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Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346

Church-based social capital, networks and geographical scale:Katrina evacuation, relocation, and recovery in a New

Orleans Vietnamese American community

Christopher A. Airriess a,*, Wei Li b, Karen J. Leong c, Angela Chia-Chen Chen d,Verna M. Keith e

a Department of Geography, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306, USAb Asian Pacific American Studies Program and School of Geographical Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA

c Asian Pacific American Studies Program, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USAd College of Nursing and Healthcare Innovation, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA

e Department of Sociology and Center for Demography and Population Health, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA

Received 9 May 2007; received in revised form 8 November 2007

Abstract

This research examines the role of social capital and networks to explain the evacuation, relocation, and recovery experiences of aVietnamese American community in New Orleans, Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As the single largest communityinstitution, the parish church’s complex bonding and bridging social capital and networks proved particularly critical in part becauseof its historically based ontological security. The process of evacuation, but especially relocation and recovery, was dependent on deploy-ing co-ethnic social capital and networks at a variety of geographical scales. Beyond the local or community scale, extra-local, regional,and national scales of social capital and networks reproduced a spatially redefined Vietnamese American community. Part of the recov-ery process included constructing discursive place-based collective-action frames to successfully contest a nearby landfill that in turnengendered social capital and networks crossing ethnic boundaries to include the extra-local African American community. Engagingsocial capital and networks beyond the local geographical scale cultivated a Vietnamese American community with an emergentpost-Katrina cultural and political identity.� 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Hurricane Katrina; Vietnamese Americans; Social capital and networks; Geographical scale; Community

1. Introduction

The devastating flood caused by Hurricane Katrina’sstorm surge and resulting breaks or overtopping of leveesin New Orleans on August 29, 2005 was the greatesthuman-induced technological disaster in United States his-tory. The most impacted large scale section of the city wasNew Orleans East, encompassing two-thirds of the city’sterritory where some entire neighborhoods experienced

0016-7185/$ - see front matter � 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.11.003

* Corresponding author.E-mail address: cairries@bsu.edu (C.A. Airriess).

floodwaters reaching 7–8 feet. With 97,000 mostly AfricanAmerican residents equal to approximately 20% of the pre-Katrina population of the city, and median householdincomes above the city average, New Orleans East is stillperceived by the city’s White population as somewhat ofa ghetto despite its varied socio-demographic composition(Johnson, 2003).

At the far eastern end of New Orleans is a suburbandevelopment informally referred to as Versailles which in2000 was inhabited by 10,699 individuals, with AfricanAmericans and Asians (primarily Vietnamese) comprising50.9% and 43.3% of the total population, respectively.While dwarfed by the Vietnamese populations of such

1334 C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346

metropolitan areas as Los Angeles, San Jose, and Houston,Versailles is the most densely settled large concentration ofVietnamese in the United States (Airriess, 2002). Unlikemuch of New Orleans East, however, post-Katrina evacueereturn rates among Versailles Vietnamese were both earlyand sustained. As a result, attention to both the immediatepost-Katrina experiences and the rapid rebuilding processof this Vietnamese American community was given wide-spread coverage by both local, regional and national newsorganizations in the months following Katrina’s landfall.More specifically, it was the role of the Vietnamese Catho-lic parish centered on Mary Queen of Vietnam Church(MQVC) that attracted the attention of journalists.

Research shows that the social capital and networksbased on kin and friends in the context of community werevital to providing social and economic support after Hurri-cane Andrew (Hurlbert et al., 2000). While we explorethese important individually based co-ethnic networks ofsocial capital, we specifically examine the role of church-centered institutionalized social capital and networks inthe successful evacuation, relocation, and recovery processof the community. We chose church-based social capitaland networks in part because the parish church is the onlylarge public institution in the community able to coordi-nate such efforts in an effective manner owing to its strongpre-immigration foundations. Equally important, we alsoconceptually tie the various forms of bonding and bridgingchurch-based social capital and networks to their attendantgeographies in the sense that each possesses a geographicalscale. Depending on a particular community goal with ref-erence to Katrina evacuation, relocation and recovery, par-ticular forms of church-based and co-ethnic social capitaland networks are harnessed at local (community), extra-local (urban region), regional, and national scales. As aresult, the traditional conception of community occupyinglocal space geographically expanded to include Vietnameseat the regional and national scales. Part of the recoveryprocess involved the community contesting a nearby land-fill, and this engendered the deployment of social capitaland networks crossing ethnic boundaries based on discur-sive place-based collective action frames, which in turncreated a new sense of an extended community at theextra-local and national geographical scales.

The results of our research are derived from both quan-titative and qualitative methods. Anchoring the quantita-tive sources is a survey comprised of forced-choicequestions addressing various issues including sources ofinformation concerning the storm’s impending landfall,sources of emergency assistance during evacuation, andreturn and recovery experiences. The surveys were admin-istered to 104 respondents, the majority of which wereattending a community Tet or New Year Festival in earlyFebruary, 2006; the remaining were largely among thoseyet-to-return during a community function in Houston,TX in March 2006. Tet Festival respondents had eitherreturned to the community permanently or were living inthe New Orleans region and waiting to return. This form

of sampling is referred to as purposive sampling whose goalis to obtain a specific sample size and engage in intensiveanalysis of a target group in research that is of an explor-atory nature (Bailey, 1994) and where sample representa-tiveness may not be the primary concern (Trochim,2006). While respondents were given the choice of fillingout surveys in either English or Vietnamese, we paired withbilingual Vietnamese research assistants to recruit partici-pants who speak no or limited English to improve samplediversity. We understand that relying on Tet Festival par-ticipants as the primary source of information biases thesample in favor of those who had already returned to thecommunity or those with transport to attend the festival.

Information derived from qualitative methods wasobtained through two methods. The first was in the formof a single focus group held in the community and wascomprised of six individuals equally split between femaleand male whose ages ranged from 18 to 65. Because onefocus group participant was a non-English speaker, thefocus group audio tapes were transcribed and translatedby a bilingual research team member. Additional qualita-tive information was obtained either from five in-depthinterviews with key community informants or from infor-mal interviews with community residents during fieldworkconducted in December 2005, and February, May, Juneand November 2006 by at least one member of the researchteam and lasting between 3 and 7 days each. In addition,we also relied on interviews with community leaders andresidents by both local and national journalists as sourcesof not only factual information, but the Katrina experi-ences of residents as well.

