The clash of reformers and survivors in the aftermath of catastrophe
CoverTitle PageCopyrightContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. "Organization without Any Organization": Order and Disorder in Exploded Halifax2. "A Great Power Had Swept Over It": Politics and Power after the Salem Fire3. "It Is Easy Enough to Establish Camps": Geographies of Community and Resistance in Burned Salem4. "The Relief Would Have Had to Pay Someone": Halifax Families and the Work of Relief in Halifax5. "A Desirable Measure of Responsibility": Halifax's Churches and Unions Respond to the Progressive6. "The Sufferings of This Time Are Not Worthy to Be Compared with the Glory That Is to Come": SaleConclusion: Cities of ComradesNotesBibliographyIndex
Jacob A. C. Remes is an assistant professor of public affairs and history at the Metropolitan Center of SUNY Empire State College. He is a winner of the Herbert G. Gutman prize from the Labor and Working-Class History Association and the Eugene A. Forsey Prize from the Canadian Committee on Labour History.
Herbert G. Gutman Prize, Labor and Working-Class History
Association (LAWCHA), 2011
"Remes is among the vanguard of the new disaster historians,
motivated by the twenty-first century wave of disasters to search
out antecedents that help us understand the formation of a modern
state that 'manages' (or does not manage) disasters like Hurricane
Katrina. . . . A tour de force of method for the new disaster
history, and hopefully a portent of things to come in this emerging
field."--American Historical Review
"Remes' impressive research demonstrates throughout that even
though the actions of working-class people drew on tight social
bonds and a deep reservoir of local knowledge, their behavior was
often illegible to the ascendant class of relief managers and
government experts."--Journal of American History
"Disaster Citizenship is an impressive accomplishment that offers a
great deal to those interested in social history, the history of
the working class, the history of progressivism, urban history,
state building in the Progressive Era, the US-Canada borderlands,
and comparative approaches to the study of history."--H-Net
Review
"Jacob A. C. Remes has shed new light over a broad terrain of
Progressive Era historiography through this richly researched,
sensitive, transnational comparison of the 1914 Salem,
Massachusetts fire and the 1917 Halifax, Nova Scotia
explosion."--New England Quarterly
"An excellent historical study rooted in high quality research.
Remes' management of the two case studies successfully supports his
central arguments relating to the state, the people, and ways of
forming citizenship at times of crisis and relief, and his
methodologies encourage us to look at disasters, both past and
present, in new ways."--Labour/Le Travail
"Remes's excellent and engaging book contributes to long-running
debates about the nature of working-class life, to more recent
discussions of transnational progressive reform and state-society
relations and to current conversations--both popular and
scholarly--about events such as Hurricanes Katrina and
Sandy."--Labor: Studies in Working Class History
"This is a thoughtful, robust work of history, exactly the kind of
study that we need to revitalize the history of working
people."--Canadian Historical Review
"A striking juxtaposition of the hierarchical order of experts and
vernacular order created by victims themselves, Remes's finely
grained comparison of two major turn-of-the-century disasters in
Halifax and Salem represents a major contribution to our
understanding of the dynamics and effects of spontaneous order in a
crisis. Meticulously researched, gripping, and important."--James
C. Scott, author of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to
Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
"In his meticulously researched and intelligently argued book,
Disaster Citizenship, Jacob Remes has advanced and perfected the
kind of deep social history pioneered by Herbert Gutman and Linda
Gordon in their studies of working people’s lives. More than any
other historian writing in this tradition, Remes has revealed the
power of the informal networks and solidarities that existed in
poorer communities, particularly during disasters, and he has
highlighted the ways agents of state intervention failed to
understand these strengths and their democratic significance.
Scholars will find in this excellent study a model of transnational
history and other readers, especially officials in charge of
disaster relief, will discover a new way of thinking about the
people they are attempting to 'rescue.'"--James Green, author of
The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and
Their Battle for Freedom
"Disaster Citizenship provides a rich, original, and sensitive
account of responses to two urban catastrophes, the Great Salem
Fire (1914) and the 1917 Halifax explosion. Remes sets a new
standard for transnational continental history as the everyday
solidarity of working people is contrasted with the progressive
state, civic institutions, and emergent welfare
professionals."--Suzanne Morton, author of Wisdom, Justice, and
Charity: Canadian Social Welfare through the Life of Jane B Wisdom,
1884–1975
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