1st Edition
Urban Preppers and the Pandemic in New York City Class, Resilience and Sheltering in Place
Drawing on urban and community resilience literature, Urban Preppers and the Pandemic in New York City: Class, Resilience and Sheltering in Place offers a detailed qualitative analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on New York City and on the philosophy and practices of the city’s urban prepper subculture.
With a special focus on the height of the pandemic in New York, it considers the city’s unique position as the pandemic’s first epicenter in the U.S. It explores the lived experience of enduring the pandemic as reflections of class division, considering key themes including: The exodus of the wealthy; sheltering in place for the middle class; the inability to leave high-risk neighborhoods for the poor; and sheltering-in-place practices and community resilience efforts by New York Preppers. It analyzes the importance of good government and an engaged citizenry in developing an agenda for the city’s continued recovery and its future, underscoring the need for cities to develop disaster management approaches that expand traditional “command and control” models to make space for local knowledge and resources.
At its core, Urban Preppers and the Pandemic in New York City: Class, Resilience and Sheltering in Place is about understanding New York City’s pandemic experience and how self-reliance evolves into community resilience outside of institutions. It is vital reading scholars and students of sociology, anthropology, geography and urban studies with interests in subcultures, ethnography and the sociology of disasters.
1. Preparing for Survival vs. Trying to Survive 2. History of Contagions and Chaos in the City 3. Escape from New York: When the Rich Left the City 4. Setting Up: Prepper Closets 5. Settling In and Settling Down: Life During Lockdown in NYC 6. Fostering Resiliency: The New York City Prepper’s Network 7. Prepper Advice for Post-pandemic New York 8. Resiliency and a Way Forward for the City
Biography
Anna Maria Bounds is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Queens College, City University of New York, USA.
"Anna Maria Bounds provides an immensely illuminating and unique analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is one that only she could produce – and demonstrates that, in 2020, Bounds was the right scholar, in the right place, at a terrible, terrible time. As it offers a forensic outline of this COVID's spread throughout New York City, this book combines Bounds' background as a New Yorker, leading expertise on disaster prepping, and flair as an author, to provide a definitive account of a unique moment in NYC (and the wider world's) history. To understand what happened during COVID, why it happened, how preppers readied for and responded to the disease, what can be learned from these events, and how we (as a society and individuals) might prepare for the next big event, you need to read this book."
Michael F. Mills, University of Kent
"Anna Maria Bounds dives again into New York City prepper culture with this fascinating follow up to her 2020 book, Bracing for the Apocalypse. Experience and ethnographic research of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic bring an urgent update and focus on the visceral, material realities of the disaster-prepared in disastrous times. The swells of massive change in economic conditions, governance, and racialized inequality are essential pieces of the puzzle that Anna brings to the table, in her quest to make us understand all of what is at stake. Expect fascinating stories and analyses of expertise, human connection, energy for collective action, and all the things New Yorkers learned during the pandemic that they could not do without. No plans for the fall? Then read this book!"
Meg Holden, Simon Fraser University
"In her second book on the prepping community, Bounds offers an insightful, captivating account of life in New York during the pandemic. A fascinating peek inside the urban prepper movement in NYC that tells a story of how hope, planning, and community can allay fear during crisis."
Bradley Garrett, Author of Bunker: Building for the End Times