2. The refugee past and present socio-demographic contours

Approximately 80% of Versailles Vietnamese areRoman Catholic. In the early 1990s, some 60% of adultsoriginated from just two Catholic diocese in former NorthVietnam (Airriess, 2002). These two diocese were charac-terized by many exclusively Catholic villages where priestsorganized agricultural activities and provided all manner ofsocial services that provided an environment of social cohe-sion and action (Haas and Nguyen, 1971). Forced to flee toSouth Vietnam as a result of the 1954 Geneva Agreementpolitically dividing northern and southern Vietnam, thesevillagers re-grouped under the leadership of their respectivepriests in fortified ‘‘strategic hamlets” to engage the Com-munist insurgency (Haas and Nguyen, 1971). In 1975 afterthe fall of Saigon, a core of Versailles Vietnamese migratedto the US as refugees and then to New Orleans under thesponsorship of the New Orleans Associated CatholicCharities.

The Versailles Vietnamese ethnic cluster is comprised oftwo contiguous census tracts (17.41 and 17.42) whose pop-ulation occupied structures that are primarily single familydwellings, both owned and rented (Fig. 1). In the 2000 Cen-sus, the 4460 Versailles Vietnamese account for approxi-mately 30% of the New Orleans Metropolitan Statistical

Vietnamese Commercial

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Fig. 1. Versailles and its metropolitan setting. Source: adapted from Airriess, (2008).

C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346 1335

Area’s (MSA) total Vietnamese population of 14,868. Ver-sailles is thus a true ‘‘immigrant cluster” (Pamuk, 2004)defined as a group of spatially contiguous census tractswhere the ethnic population in at least one of those tractsis at least 10 percentage points greater than the county’stotal population for that immigrant group. Poverty ratesin 2000 stood at 31.3% with lower incomes and educationalattainment when compared to co-ethnics in the NewOrleans urban region. As a result of low educational attain-ment, 63.3% of Versailles adults are relegated to lowerwage production, service, and sales and office occupations.No doubt a contributing factor to poor economic adapta-tion to the larger urban economy is that approximately67% of Versailles Vietnamese adults were foreign born in2000 and 36.7% of households are linguistically isolated,that is, no individual in the household 14 years or olderspeaks only English at home or speaks English ‘‘very well”.

3. Social capital, networks and geographical scale

Although the term social capital is a much contested andmisunderstood term (Bankston and Zhou, 2002; Mohanand Mohan, 2002; DeFilippis, 2001), we adopt two work-

ing definitions that suit our particular purpose. Social cap-ital is broadly defined as ‘‘social networks, the reciprocitiesthat arise from them, and the value of these for achievingcertain goals” (Schuller et al., 2000, p. 1) or ‘‘the trust,mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviorsthat bind the members of human networks and communi-ties and make cooperative action possible” (Cohen andPrusak, 2001, p. 4). A more targeted definition with refer-ence to disaster research is networks of social capital ‘‘facil-itate a flow of information providing a basis for action andassisting in individual and community goal attainment”(Ritchie and Gill, 2007, p. 109). Social capital, however,is not a thing possessed by a community because a commu-nity is an outcome of social relationships; only individualsor institutions are able to possess social capital (DeFilippis,2001).

For this research, the parish church as an institution inthe context of Katrina is an actor that possesses and gener-ates social capital because ‘‘[I]nstitutional structures canmake a difference to levels of participation and thereby,influence the formation of social capital” (Mohan andMohan, 2002, p. 197). Indeed, ethnic/immigrant-tied reli-gious institutions have functioned not only as sources of

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identity and solidarity, but also as foci of social capital andnetworks in this particular Vietnamese settlement (Airriess,2002; Bankston and Zhou, 1996) and countless other ethniccommunities as well (MacDonald and MacDonald, 1964;Williams, 1998; Min, 1992; Smith, 2004). This is not sur-prising because in ethnically diverse societies, levels ofsocial trust are often greater within ethnic communitieswhen compared to larger scale institutions such as govern-ments (Fennema and Tillie, 2001). Especially important arethe parish priests, who as actors within the institutionalcontext, have drawn on pre-existing social capital and net-works during the Katrina evacuation and relocation pro-cess and have created social capital through establishingnew networks to successfully rebuild the Versailles commu-nity. When secular institutions are recreant in providingeven basic needs to victims of technological disasters, andthis is certainly the case in the Katrina context, it is oftenchurches that afford the ‘‘ontological” security of safetyand continuity (Ritchie and Gill, 2007). During the imme-diate post-Hurricane Andrew period, for example,churches were often the only initiators of relief efforts inparticular neighborhoods in Miami (Morrow and Peacock,1997).

Because of the central role of parish clergy as networkactors in the evacuation and especially the recovery pro-cess, it is worthwhile to speak of priests as possessing pas-toral power. While churches certainly provided pastoralcare or the ‘‘mobilization of the church’s resources (i.e.material, spiritual, emotional, and informational) to assistindividuals and families in crisis and in facing the common-place problems of living” (Taylor and Chatters, 1998, p.193), pastoral power is conceptually different. Harnessinga Foucaldian perspective, Rose (1996) speaks of church-based pastoral power being anchored in moral ties thatengender social solidarity in what is referred to as the shep-herd–flock model. Pastoral power is top-down and pater-nalistic in nature as the shepherd or priest views the flockas particularly weak and vulnerable (Airriess, 2005).Indeed, studies have shown that when compared to otherdenominations, Catholics depend far more on clergy andthe church as an institution for both formal and informalsupport resources (Taylor and Chatters, 1998). In Ver-sailles, the ties between church and flock are accentuatedbecause refugees require more pastoral care when com-pared to economic immigrants. Expressive of both pastoralcare and especially pastoral power is the often-used phrase‘‘my people” by MQVC’s pastor when interviewed by themedia as well as the authors. Indeed, the pastoral powerof priests in Vietnamese Catholicism is heightened becauseof the perception of the church as the primary social insti-tution and the persistent role of a pre-Catholic Confucian-ist culture with its attendant values of authority andtradition (Phan, 2001).

