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Abstract
As the floodwaters of 2005 receded from New Orleans, a new city emerged – rotting and fetid. The guidepost of living in New Orleans had been altered, in many cases, beyond recognition. Public officials tasked with leading the recovery had to come to terms with the unfamiliar and renegotiate a sense of place. Residents faced the same tasks of recovery and making meaning. This article examines the leadership of one organization, Market Umbrella, that used farmers markets as spaces of community gathering to help facilitate the ongoing recovery of the familiar and restoring one meaningful context of New Orleans – food. The study suggests that informal leadership can use ‘free spaces’ of community gathering to recreate fractured relationships between people and places affected by disaster. The study shows the key roles that informal leadership and the spaces of food played in redressing the anomie brought about by the flooding of New Orleans.