Ad hoc neighbor networks after disaster outperform institutional aid.

Evidence

This is also a good place to return to Rebecca Solnit’s Paradise in Hell, in which ad hoc networks of support were erected in the wake of disaster by neighbors who may never have had the occasion to meet each other. Not only did these neighbors organize and provide each other with food, water, shelter, medical aid, and moral support—often crossing social boundaries or upending norms in order to do so—but these local, flexible, and rhizomatic networks often got the job done better, or at least faster, than the more institutional aid that followed. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 459

Not only did these neighbors organize and provide each other with food, water, shelter, medical aid, and moral support—often crossing social boundaries or upending norms in order to do so—but these local, flexible, and rhizomatic networks often got the job done better, or at least faster, than the more institutional aid that followed. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 459

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in practical, non-instrumental social bonds; Solnit’s Paradise Built in Hell shows caring neighbors as infrastructure. — connects to: Communications shutdowns backfire in dense cities where informal street networks replace telecom — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 226
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 459