The critical role of church-based social capital and net-working in the context of Katrina evacuation, return andrecovery is in part historically based; indeed ‘‘like classand race, [religion] must be a matter for historical and

place-specific analysis” (Kong, 2001, p. 226). Based uponthese common religious and historical-based experiencesthat engendered a ‘‘shared emotional connection” (Prezzaand Costantini, 1998, p. 182) among residents, coupledwith a shared territory, Versailles constitutes a commu-nity of faith (Nash, 1992). While we recognize that a‘‘sense of community” is often imagined, particularly inan urban and post-industrial context (Alleyne, 2002), reli-gious faith and membership in a community religiousinstitution is a basic factor in promoting a sense of com-munity (Farrell et al., 2004), especially when identity for-mation is co-ethnic in nature (Smith, 2004). Indeed, manyindividuals in the Versailles Vietnamese community per-ceived their community as being very different from otherVietnamese American communities in the New Orleansurban region, as well as other metropolitan regions ofthe country (Airriess, 2002; Airriess and Clawson, 1994).The sense of community as an urban village (Gans,1962) is captured in the term ‘‘village” commonly usedby co-ethnics not residing in Versailles as well as thoseVietnamese in Versailles to refer to the Versailles commu-nity as a cultural and geographically distinct place. Withcommunity identity anchored in historical experiences,ethnicity, and religious institutions, the opportunities forchurch-based social capital and network formation tosuccessfully address the complex problems associated withtechnological disasters such as Katrina are onlyheightened.

The church centered social capital that allowed for thesuccessful evacuation and recovery of the Versailles com-munity was deployed through existing pre-Katrina anddeveloped post-Katrina social networks. A social networkis defined as ‘‘a specific set of linkages among a definedset of persons, with the additional property that the char-acteristics of these linkages as a whole may be used tointerpret the social behavior of the persons involved(Mitchell, 1969, p. 2, in Bridge, 2002, p. 8). A more tai-lored definition of social networks specific to our Katrinaresearch is that they ‘‘facilitate a flow of information pro-viding a basis for action and assisting in individual andcommunity goal attainment” (Ritchie and Gill, 2007, p.109). In the context of church-based social capital, net-works take two forms. The first is bonding social capitalthat is based on persistent and personal inward orientednetworks between members of the same social or ethnicsodality. The second is bridging social capital based onweaker and impersonal external networks betweenheterogeneous individuals and institutions (Bridge, 2002;Wuthnow, 2002).

These inward and external oriented networks and theirattendant forms of social capital possess differing geo-graphical scales. Recent geographical literature argues thatthe ontological existence of spatial or geographical scalesparticularly with reference to size and level should be ques-tioned (Marston et al., 2005; Howitt, 1998). Yet we adopt amore conventional concept of geographical scale thatexamines the role of actors embedded in sites that are local,

Fig. 2. Flooded homes and cars after Katrina made landfall. Source:Father Vien The Nguyen.

1 The source of flood depths in the study area was obtained from http://katrina.lsu.edu/products_reports_download.asp. The specific link is‘‘Depth Grid for Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes.” Becausethe flood depth data is from September 2, three days after the floodingcommenced, real flood depths were a bit higher.

2 Victims of Katrina: Where They Were Found. New Orleans TimesPicayune, Tuesday, December 27, 2005, A-6.

C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346 1337

extra-local, regional and national in scale (Hoefle, 2006).This more conventional approach is better suited to thisresearch because while these different scales can be con-ceived as spatially or vertically nested, there exists no struc-turally based top-down hierarchy of economic and politicalpower that lies at the heart of the critique of scale (Leitnerand Miller, 2007). In contrast, the role of human and insti-tutional agency within the multi-scalar dynamics of socialnetworks plays a critical role in the community’s Katrinaexperiences. In this sense, networks are socially constructedbecause the church became a ‘‘scale-builder” in an attemptto mobilize social capital to access economic and politicalresources for the recovery process (Howitt, 2003). Anequally valuable conceptualization of geographical scalefor this research is the ‘‘resolution at which a given phe-nomenon is thought of, acted on or studied” (Agnew,1997, p. 100). These networks exist between co-ethnic indi-viduals, co-ethnic institutions and individuals, as wellbetween two or more co-ethnic institutions. While thesesocial capital-based networks are heterogeneous in thesense that they encompass or cut across a variety of scalesdepending upon a desired goal, particular networks tend tobe, for the most part, scale specific (Chamlee-Wright,2006).

Local scale networks comprise bonding social capitalbetween the church and individual parishioners as wellas between parishioners that was critical to both the evac-uation and recovery process. Extra-local scale networksencompass bonding social capital between kin and familyin Versailles and the rest of the New Orleans urban region.Regional capital networks include both bonding andbridging social capital whereby other Catholic churches,co-ethnic institutions, and individuals provided evacueesshelter. National scale bridging social capital networksinclude co-ethnic organizations, co-ethnic media, as wellas non-co-ethnic institutions that networked with thechurch and were critically important to rebuilding thecommunity, especially with reference to contesting a land-fill located in close proximity to Versailles. At both thelocal and especially regional and national scales, the tradi-tional notion of ethnic community based on territory andpersonal relations becomes spatially redefined to includethe broader community of Vietnamese America. In addi-tion, we are able to conceptualize, in the context of Kat-rina, that the local occupied spaces or scales ofdependence were reliant in many ways upon regionaland national external spaces or scales of engagementwhere social capital resources could be harnessed (Jonas,2006).

4. Evacuating the storm

Unlike much of the rest of the city that flooded becauseof levee failure, flooding in New Orleans East, includingVersailles, was the result of storm surge of 18–22 feet over-topping the levees of the Intracoastal Waterway (Fig. 1).Flood depths in the study area varied substantially from

0 to 4.5 feet1 (Fig. 2). Some homes did not have any stand-ing water in part because of elevational relief or being builtatop earthen fill, but most homes had between half a footto a foot and half of standing water. While Versailles didnot experience the high flood depths that many other areasof the city experienced, rebuilding the community becamejust as much of a challenge because mold quickly spreadthroughout flooded houses because residents were notallowed to return immediately. Unlike other areas ofNew Orleans East, however, only one fatality from thestorm was recorded in Versailles by state officials.2

Unlike some communities in New Orleans East, 93.8%of Versailles Vietnamese respondents in our survey evacu-ated before Katrina’s landfall and 95.0% did so by automo-bile. Respondents learned of Katrina’s landfall fromvarious sources. Most important were the media (40.71%)and family (20.35%), government (21.24%); the churchwas a less important source of information (5.31%). Thisis understandable because evacuation generally took placeon Friday and Saturday before Sunday morning mass.Nevertheless, the church was instrumental to promotingthe safety of its flock during the evacuation period basedon an existing administrative structure from their villagesin Vietnam whereby parish council members were adminis-tratively responsible for particular hamlets each namedafter a patron saint; in Versailles, hamlets were replacedby neighborhoods centered on major streets (Interview, 5November 2006).

