Commerce and Community by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-56926-8
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Conclusion

Scholars have long posited that we live simultaneously in two very different spheres: the sphere of the intimate order of Gemeinschaft, in which narratives of solidarity and intentional beneficence toward known others guide our actions, and the sphere of the extended order of Gesellschaft, in which narratives of narrowly focused self-interest guide our action and result in patterns of unintentional beneficence through impersonal signals and market mechanisms of exchange. Under ordinary circumstances, our ability to switch between these two spheres, to navigate the murky territory in between, and to deploy the appropriate narratives tends to escape our notice. Because it blurs the boundaries defining Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft so dramatically, and renders unclear the territory between these spheres, a post-disaster context offers a particularly robust opportunity to understand this navigation process.

In this chapter, we discussed how people deploy narrative as a means of navigating these two spheres of social life. Further, we examined how people cultivate and deploy new stories when the boundaries defining and the territory between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are problematized. Building from interview data gathered in the post-Katrina context of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the analysis presented above suggests that when external events disrupt the boundaries that define the intimate and extended spheres of social life, people deploy their capacities for story craft and storytelling in order to find new narratives that guide their way. In the context of the post-Katrina environment, such capacities were a significant source of community resilience.

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