ABSTRACT
This paper frames the unfolding impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as a process of lifeway disruption, analyzing the degree to which residents of spill affected communities were prevented from undertaking routine behaviors during the disaster. Special attention is paid to the influence of time, natural resource employment, and community sentiment. Drawing on data from the Louisiana Community Oil Spill Survey, the results show that people in the spill impacted region were prevented from engaging in routine behaviors, though this disruption has steadily decreased over time, suggesting a general trend toward recovery. Consistent with the renewable resource community concept, the results also show that those with ties to the fishing industry were more likely to be prevented from undertaking routine behaviors than were nonfishers. Finally, community sentiment is shown to ameliorate routine behavior disruption, thus, promoting resilience. Overall, these results challenge notions of monolithic paths to disaster recovery.
Notes
Elsewhere these measures have been referred to as community attachment (Lee and Blanchard Citation2012; Cope et al. Citation2013). However, we have come to prefer the term community sentiment, which is consistent with more recent research using COSS data (Cope and Slack Citation2016; Cope, Slack, et al. Citation2016). The term community attachment is linked to the “community saved” theoretical perspective (Durkheim Citation1883/1997; Tönnies Citation1887/2002; Simmel Citation1903/1969; Wirth Citation1938) and Kasarda and Janowitz’s (Citation1974) elaboration on the systemic model of community. However, several scholars have noted that community attachment, as an explanatory concept, has been poorly developed and expounded upon (Hummon Citation1992; Theodori and Luloff Citation2000; Pretty Citation2002; Pretty, Chipuer, and Bramston Citation2003; Ryan et al. Citation2005; Flaherty and Brown Citation2010; Cope, Currit, et al. Citation2016). Indeed, Pretty, Chipuer, and Bramston (Citation2003, 274) note that the “‘blurring of conceptual boundaries’ between operationalization of concepts with community-attachment and other community-focused concepts has resulted in a ‘theoretical quagmire.’” In the present research, we opt for the term community sentiment to avoid semantic entanglement in the community attachment literature.
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Funding
This research was made possible by a grant from The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative. Data are publicly available through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information & Data Cooperative (GRIIDC) at
https://data.gulfresearchinitiative.org (doi:10.7266/N7T72FDS, 10.7266/N7PG1PP2, 10.7266/N7JQ0XZB, 10.7266/N7DZ068V).
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