A Versailles flooding story that attracted the most mediaattention is the role of MQVC in providing sanctuary for

1338 C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346

some 200–300 individuals (mostly Vietnamese with someAfrican Americans) who did not evacuate. While sanctuarywas based on local church-centered social capital and net-works, important assistance was engendered through co-ethnic bridging social capital at the regional and nationallevels (Fig. 3). The pastor had contacted the Saigon Radiostation in Houston and informed them that while mostVietnamese had evacuated before Katrina’s landfall, manysought sanctuary in the church (Interview, 4 December,2005). This message was then relayed from Houston tothe Radio Saigon station in Orange County, California.On September 1, 3 days after Katrina made landfall, aVietnamese American woman in Arlington, TX was ableto contact her mother’s friend in Versailles by a land lineto learn of the condition of the stranded population. ThisArlington woman began e-mailing the Coast Guard, theRed Cross and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Thesee-mails were then accessed by the National Congress ofVietnamese Americans (NCVA) in northern Virginia and

MQVN

RESIDEN

SCLC

SAVE N.O. EAST

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Fig. 3. Geographical scales of s

provided a threaded discussion forum on its homepage tokeep those interested informed of this dire situation.News from the church was forwarded to NCVA and fromthere to the organization’s ‘‘network of action” (NCVA,2006).

This network of action refers to the larger VietnameseAmerican population, whether they be individuals or eth-nic organizations who then contacted the Louisiana Gover-nor’s Office, the Federal Emergency Management Agency(FEMA), the Coast Guard, the Red Cross, and The UnitedStates Conference of Catholic Bishops or any other organi-zations that might lend assistance. This particular relation-ship between the local and the co-ethnic regional andnational institutions provides a different dimension to theconcept of networks of social capital in the sense that eth-nic media and the internet rescaled a wider sense of ethniccommunity identity in a unified space of networks. By thefollowing day, all were rescued by the National Guard withlarge trucks.

NAVASAFELLOWS

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ocial capital and networks.

3 The windshield survey consisted of slowly driving in a car down everystreet in the community and enumerating whether residents were eitheractively rebuilding their homes or had already completed the rebuildingprocess. Those who were in the process of rebuilding were counted asreturned.

C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346 1339

5. Evacuee relocation

Much like most of New Orleans’ evacuees, VersaillesVietnamese evacuated to a number of cities within the Cen-tral Gulf region. The most important destination was Hous-ton, TX. While many New Orleanians possessed a Houstonconnection through family and friends, the Versailles–Houston connection is somewhat distinctive because Hous-ton is home to approximately 55,000 people of Vietnameseancestry. With many more Vietnamese cultural amenitiesthan Versailles and the larger New Orleans region, Houstonpossesses significantly high levels of co-ethnic symbolic cap-ital and is the Vietnamese cultural capital of the Gulf Coastregion. This in part explains why Houston was the firstevacuation stop for 36.28% of survey respondents.

Versailles evacuees’ sources of emergency assistance inHouston were diverse, reflecting the complex networks ofbridging social capital at the regional scale (Fig. 3). Thesources of emergency assistance for those who made Hous-ton their first evacuation stop were primarily the govern-ment (50.0%), church (23.9%), and family (10.9%). Whilegovernment sources of emergency assistance predominate,delivery of these services was weeks late, forcing evacueesto seek help centered on co-ethnic and religious spaces.One of the earliest centers of emergency assistance wasthe Hong Kong Mall, Houston’s premier VietnameseAmerican shopping complex. Evacuees arrived at the malland Radio Saigon in Houston immediately began organiz-ing relief efforts (ASN, 2005). The Vietnamese Americancommunity in Houston began delivering clothing and foodand offering housing assistance to the 1000 evacuees whovisited the mall each day (Tran, 2005). The office of BPSOS(Boat People SOS), an organization that provides practicalassistance to Vietnamese immigrants, was also located inthe mall and they too attended to 100 evacuees per dayby giving them Hepatitis A shots and assistance in fillingout FEMA forms (Lin, 2005). Vietnamese Catholicchurches and Buddhist temples also opened their doorsto evacuees. One Vietnamese Catholic convent, for exam-ple, sheltered 200 evacuees sustained by food and clothingdonations from co-ethnics in Houston (Lam, 2005a). As anideal example of bridging social capital, those evacuees onone of the trucks leaving Versailles all agreed to meet atone of the Vietnamese Catholic Churches in Houston(NCVA, 2006).

If the Vietnamese American ethnic media was instru-mental in rescuing those at MQVC, the bridging social cap-ital and networks at the national scale that intersected withthe regional scale in Houston were even more critical inmeeting the immediate material needs of evacuees. In thissense, Houston too became a space of dependence on thelarger national Vietnamese American community. A webpage on Nguoi Viet, the largest Vietnamese language news-paper in the country, was created to assist individuals inlocating friends and relatives that were evacuees. Co-ethnicorganizations such as The National Alliance of VietnameseAmerican Service Agencies (NAVASA), the Viet Heritage

Society and United Vietnamese Americans coordinateddonations and fund raising through their respective web-sites (Lam, 2005b). The role of these organizations in pro-viding assistance through social capital and networking inthe absence of government support during the early post-Katrina period is captured in a statement by the co-anchorof Saigon Radio in Houston; ‘‘the Vietnamese communityoften responds faster to calls for emergency help than thegovernment” and ‘‘[w]e can reach out immediately anddirectly because we are closely connected” (Lam, 2005b).Church-based social capital intersecting with ethnic mediaat the national scale provided a distinctive form of socialcapital and networks benefiting evacuees in Houston.MQVC’s first parish priest was appointed in 2003 as anauxiliary bishop of Orange County, CA, the commonlyrecognized ‘‘capital of Vietnamese America”. As the firstVietnamese bishop in the country, he visited OrangeCounty’s Little Saigon Radio and asked listeners for dona-tions to assist the evacuees in Houston (NamViet, 2005).Ethnic media in this example and others functioning associal capital within the larger ‘‘disaster network,” rescaledthe relief effort (Viswanath and Arora, 2000) through theconstruction of a ‘‘virtual community” based on sharedidentity.

