LIMITS TO SOCIAL CAPITAL: Comparing
Network Assistance in Two New Orleans
Neighborhoods Devastated by
Hurricane Katrinatsq_1186 624..648
James R. Elliott*
University of Oregon
Timothy J. Haney
Mount Royal University
Petrice Sams-Abiodun
Lindy Boggs National Center for Community Literacy, Loyola University
Sociological research emphasizes that personal networks offer social resources in times of need
and that this capacity varies by the social position of those involved.Yet rarely are sociologists able
to make direct comparisons of such inequalities. This study overcomes this methodological
challenge by examining network activation among residents of two unequal neighborhoods
severely devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Results indicate that local network capacities of Lower
Ninth Ward residents relative to those of the more affluent Lakeview neighborhood dissipated
before, during, and after the disaster to erode the life chances of individual residents and the
neighborhood they once constituted.
Public concern and expenditures associated with environmentally induced disasters
have increased over recent years (Perrow 2007), renewing sociological interest in how
individuals and households use social networks, or capital, to craft their own civic
responses to such events. Indeed, Dynes (2006:2) calls such informal assistance “our
most significant resource in responding to damage caused by natural and other hazards.”
He explains that such an approach“has the advantage of seeing [informal] social systems
as active resources, not passive victims, shifting the focus away from human vulnerabil-
ity toward an emphasis on human capability” (Dynes 2006:23). This perspective echoes
Clarke’s (2006) policy prescription for “preemptive resilience,” which emphasizes the
decentralized capacity of bottom-up, citizen-based responses to worst-case scenarios.
Broadly, Clarke recommends that “The power of individuals and their networks
shouldn’t be underestimated. . . . It should be bolstered and facilitated by organized
government agencies” (p. 173). This emphasis on social networks and resources signals
a substantial break with the traditional view that people panic and become hyper-
atomistic in times of mass crisis, necessitating top-down “command and control” rather
*Direct all correspondence to James R. Elliott, Department of Sociology, 1291 University of Oregon, Eugene,
OR 97403; e-mail: elliott@uoregon.edu
The Sociological Quarterly ISSN 0038-0253
The Sociological Quarterly 51 (2010) 624–648 © 2010 Midwest Sociological Society624

than support and empowerment (for a critique of this traditional view, see Rodriguez,
Quarantelli, and Dynes 2006).
In the present study we move beyond these general statements and policy prescrip-
tions to examine the use of personal networks among members of unequal social groups
during mass disaster and extended displacement. Specifically, we ask to what extent
inequalities in social support are evident in early, preparatory stages of disaster and then
change over time, as types of support needed shift, and with them, prospects for
reconstituting local communities in which residents were once embedded. Through
these questions, we extend common distinctions between “bonding” and “bridging”
forms of social capital to include a spatial dimension that highlights variation in local
and translocal supportive ties in times of extreme devastation and prolonged displace-
ment. Our overarching aim is to re-establish the fundamental point that social relations
do not occur on the head of a pin (i.e., that “space matters”) and to show empirically
how this social fact contributes to, as well as reflects, social inequalities that accrue over
sequential stages of disaster, displacement, and uneven return.
These efforts are valuable beyond disaster studies because despite common socio-
logical claims that personal networks matter for a wide range of social outcomes and
that the resources these networks confer vary significantly by the social status of those
involved (Granovetter 1983; Bourdieu 1986; Coleman 1988; Portes 1998), direct empiri-
cal comparison of network utilization among members of highly unequal social groups
has remained surprisingly limited. One reason for this limitation is that members of
unequal groups conduct their lives in different social and spatial settings, which means
that they rarely face the same acute situation at the same time, let alone one known to
activate a common need for social support. A good example is Klinenberg’s (2002) study
of the 1995 Chicago heat wave, which killed hundreds of isolated residents of poor,
minority neighborhoods. Faced with the same environmental threat, well-healed
Chicagoans simply turned up their air-conditioning or left the city altogether, thereby
offering little comparative insight into their use of local support networks.
In the present study, we pursue a more direct comparative approach to such
inequalities by examining two highly unequal sets of residents displaced from New
Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. One set of residents comes from the Lower Ninth
Ward, which was a disproportionately poor, African-American neighborhood where
levee failures along the nearby Industrial Canal swept homes and businesses from their
foundations and left more than eight feet of water, sewage, and debris floating for nearly
a month. The other set of residents comes from the city’s Lakeview area, which was a
disproportionately affluent, white enclave that experienced similar devastation from
levee failures along the nearby London Avenue and 17th Street drainage canals. By
comparing these two sets of residents, we are able to glean direct insights into broad
inequalities in social resources used in response to the same prolonged crisis, while
heeding the more general methodological call of Lieberson and Lynn (2002:8) to
seek out unplanned “natural experiments” to advance social scientific research. For
this unplanned experiment, we surveyed approximately 100 residents from each
neighborhood about their use of personal ties for social support before, during and after
James R. Elliott, Timothy J. Haney and Petrice Sams-Abiodun Inequalities in Social Capital during Disaster
The Sociological Quarterly 51 (2010) 624–648 © 2010 Midwest Sociological Society 625