Roberto E. Barrios - Governing Affect

This book and my career as an anthropologist would not have been possible were it not for a number of people who supported and educated me over the course of four decades of life. First among these people are my parents, Mara Teresa Castellanos Pasarelli and Domingo Everardo Barrios Daz, who made tremendous sacrifices to provide me with the resources and experiences that shaped me as a person and as a professional social scientist. Academics, of course, also have scholarly families, and I am forever indebted to the educators and researchers who encouraged me to pursue anthropology as a field of study. At the University of New Orleans, Malcolm Webb, Ethelyn Orso, Richard Shenkel, and Richard Beavers all played key roles in my mentorship and encouraged me to pursue a graduate degree in anthropology. At the University of Florida, Anthony Oliver-Smith, James P. Stansbury, Allan F. Burns, Lynette Norr, and Stacey Langwick were instrumental in guiding me to develop an interest in applied anthropology, the anthropology of disasters, and the anthropology of development, as well as providing me with the means necessary to complete my graduate training and dissertation research.

My graduate development would not have been the same were it not for a number of fellow students who volunteered their friendships and developing professional expertise, among whom I count Lauren Fordyce, Debra Rodman, Jennifer Hale-Gallardo, Sarah Graddy, Antonio de la Pea, and Robert Freeman. The ideas and research interests I developed in graduate school also came to fruition over the course of my postdoctoral employment as an assistant professor at Southern Illinois UniversityCarbondale ( SIUC ), where a number of colleagues fostered the development of this book through casual conversations and helpful critiques. I am particularly indebted to Janet Fuller, Anthony K. Webster, Jonathan D. Hill, David Sutton, John McCall, Ren Francisco Poitevin, and Robert Swenson for making me a part of their intellectual communities and supporting my professional advancement.

Beyond the hallways of my home academic institution, I am also grateful to a number of fellow anthropologists who provided keen commentaries on my work that greatly enhanced the ways I think about post-catastrophe reconstruction. I am particularly grateful in this regard to Susanna Hoffman, Michele Gamburd, Mark Schuller, Faye Harrison, Katherine Browne, Rachel Breunlin, Helen Regis, Antoinette Jackson, David Beriss, Jeffrey Ehrenreich, Jesus Manuel Macas, Tang Yun, Zhang Yuan, AJ Faas, Gregory Button, and the two anonymous reviewers whose insights and recommendations greatly improved this manuscript. I would also like to thank James Bielo, Carrie Lane, Alicia Christensen, Sara Springsteen, and Vicki Chamlee at the University of Nebraska Press, who believed in and supported this book project.

The research upon which this book is based became possible through the kindness and hard work of a number of people who opened their homes, communities, and research sites to me. In Honduras, I was assisted by Marco Tulio Medina, Rosa Palencia, Carlos Giacoletti, Maria Fiallos, Myrna Portillo, and hundreds of disaster-displaced families who, despite the hardships brought about by forceful displacement and resettlement, always found time to share their life stories and thoughts with me. In New Orleans, Cheryl Austin, Jeanell Holmes, and Isabel Barrios Sherwood were instrumental in helping me understand life in the city before and after Hurricane Katrina. Qiaoyun Zhang, a graduate student from the SIUC Department of Anthropology, also contributed to my research efforts in southeastern Louisiana. In southern Illinois, Heather McIlvane-Newsad and David Casagrande were incredibly kind in inviting me to collaborate on their work on community resettlement and sharing their wealth of ethnographic data. I was also fortunate to be assisted by two undergraduate students, Katherine Ray and Christopher Higgerson. In Mexico, I remain indebted to Asuncin Avendao Garca, Roberto Melville, Virginia Garca Acosta, and the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologa Social (Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology) for their hospitality and guidance. My ethnographic fieldwork was also facilitated by the Fulbright Institute of International Education program (which funded my dissertation research), the National Science Foundation (which assisted me in Honduras via a senior grant awarded to James P. Stansbury and Anthony Oliver-Smith), and the SIUC Faculty Seed Grant (which supported my work in New Orleans). Finally, I am eternally grateful to Kelly McGuire, who has been a friend and partner through this two-decade endeavor.