6. Return and recovery

Much like the rest of New Orleans, the return to andrebuilding of Versailles has been a long term and frustrat-ing process primarily because of the lack of leadership atthe city, state and national levels. Nevertheless, VersaillesVietnamese returned sooner and in greater numbers whencompared to other devastated communities in New OrleansEast. We explain this rapid return based on the critical roleof local bonding social capital between church and parish-ioners, a profound attachment to place by the residents,and also on the ability of the church to construct bridgingsocial capital with national scale co-ethnic institutional net-works (Fig. 3). Part of the recovery process also involvedcontesting the opening of a Katrina landfill adjacent tothe community. This process involved developing achurch-centered network of bridging social capital withnon-co-ethnic institutions at the extra-local and nationalscales (Fig. 3).

Based upon two auto windshield surveys of Versaillesconducted in the first week of May and the last week ofJune of 2006, Vietnamese American residents returnedearly and in substantial numbers.3 In the two neighbor-hoods closest to Mary Queen of Vietnamese Churchwhere Vietnamese Americans numerically dominate,approximately 80% of Vietnamese American homes were

1340 C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346

reoccupied in early May and this increased to slightly over90% by late June. These Vietnamese American house re-occupancy figures are similar to the figure of 80% providedby the church’s pastor in mid-2006 (Interview, 2 November2006). Lower Vietnamese American return rates were expe-rienced in primarily mixed Vietnamese/African Americanneighborhoods where floodwater depths were greater andrental properties were more common. By early November2006, re-occupancy rates in these neighborhoods rangedfrom 73% to 88%.4 Those who have not returned tendedto be renters, fisherfolk, the infirmed elderly because ofthe absence of the continuing absence of nearby hospitals,and skilled workers whose employers relocated out of thecity (Interview, 26 September 2007).

The re-opening of co-ethnic businesses in Versailles is analternative measure of community recovery. By early Feb-ruary 2006, some 25% of the 93 pre-Katrina businesses hadre-opened; this is more than double the percentage of re-opened businesses in New Orleans East as a whole forthe same month (Williams, 2006). By May 2006, the num-ber of businesses re-opening increased to 59% and byDecember of 2006, the number increased to slightly over90%. Providing basic co-ethnic needs and wants, the recov-ery of the business enclave is critical to the future viabilityof the Vietnamese community in part because residents didnot rely heavily on regional or national chain stores that inother parts of the city only began returning in a sustainedmanner one year after the storm (Campanella, 2007).

6.1. Local networks of bonding social capital

Versailles residents returned to their neighborhoods tosurvey the damage to their homes relatively early afterflood waters receded and the city permitted residents toreturn in early October; 37.5% of survey respondents vis-ited within one month, an additional 22.9% within 2months, and 27.1% after 3 months. Living with friendsand family on the West Bank, which is New Orleans’ otherlarge concentration of ethnic-Vietnamese (that only sus-tained wind damage), 27.7% returned several times a weekto clean and rebuild their homes, and an additional 34.0%returned several times a month for the same purpose. Byearly October, only one month after Katrina made landfall,

4 While this article concerns only ethnic-Vietnamese in Versailles, thepurpose of our larger research project is to compare their recoveryexperiences with that of African Americans in Versailles. AfricanAmericans only began returning to their Versailles residences in March,two full months after the Vietnamese. Some 40% of African Americanresidents did not returned by March 2007 because they lived in threeapartment complexes that have yet to be rebuilt. Those that have returnedare middle class homeowners. Their late return is in part explained by theabsence of church-based social capital and networks so critical to the earlyreturn of Vietnamese. There existed only one African American-basedchurch in Versailles and it had yet to re-open by June 2006. In addition,African Americans attended many different churches outside the commu-nity. There existed then, less bonding social capital between institutionslike the church and church members that was geographically based in theVersailles African American community.

the church’s pastor returned with 300 parishioners to beginthe rebuilding process (Interview, 4 December 2005). Pro-viding shelter for this first group of returnees, MQVCwas the center of recovery activities. In a symbolic state-ment of the central role of the parish church in the commu-nity’s return, the pastor claimed that ‘‘it is only right andproper that the church is where we should begin therebuilding” (Joe, 2005). Indeed, the first mass was heldon October 9 and the next Sunday mass was attended by800 parishioners, many from the immediate Katrina dias-pora encompassing both extra-local and regional scalelocations (Interview, 4 December 2005). Just as the parishcouncil assisted in the evacuation process, this neighbor-hood zone administrative structure brought from Vietnamand modified, provided a local action network for rebuild-ing (Interview, 5 November 2006). Groups were given thedifferent and specific tasks of repairing houses, administer-ing tetanus shots and health care, and purchasing food andpreparing meals for the 300 returnees as well as for thoseshort term returnees (Hauser, 2005).

While these early church centered and organized recov-ery efforts at the local scale were tied to re-establishingcommunity as a body of people, the church simultaneouslyengaged in aggressive efforts to contest larger power struc-tures that threatened the communities recovery. Fully 2months after the storm electric power had yet to returnin New Orleans East, and power was unlikely to berestored in Versailles because of its distant location at theeastern edge of the urban region. When the church’s pastorrequested that the local utility restore power to Versailles,the company agreed to do so only if proof was providedthat a sufficient number of residents had returned. Withinone week, the pastor gathered 500 signatures and presentedthe list to the company; both electrical power and waterservice were restored by November (Hill, 2006). The churchalso served as an ombudsman for residents contestinghomeowners’ insurance compensation (Interview, 5November 2006); such litigation is itself a form of post-storm secondary trauma (Brown and Mikkelson, 1997).In the context of the Urban Land Institute’s recommenda-tion that large swaths of land in New Orleans East bereborn as green space, the church organized parishionersto attend a November 2005 downtown meeting of theBring New Orleans Back Commission to contest what theybelieved was a myopic vision. With approximately 25% ofthose in attendance being ethnic-Vietnamese (Campanella,2006), the pastor contested the top-down decision makingprocess by claiming that ‘‘we were never invited to thetable” and that ‘‘we have a right to be part of the commu-nity-driven process” (Williams, 2005). This top-down deci-sion making power of the city government at the extra-local scale embodied in the Urban Land Institute verymuch reduced, however, the power of resistance at the localscale (Judd, 1998). Fortunately for New Orleans East com-munities, the Institute’s recommendations were not imple-mented. It is not surprising then that our surveyrespondents claimed that when compared to the city, state,

C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346 1341

and federal governments, it was the church and communityleaders who provided the most beneficial assistance toreturnees.

