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Chris Smaje's avatar

Thanks for the comments & recommendations. I'll try to follow up, although I don't have much time before my book deadline!

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Joy Green's avatar

Rebecca Solnit wrote a very interesting book about what actually happens in situations of breakdown and disaster, researching a wide variety of them including hurricane Katrina etc. it turns out the Hollywood Hobbesian idea is completely backwards and there is usually a mass outbreak of altruism. Collective mutual support communities emerge very quickly, and people often say afterwards it was one of the best times in their lives, despite the immense difficulty, because of what they saw of human nature. I think perhaps the challenge is how to support and protect this tendency in the long term. She also mentions that paranoid distant elites will sometimes disrupt or squash these communities out of fear, so eg during hurricane Katrina the official assumptions of looting and criminality led to ridiculous and heavy handed behaviour by authorities.

The book is called ‘a Paradise built in hell’

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