ABSTRACT
BEYOND FEEDING THE MULTITUDE: INTERNATIONAL NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS AND LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS IN SOUTHWESTERN HAITI
Heather Marie Prentice-Walz, MA Department of Anthropology Northern Illinois University, 2017 Mark Schuller, Thesis Director
This thesis explores the ways that international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) interface with the community and its local food system in a rural coastal town in southwestern
Haiti. The thesis argues that, especially in light of Hurricane Matthew, it is essential that INGOs in the region consider input from local residents as the food system is rebuilt.
NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY DE KALB, ILLINOIS
MAY 2017
BEYOND FEEDING THE MULTITUDE: INTERNATIONAL NONGOVERNMENTAL
ORGANIZATIONS AND LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS
IN SOUTHWESTERN HAITI
BY
HEATHER MARIE PRENTICE-WALZ ©2017 Heather Marie Prentice-Walz
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE
MASTER OF ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Thesis Director: Mark Schuller ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Professor Mark Schuller, for his support and guidance in this process, as well as as Professor Kristen Borre and Professor Emily McKee, who served on my thesis committee. I would also like to thank the Department of Anthropology at
Northern Illinois University, the National Science Foundation, and my colleagues in the U.S. and
Haiti for making this research possible. Above all, I thank my family. Mama, Dad, and Shane-- you mean the world to me. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………..vi LIST OF APPENDICES………………………………………………………………...vii PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………….viii
Chapter INTRODUCTION: A FRAGILE PARADISE……………………………………1 Overview of Thesis ……………………………………………………….4 Methodology and Research Questions…………………………………….7
1. HAITIAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND THE LOGIC OF FOREIGN INTERVENTIONS……………………………………………………………15 Haitian Exceptionalism and the Silencing of History……………………17 Foreign Intervention and the Exceptionalization of Haiti………………..25 Questioning the Exceptionalist Paradigm in Beaux Arbres……………...33 “Materially Poor and the Poor in Spirit”…………………………………38
2. LOAVES AND FISHES OR BREADFRUIT AND PWASON?...... 41 Food Systems and INGO Interventions in Beaux Arbres……………..…41 Food Systems and Interventions in Haiti………………………………...48 Case Study: Feeding the World’s Hungry and the Asosyasyon Pechè……………………………………………….56 Hunger in Beaux Arbres: Proposed Causes and Solutions…………...….64
3. BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE: NGOS IN BEAUX ARBRES……69 What Is an NGO?...... 69 Theoretical Orientation: Foucault and Power……………………………72 How Are NGOs Studied?...... 75 Haunting and the (In)Visibility of NGOs in Beaux Arbres…………...…82 NGOs in Haiti: Republic of NGOs? Invasion of NGOs?...... 87 NGOs in Beaux Arbres…………………………………………………..91 Perceptions of NGOs Within the Community……...…………………..101
CONCLUSION: GRAPPLING WITH GHOSTS, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE………………………………………………………………….115 Hurricane Matthew……………………………………………………..115 Evaluation Processes and NGOs: Evaluating What, and for Whom?.....120 iv Page
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………125
APPENDICES………………………………………………………………………….132 LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1.1 Departments of Haiti by Variable …………………………………...……….8
2.1 How Do People in Beaux Arbres Live?...... 43
2.2 What Does Beaux Arbres Produce? ………………………………...…...…..45
2.3 Have You Heard of Feeding the World’s Hungry? ………………..………..61
2.4 What Is Feeding the World’s Hungry? ………………...……...…………… 62
2.5 What Does Feeding the World’s Hungry do in Beaux Arbres? ……………..62
2.6 What Explains Hunger in Beaux Arbres? ………………………………...…65
3.1 Groups Described as “NGOs” in Collaborative Survey…………………. …94
3.2 INGOs We Believed Worked in Beaux Arbres………………….……..……96
3.3 INGOs We Learned About Through Ethnographic Work in Beaux Arbres………………………………………….……………98
3.4 Words to Describe NGOs Grouped by Common Theme………..…………103
3.5 Responses by Theme: What Role Should NGOs Play? Do NGOs Do This? ……………………………………………………..…106
3.6 Community Needs in Beaux Arbres………………………………………. 108
3.7 Comparing Community Priorities and the Perceived Priorities of NGOs in Beaux Arbres …………………………………………..……..109
3.8 Perception of INGOs’ Role in Beaux Arbres………………………..……. 110
3.9 Perceptions of INGOs’ Role in Beaux Arbres by Gender……………..…...111
LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix Page
A. SURVEY FOR COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT…….……..132
B. OPEN-ENDED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT ……………………………………………...138
A. SURVEY FOR INDEPENDENT RESEARCH PROJECT…………………………………..………….….………..…143
B. OPEN-ENDED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR INDEPENDENT RESEARCH PROJECT ……………………………………………....145
PREFACE: WE SHARE: CONDUCTING ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH IN BEAUX ARBRES, HAITI
Èske w konn pataje? (Do you share?) Wi! (Yes!) Kisa w konn pataje? (What do you share?) Mwen konn pataje manje, dlo, enfòmasyon… (I share food, water, information…) Èske w konn pataje flach w? (Are you accustomed to sharing your flashlight?) Anbe ok- w ka prete flash mwen (Sure, you can borrow the flashlight.)