Critically important to the early recovery process as wellwas the holding of the annual Lunar New Year’s Festivalor Tet in early February 2006 on church grounds. Attract-ing those who had already permanently returned, but manymore who were still part of the Gulf Coast diaspora, thefestival is symbolic of bonding social capital in local space.In addition, the festival also functioned as a venue toremind both evacuees and the city government that thecommunity had returned. In this sense, the Tet festivalwas a political act at the local scale.

A partial explanation for the rapid repopulation of Ver-sailles is the attachment to place and community that iscontingent on embedded bonding social capital and net-works (Bridge, 2002; Granovetter, 1985). This attachmentis expressed in focus group responses to the question‘‘how did you feel about the neighborhood beforeKatrina?”

‘‘Before Katrina, the neighborhood is a very happycommunity.”

‘‘Before Katrina, all our neighborhood, we talktogether, we’re just like a family.”

‘‘I thought it was the best place ever. We know every-body and everything is close by.”

‘‘I like it because we are so close together. Everybodyis like a family and we know each other very well.”

Interviews with returned residents conducted by journal-ists as well as the authors speak to the same profoundattachment to place and community. In one interview, aVersailles restaurant server said ‘‘Texas didn’t feel likehome to the Vietnamese in exile there” so they hurried backbecause ‘‘[e]ven if your home is nothing, it is still yoursweet home” (Shaftel, 2006). The owner of a strip mall saidabout returning, ‘‘[w]e left Vietnam and we’ve made thisour second home” (Williams, 2005). The authors spoketo a middle aged man with much the same response; ‘‘Viet-nam is my first country, and New Orleans is my secondcountry”. An interview with the chief of FEMA’s disasterhousing operations in Louisiana speaks of social capitaland networks attached to local geographical space;‘‘[t]hey were traumatized when they were mixed with othergroups” and ‘‘[t]hey want to remain together” (Hauser,2005). The church’s pastor spoke the historical dimensionof embedded bonding social capital and networks to par-tially explain the rapid recovery of the community;‘‘[w]e’re talking about 60-year olds knowing each othersince 1975, from the same villages in Vietnam” (Hauser,2005). Indeed, the present networks of social capital in geo-graphical space are often based on ‘‘past success at collab-oration, thus serving as a template for future cooperationon other issues” (Mohan and Mohan, 2002, p. 193).

6.2. National networks of bridging social capital

Rebuilding of the community obviously required agrassroots effort, that is the recovery of local bondingsocial capital and networks. Nonetheless, local scale socialcapital and networks for rebuilding were not sufficient forsome particular goals of recovery that emerged in thepost-Katrina environment. Generally, these goals addressissues of community economic development and engender-ing greater political organization to engage extra-localpolitical structures to meet pressing community needs.The church has thus purposely reached beyond the place-specific community of Versailles to enlist bridging socialcapital and networks in the form of co-ethnic individualsand organizations at the national scale to assist in therecovery process (Fig. 3).

External assistance was necessary in part because of thesocial nature of the church-led community that was conser-vative and largely inward oriented, and one that lackedboth the human or bridging social capital to engage thepower structures outside the community to demand thattheir needs be met. The power structures of the communitywere based on the church parish council which was domi-nated by older refugees with little experience, talent, orknowledge of American community and political activism.In a sense, bridging social capital was required to engendersuccessful community development and political activismrather than depending on individuals who possessed bond-ing social capital and strong emotional place attachment tothe community. When we asked the church pastor aboutthe recruitment of outsiders rather than existing commu-nity members to organize community activism, hisresponse was that at this critical juncture when the commu-nity is beset by many challenges, it was important thatactivists possess ‘‘minds” rather than ‘‘spirits” (Interview,4 February, 2006). This distinction between local bondingsocial capital and networks, and national bridging socialcapital and networks, in the context of different goals istheoretically instructive. The local bonding social capitalbased on the embedded social norms, place attachment,and characterized by a closed network (Coleman, 1988;Granovetter, 1985) of the church parish council were idealfor initial and specific rebuilding purposes; yet because it istied to the local scale it also is somewhat of a liability inmore complex and later stages of the rebuilding processthat require the construction of bridging social capitaland networks at larger geographical scales (Bridge, 2002).Versailles thus occupies a space of dependence within theselarger scale networks (Jonas, 2006).

Deploying co-ethnic bridging social capital and net-works at the national scale is expressed in many forms.One of the most important was NAVASA, a 35 membermutual assistance group that promotes empowerment ofVietnamese communities across the country throughgreater active citizenship and assists in addressing thesocial and economic needs of Vietnamese. NAVASAassigned numerous interns through its Dan Than (Be the

1342 C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346

Change) Corps fellows program, young college graduatesfrom around the country to Versailles, to provide talentfor community building capacities. Some Dan Than Corpsfellows in fact were young people who applied after travel-ing to New Orleans soon after Katrina to offer their volun-teer services. As an expression of community at thenational scale and co-ethnic bridging social capital, one fel-low, a college senior from California, explained ‘‘I decidedto become a Dan Than fellow because we share the samegoal that the Vietnamese community should have equalaccess to resources for recovery and rebuilding”

(NAVASA, 2005).One expression of community building was the

NAVASA fellow-induced establishment of The VietnameseAmerican Young Leaders Association of New Orleans(VAYLA) whose goal is to encourage leadership, service,and activism in the community. Admitting that thereexisted a ‘‘gap of leadership skills within the community”

and ‘‘the program is to bring in young people to fill thesegaps” (LaRose, 2006), the church initially housed andfinancially sponsored VAYLA. The organization now pos-sesses its own meeting space in one of the community’scommercial strips. Other responsibilities of NAVASA fel-lows include assisting the church in procuring externalgrants for community development as well as developingrebuilding strategies for local businesses. An additionalgoal of community recovery is the May 2006 establishmentof the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community DevelopmentCorporation (MQVN CDC) housed at the church withsix staff members; four of the six co-ethnic staff membersare from outside the community.

Much like the many CDCs across the country (Gittelland Wilder, 1999), the primary community building goalsof the MVQCDC are varied. The first is to promote busi-ness development through revitalization of the commercialdistrict. A second goal is to develop a low-income seniorretirement complex on church owned land across the streetfrom the church. The grandest goal is to ‘‘re-develop” thecommunity through upgrading the commercial district,establishing a centrally located twenty-acre communitygarden to replace the sometimes scattered and post-Kat-rina abandoned gardens, and creating a park-like land-scape along canals to improve recreational space. Thismultifaceted vision’s goal is to create a ‘‘Viet Village” asa cultural or ethnic tourism destination for long term com-munity sustainability and development. Much like theplanning of ‘‘Little Saigon” of Westminister in southernCalifornia’s Orange County (McLauglin and Jesilow,1998), commercial sustainability is unable to rely on a localco-ethnic customer base, but must reach out to a more geo-graphically diverse population (Eljera, 2004).

