Dealing with background inequality in post-disaster participatory spaces

This paper looks at how differences are accommodated in claimed participatory spaces and discusses what one can learn from different types of mechanisms for dealing with background inequality among participants in post-disaster settings. The paper thus grounds democratic theorising in an empirical investigation of a particular type of setting, namely post-disaster processes. In short, this article focuses on mechanisms to handle inequality among participants in claimed participatory spaces. An ethnographic study of the Occupy Sandy network after Hurricane Sandy in New York City shows how activists worked with socio-economically marginalised communities with the aim of empowering them. The compensatory mechanisms put in place to counteract inequality brought about three problems of differentiation.

 The problems are detailed as follows: 

• There are variations in individual agency. People tend to negotiate and relate in various ways to social hierarchies. A social position does not fully determine individual identity or actions. Although as individuals we have little control over the conditions imposed on us by virtue of our social position, we have a degree of freedom in terms of how we relate to the structural position we are in.
• Difficulty can come within intersectional positions. The focus of black feminist researchers on intersectional analysis raises the complexity inherent in issues of community and identity. Groups are not mutually exclusive since various social positions intersect. Perhaps there is no simple mechanism to be found, since in the words of Phillips (1996), ‘diversity is too great to be captured in any categorical list’.
• There is situated marginalisation beyond commonly acknowledged identity markers. participation is 'acted out in an environment which varies dramatically depending on the particular setting’. Inequalities that are challenged through compensatory mechanisms may not be the only ones at play.