EAGER: The Sociolegal Dynamics of Property in Post-Disaster Contexts

This project explores the process of property formation following a major disaster. While much attention has been given to the rapid privatization of land following disaster (a process commonly referred to as disaster capitalism), this project focuses on the post-disaster period when the form of property is not yet determined, private or otherwise. Indeed, after the emergency phase of the disaster has passed, property often remains in flux, caught up in local resistance efforts, political wrangling, and contested legal matters. By focusing on this interim period, this research is able to study the way in which law and legal decisions come to matter in differing claims to property. Privatization is neither a facile nor foregone process, and law is neither always nor the only way that different societies relate to land and their claim to it. As the severity and frequency of disasters has escalated, this research has broad implications by building an understanding of how law impacts society at large and marginalized communities more specifically as they recover and reclaim property. This early concept grant for exploratory research (EAGER) project investigates the process of property formation in the aftermath of natural disaster. The guiding research questions are: how does landownership take shape following a major disaster? And how are laws and legal decisions taken up (or not) when making a claim to a particular model of property? To answer these questions, the researcher will conduct a series of three ethnographic research trips over the course of 18 months. The site of the research is a community that was directly affected by a major hurricane several years ago and is now actively negotiating the shape that property will take in the wake of the disaster, recent landmark legal decisions, and an external push to privatize. The researcher will conduct interviews, participant observation, and media and social media analysis. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.