7. Contesting the landfill

Part of the recovery process that engendered the inter-section of bridging social capital and networks at all geo-graphical scales, but most importantly the establishment

of support networks that crossed ethnic boundaries, wascontesting the opening of a Katrina waste landfill approx-imately one mile from the community (Fig. 1). As a result,the definition of community was rescaled beyond local andco-ethnic identities. Two forms of social capital wererequired to accomplish this task. The first is identity bridg-ing social capital that provides a ‘‘rubric for the kinds ofnetworks that span such culturally defined differences suchas race, ethnicity, religious tradition and more” andrequires deemphasizing the social constructions of ‘‘us”

and ‘‘them” (Wuthnow, 2002, p. 670). The second is statusbridging social capital that refers to ‘‘networks that spanvertical arrangements of power, influence, wealth and pres-tige” and ‘‘suggests possibilities for those with less influenceto acquire influence and other resources through their con-nections with persons of higher status” (Wuthnow, 2002, p.670). Indeed, the construction of social capital and net-works to contest the landfill was critical because environ-mental justice movements are only successful when theycross cultural and ethnic boundaries and enlist advocatesoutside the local community (Allen, 2003).

In April 2006, New Orleans Mayor Nagin circumventedthe normal zoning and public input procedures under post-Katrina emergency orders to re-open a landfill for post-Katrina debris from much of the greater New Orleansmetropolitan region. The city signed a $30 million dollarcontract with the private company Waste Management ofLouisiana and in return, the company was to return 22%of the landfill’s gross revenues to the city. Despite claimsthat hurricane debris would only consist of various envi-ronmentally benign building materials, anti-landfill propo-nents became concerned about toxic waste co-mingled withbuilding debris such as acid-based lead batteries andpaints, asbestos, creosote, household pesticides and clean-ing chemicals. The US Congress has mandated that Muni-cipal Solid Waste landfills possess synthetic liners toprevent toxic leaching into the water table, and monitorgroundwater, but the Louisiana Department of Environ-mental Quality (LDEQ) and Army Corps of Engineers sus-pended this rule. The anti-landfill coalition demanded thatlandfill runoff and soil be tested for leaching and hazards,but was turned down by both Waste Management andthe LDEQ.

Before directly examining the social capital and net-works employed to successfully contest the landfill, it isnecessary to explore the local and extra-local scale dis-course harnessed by community activists to make theiranti-landfill case. Much like the general process of rebuild-ing the community after Katrina, church-based spokesper-sons employed discursive ‘‘collective action framing” thatharnessed the community’s shared social and cultural expe-riences to achieve their goals of closing the landfill. Morespecifically, there existed ‘‘place-based collective-actionframes that provide[d] a better understanding of how com-munity organizations create a discursive place-identity tosituate and legitimate their activism” (Martin, 2003, p.733).

Fig. 4. May 10th, 2006 anti-landfill protestors outside New Orleans cityhall. Source: Mary Beth Black.

C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346 1343

One of the most common frames in which local placeidentities have been constructed are cultural in the sensethat environmental concerns related to groundwater leach-ate might pose threats to the agricultural spaces and thuscultural identity spaces of Versailles. Indeed the church’spastor is quoted in countless newspaper articles that ‘‘[r]esi-dents use that water on the tiny waterside gardens that sup-ply the community with sugar cane and bitter melon andVietnamese varieties of vegetables” (Eaton, 2006). As ruralfolk from Vietnam, elderly residents during the 1980s and1990s reproduced small scale gardens where over 30 vegeta-ble, tubers, herb and medicinal cultivars supplied the com-munity with much of its ‘‘leafy green” needs (Airriess andClawson, 1994). For local newspapers and non-ethnic visi-tors alike, the green and verdant vegetable gardens becamea sort of iconic cultural landscape of the community.

A similar cultural and place-based frame contesting thelandfill centered on community identity also was harnessedwith reference to plans for the ‘‘Viet Village”. Showcasedduring the February 2006 Tet festival and presented tothe Bring Back New Orleans Commission, the church’spastor argued against the plan employing discourse at mul-tiple geographical scales. At the local scale, the church’spastor claimed that the landfill not only threatened the suc-cess of Viet Village, but that ‘‘[t]hey’re threatening our veryexistence” (Eaton, 2006). At the extra-local scale, discourseimplicitly includes Vietnamese culture as part of rebuildingthe larger New Orleans culture. The church’s pastorasserted that ‘‘[w]e look at those plans as a way to not onlycelebrate our culture, but also play a part in the larger,renewed culture of New Orleans—New Orleans togetheras a city, a community, a culture” (Etheridge, 2006). Suchdiscourse asserts that while Versailles may have been anisolated culture in the past, it is now an integral part ofthe city’s post-Katrina culture.

A third frame to contest the landfill is based on racialpolitics, one that relies upon the intersection of local andextra-local scales to make an argument when contestingthe landfill. For example, one young Vietnamese womanwho linked the upcoming mayoral election and the landfillissue was asked by a reporter for her name. She respondedN-g-u-y-e-n, and that you better ‘‘get used to the spelling”

(Elie, 2006). The reporter makes an implicit and very per-ceptive observation about geographical scale and Versaillesno longer being a territorially isolated and politically inac-tive community in terms of the larger scale New Orleanspolitical power structure when he states ‘‘[t]he city’s Viet-namese community is a large one. Nguyen is a commonVietnamese surname and, by extension, a common NewOrleanian one” (Elie, 2006). Similarly, before the mayoralelection, identity bridging social capital at the extra-localscale was constructed when the Black city councilpersonrepresenting Versailles appointed a NAVASA fellow asher community liaison.

