A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster is a 2009 non-fiction book that examines the behavior of people amid and after disasters as well as the institutional failure that can worsen disasters. Solnit explores five major disasters and detours to discuss several others while providing commentary on contemporary Western culture, anarchism, and the media’s portrayal of disaster victims.

Solnit and the many sociologists she cites present an optimistic view of human nature amid disaster. People, she argues, tend to want to help each other and usually behave cooperatively. By contrast, elites, government, and military authorities assume the worst of ordinary citizens and often react to disasters with the expectation that people will worsen the situation by looting and panicking. They preempt these expected behaviors through militarized and distrustful responses, often hindering the highly effective, informal, and anarchic strategies of the citizens themselves and sometimes even actively harming the people.

The book also examines the feeling of solidarity, togetherness, and even elation that disaster survivors frequently report. Solnit posits that these feelings emerge from the necessary conditions of disaster: Disaster unites people under a common mission, purpose, and identity, puts their often-small problems into perspective, and presents tangible and straightforward problems with actionable solutions.

The book is divided into five sections: Part 1 details the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the positive responses of many of its survivors, and its influence on activist Dorothy Day and others. Part 2 discusses the Halifax explosion of 1917, its impact on the founder of disaster studies, Samuel Prince, and theories of human nature that were popular in the early 20th century. Part 3 describes the lasting impact of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake on labor movements and the political consciousness of the nation. Part 4 details New York City’s reaction to 9/11 and the war that followed, and Part 5 focuses on New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and in particular the harmful reactions of authorities relying on rumor and stereotypes about the people living there.

By examining these cases, Solnit hopes to illuminate the intrinsic goodness of people and thus show that there is another way beyond the “hell” of a coercive and harmful system: a paradise of goodwill and cooperation for which people already have the capacity, and that is glimpsed even, or especially, in the hellish circumstances of disaster.