Making and Scheduling Citizens: Political Time and the Democratic Potential of Hurricanes

This article supplements the one-sided diet of spatial concepts, metaphors, and case studies used by scholars to feed our thinking on how everyday people become collective political agents. Drawing from interviews and ethnographic observations of a post-Hurricane Sandy relief effort, I highlight how people's understanding of time is an important, but often neglected resource for political mobilization. To examine this dimension, I excavate from Sheldon Wolin's work two concepts for thinking about political time and how events such as hurricanes can instigate extraordinary acts of political participation. I argue that insofar as a natural disaster is perceived as a crisis, it can break the boundaries of "time zones" in which we are normally isolated, and the established "rhythms" that schedule and limit citizen participation. Such a process helps spread concern for our common fate, and the need for people to act on its behalf in unscripted ways.