The construction of an identity and status bridgingsocial capital platform to racially and thus collectivelyframe the contest at both the extra-local and national scales

was implemented through the posting of a website Save

New Orleans East: Citizens for a Strong New Orleans East

whose homepage manager is located at Mary Queen ofVietnam Church. The coalition’s networked membersinclude Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, Louisiana Envi-ronmental Action Network (LEAN), the Sierra Club, andNAVASA (Fig. 3). The in-house counsel for LEAN is aWhite attorney with a pre-Katrina office in the communitythat provided legal services to the Vietnamese refugee pop-ulation for over one decade. As a form of extra-local scalenationalism whereby discourse is pan-racial in nature(Back, 1996), the coalition’s mission statement asserts that‘‘Citizens for a Strong New Orleans East is a coalition ofnon-profit organizations and faith-based organizationswho want to make sure that the communities of colorwho had lived in New Orleans East prior to Katrina canreturn home.” The collective race frame applies to bothVietnamese and African Americans; indeed the pre-Kat-rina population of Versailles as well as New Orleans Eastwas majority African American. While the future recoveryof Versailles is dependent on the larger and successfulrebuilding process of New Orleans East, the collectiveaction discourse includes a geographical rescaling of thelandfill issue that encompassed the far larger living spacesof African Americans in New Orleans East. Indeed, mobi-lization against environmental racism is strong becausenumerically dominant Black New Orleans East is hometo two additional landfills.

Race as a discursive frame is expressed in additionalways. Mary Queen of Vietnam Church organized an anti-landfill demonstration of 400 people at City Hall on May10, 2006 (Fig. 4) and developed extra-local bridging socialcapital by inviting members of the Black-based SouthernChristian Leadership Conference to participate (Interview,2 November, 2006) (Fig. 3). This social capital network wasdeveloped in part because the church’s pastor had formonths attended numerous meetings and rallies organized

1344 C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346

by Black community groups to contest ‘‘right of return”

issues as well as the absence of school and health facilitiesserving the poor. In addition, MQVC parishioners helpedin the cleanup of nearby African American churches (Inter-view, 2 November, 2006). Likewise, the regional directorfor NAVASA who works out of the parish church claimsthat environmental justice issues in New Orleans East isnot just a ‘‘Vietnamese thing” (Tang, 2007). As a resultof the demonstration, Mayor Nagin temporarily closedthe landfill, but re-opened it immediately after he won re-election on May 20.

At the national scale and constructing status bridgingsocial capital, ethnicity and race also played a role in theanti-landfill issue. US Representative Michael Honda (D-CA), a Japanese American and Chairman of the Congres-sional Asian Pacific American Caucus with a large Viet-namese American constituency wrote a strongly wordedletter sub-titled ‘‘Respect Vietnamese American Commu-nity-Protect Environment” to the Army Corps of Engineerson May 24, 2006 expressing concern over the impact of thelandfill. Aside from the environmental impacts, Rep. Hon-da’s letter states that ‘‘I have a keen interest in the rebuild-ing effort and its effects on regional ethnic communities”

(Honda, 2006). In late June, the deputy director of theWhite House’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Initia-tive was sent to Versailles to help mediate a meetingbetween local opponents of the landfill and local, state,and federal officials (Russell, 2006). Despite votes by theLouisiana Legislature as well as a ruling by a US DistrictJudge in favor of keeping the landfill operational, the land-fill was eventually closed on August 14, 2006 after themayor’s executive order expired. The next morning, 250individuals comprising the anti-landfill network stood atthe gates of the closed landfill and celebrated.

8. Conclusions

This narrative of a church-centered Katrina recoveryprocess might seem to romanticize the nature of commu-nity identity. We contend, however, that a deep historicalmemory of refugee experiences, a shared faith, a profoundattachment to place have contributed to the strong commu-nity identity, and this coupled with the harnessing ofchurch-centered social capital across multiple scales wascritical to the post-Katrina recovery (Leong et al., 2007).There is no doubt that community tensions existed duringthe recovery period. For example, a vocal group of Amer-ican-born and educated community members contested thechurches’ call for the immediate rebuilding for fear thattheir community would later disappear as part of theNew Orleans East ‘‘green zone” proposed by the BringNew Orleans Back Commission (Interview, 26 September2007). However, community identity and cohesion hasincreased in the post-Katrina period as the elderly refugeepopulation and the American-born generation have gainedgreater appreciation of each other through shared Katrinaexperiences and working together to close the landfill. Nor

does this narrative implicitly advocate the rescaling of post-disaster responsibility from the national scale to the localscale under a neoliberal ideology (Varner, 2006) that pro-motes local social capital as an alternative recoveryresource. In addition, this narrative dispels the Asian‘‘model minority” myth of self-reliance and hard work asa reason of the community’s rapid recovery. This discourselitters local and national newspaper accounts of the com-munity’s recovery to the exclusion of many VietnameseAmerican voices calling for increased government attention(Leong et al., 2007) as well as the non-recognition that thecommunity was heavily dependent upon external recoveryassistance. While studies have shown that communitysocial change as a consequence of a disaster are fleetingin nature (Passerini, 2000), the potential for increased com-munity political organization and action is substantial(Olson and Drury, 1997). The impact of the community’semergent political activism in part explains why Versailleswas chosen by the city as one of the top 17 neighborhoodsto receive additional financial assistance (Leong et al.,2007).

This empirical based research engages the scale debateacross a number of different dimensions. At the most basiclevel, this research adopts a spatial lens to examine socialcapital and networks in a multi-scalar context. While someattention has been given to the spatial dimensions of socialcapital, it has primarily come from development andurban/social geographers with little attention to scale(Mohan and Mohan, 2002). While this research isanchored in the concept of scale, we do not privilege scaleto the exclusion of additional spatial concepts such as net-works that engage different scales, nor place, where thesocial practices of everyday life, especially those that arechurch-centered, are embedded (Leitner and Miller,2007). Our research also calls attention to the criticalimportance of bottom-up or local scale agency in the socialconstruction of multi-scaled social capital networks, partic-ularly when larger scale government institutions arerecreant in providing various forms of assistance to com-munities beset by specific challenges. This form of scalebuilding through bridging social capital to procure eco-nomic and political resources was no more apparent thanin the landfill issue whereby flexible and placed-based andcollective action discourses were harnessed across multiplescales to successfully promote co-ethnic and multi-racialsolidarity to achieve a particular goal. Indeed, futureempirically based research on disaster impacted communi-ties, particularly those that are socioeconomically margin-alized, should be mindful of the important andconstitutive role of social capital and networks at multiplegeographical scales to theorize the process of disaster evac-uation, relocation and recovery.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by National Science Founda-tion SGER Grants 0555135 and 0555086. The authors also

C.A. Airriess et al. / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1333–1346 1345

thank Father The Vien Nguyen, Cyndi Nguyen, Thu Ngu-yen, Vietnamese Initiative in Economic Training and MaryQueen of Vietnam Church for their patience and supportthroughout the research process.

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