ABSTRACT
Disasters are events that can severely disrupt the immediate biophysical and social environments of human communities, threatening the ability of impacted cultural systems to adapt and survive. As such, disasters provide opportunities to understand responses of individuals, communities, and institutions in crisis, allowing anthropologists to penetrate the core of culture systems, as people recover, restore, and reinvent themselves in the post-disaster environment. Political ecology also exposes competing interests in contested interpretations of power. In disasters the struggles of communities to maintain power come to the fore. Power relationships work themselves out within the place and space—the territories or environments—of communities. In Florida, loss of fishery resources was tied to loss of important marine fisheries habitat, including destruction of marine habitats and commercially important marine species. Many seafood processors suffered heavy losses in the hurricane, including losses of product supply, business infrastructure, and clientele.
