an attempt to theorize democratic versions of emergency, see Bonnie Honig, “Three Models of Emergency Politics,” boundary 2 41:2 (2014), pp. 45–70.

⁸⁰ Michele Landis Dauber, The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

⁸¹ Vincanne Adams, Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013).

⁸² Kenneth Hewitt, “The Idea of Calamity in a Technocratic Age,” in Kenneth Hewitt (ed.), Interpretations of Calamity, from the Viewpoint of Human Ecology (Boston, MA: Allen and Unwin, 1983), pp. 3–32.

⁸³ For a similar critique of anarchist recovery projects after Katrina, see Cedric G. Johnson, “What’s Left for New Orleans? The People’s Reconstruction and the Limits of Anarcho-Liberalism,” Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), pp. 261–87.

⁸⁴ Wolin, Democracy Incorporated, p. 289.

⁸⁵ Margaret Kohn, “Homo Spectator: Public Space in the Age of Spectacle,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 34:5 (2008), pp. 467–86.

⁸⁶ Honig, “Three Models of Emergency Politics,” p. 68.

⁸⁷ Allan Lavell, et al., Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

⁸⁸ JunteGente, “Manifesto of Emergency and Hope” JunteGente, (June 2, 2018), available online at: http://juntegente.org/en/manifiesto/.

⁸⁹ Karen Pinchin, “How Hurricane Maria Fueled Puerto Rico’s Resistance,” PBS Frontline (August 2, 2019), available online at: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-hurricane-maria-fueled-puerto-ricos-resistance/; Patrician Mazzei and Alejandra Rosa, “Hurricane Maria, 2 Years Later: ‘We Want Another Puerto Rico,’” The New York Times (September 9, 2019), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/us/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria.html.

⁹⁰ For example, see Eric Ambinder and David M. Jennings, “The Resilient Social Network: @OccupySandy #SuperstormSandy,” Homeland Security Studies & Analysis Institute (September 30, 2013), available online at: http://homelandsecurity.org/Docs/The%20Resilient%20Social%20Network.pdf.

⁹¹ Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution and Other Writings (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications Inc., 2006), p. 216.

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Tyler Schuenemann

Tyler Schuenemann is a Visiting Instructor at the College of the Holy Cross, and a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  His research examines contentious politics through the lens of climate change, with an emphasis on the Middle East and North America.