Connecting After Chaos

Stephen F. Ostertag is Associate Professor of Sociology at Tulane University.

"How do you find strength in a world crumbling around you? In Connecting After Chaos, Stephen Ostertag takes us to the world of DYI news production during Katrina and its aftermath, to show how collective action can result from desperation. Very accessible and yet original in how to think about issues of trust, authority, and cultural production in the digital era. This engaging book tells an illuminating story of what moves us and makes the case for the importance of understanding how culture works after the deluge." * Claudio E. Benzecry, author of The Perfect Fit: Creative Work in the Global Shoe Industry * "Stephen Ostertag writes about devastation-a time when everyone and everything that has meaning for you is destroyed. He is speaking about New Orleanians after Hurricane Katrina and he uses the frame of culture and action to better understand the strategies-collective blogging in particular-- one uses to survive an extended period of loss. It is a timely and eye-opening analysis that has many important implications for our changing world." * Karen A. Cerulo, author of Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst * "Connecting After Chaos is a must-read. Examining the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans in August 2005, it asks a new question: How do unsettled times become settled? Ostertag uses data covering over ten years, to introduce us to 'the settling period.' Then, to restore a sense of normality, people engage in active 'cultural work' that creates new sorts of relationships and even develops new genres of media. Ostertag argues, modern times jump so quickly from crisis to crisis that we live perpetually in settling times. To cope, we must understand how we all create cultural work." * Gaye Tuchman, author of Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality * "Connecting After Chaos is a major contribution to cultural sociology, highly original theoretically, deeply researched, and compelling in its empirical discoveries. To explain what happened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Ostertag brings elegantly together a vast range of writing about blogging, cultural structures and archetypes, and emotions, weaving them into a new way of thinking about social trauma as cultural action. Not to be ignored is Ostertag's flowing, beautiful prose. This is a wonderful book that is not only intellectually stimulating but a pleasure to read." * Jeffrey C. Alexander, author of What Makes a Social Crisis?: The Societalization of Social Problems *