It was nighttime in Beaux Arbres,1 Haiti, in July of 2016, and the solar-powered battery we relied on to power the lights had long since lost its charge. I needed to borrow my research partner Roseline’s flashlight and made this request by employing what had become a standing joke. We had spent the day surveying locals about life in this provincial fishing and farming town in southwestern Haiti, and our work included asking a series of questions about whether people are in the habit of sharing with their neighbors. This question was intended to gauge relationships between members of the community and to see how (and if) these relationships change over time. Although we joked, the truth is that Roseline and I did share. Constantly. We shared a bedroom, we ate meals together, we shared toiletries and clothes, we shared research tools. And we were able to tease about our shared experiences as ethnographic researchers.
We spent seven weeks in the Grand’Anse department of Haiti engaging in ethnographic research. Our work represents a cross-section of an NSF-funded, longitudinal study that investigates the research question What long-term changes to local socio-cultural institutions remain following the end of an international nongovernmental organization (INGO) project? To answer this question, Northern Illinois University Professor Mark Schuller paired students from
1 The name of the town has been changed to protect residents’ identities. ix Université d’Etat d’Haiti (Haiti’s state university), where he has been an affiliate professor since
2003, with graduate students from around the U.S. to create international research teams.
Adopting a mixed-methods approach, each of our teams was responsible for administering surveys, conducting open-ended interviews with local leaders, and compiling observational field notes for the communities within which we worked. The data we gathered focuses on the perceived presence and impacts of INGOs and local associations and organizations, local authorities, and the state. We also studied the communities themselves to understand the local socio-cultural institutions. Sharing, collaboration, and participation in local groups proved to be integral to the community of Beaux Arbres.
At the same time, I was working on an independent research project, in partial fulfillment of a master’s degree in cultural anthropology at Northern Illinois University. In this project I looked at the faith-based INGO Feeding the World’s Hungry2 (which works with a local fishers’ organization in Beaux Arbres) as a case study to explore the impacts of NGOs on local food systems.3 I also adopted a mixed-methods approach to research, and compiled data from a small survey, semi-structured interviews with local fishers, and ethnographic observations. Roseline worked on her own independent research project on deforestation in the region. Although the projects on deforestation and NGOs and food systems are separate, Roseline and I found that we helped one another with our independent research. I primarily helped Roseline by documenting deforestation and charcoal production through photographs and ethnographic notes. She helped
2 “Feeding the World’s Hungry” is a pseudonym for the INGO. 3 According to public health and food systems expert Roni Neff, “The food system is a system encompassing all the activities and resources that go into producing, distributing, and consuming food; the drivers and outcomes of those processes; and, the extensive and complex relationships between system participants and components.” (Ronie Neff, Introduction to the US Food System: Public Health, Environment, and Equity (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2015), 1).
x me by making casual inquiries about Feeding the World’s Hungry and by introducing me to acquaintances in the local fishing community.
The collaborative research model implicitly asks what it means to truly collaborate in the context of ethnographic fieldwork. How do we equally share the responsibility and accountability of our work with another person? This project is methodologically unique because the international student research teams are working as academic and professional equals. In addition to exploring the overarching question of the long-term impact of INGOs in Haitian socio-cultural environments we are, through our research methods, actively exploring the efficacy of collaborative Haitian/ US American research teams and academic partnerships.
Writing about the phenomenon of “decolonizing anthropology,” Professor Faye Harrison asks her readers to what extent and under what conditions “an authentic anthropology” can “emerge from the critical intellectual traditions and counter-hegemonic struggles of Third World peoples.”4 In a world where local anthropologists “have historically been relegated to the ranks of overqualified fieldwork assistants,” this research project strives to create a set of conditions which promotes Haitian anthropologists to work in their home country. Our work calls for critical and reflective examinations of the both the position of a “native anthropologist” and the position of the “outsider” foreign blan anthropologist in Haiti.
So then, what does it mean to be the American half of a collaborative research team with a Haitian academic in her native country? What does it mean to “share” every day? In practice, I found that my research partner and I were each other’s academic sounding board, closest confidante, and most reliable support system in Beaux Arbres. At the same time, we were
4Faye V. Harrison, Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further Toward and Anthropology for Liberation, 3rd edition (American Anthropological Association, 1997), 1-11.
xi perhaps each other’s harshest critic. Working alone in the field, the anthropologist is accountable to her institution or employer, to herself, and to the local community within which she works. In addition to these classic allegiances, my research partner and I are at all times accountable to one another. It took time to establish trust and confidence and to move away from constantly questioning one another. This constant sharing proved to be extremely challenging but, I argue, productive because together we were able to assemble a more complete picture of the town of
Beaux Arbres.
We asked different questions, noticed different things, and had different comfort zones. I found that being a foreigner is at once a bridge and a barrier. My research partner experienced a similar phenomenon as both a native-born Haitian and an outsider in Beaux Arbres. However, these multiple identities oftentimes complemented one another. I have the impression that some of the “bridges” I have been able to establish crisscrossed spaces that may otherwise have been barred for my research partner. Conversely, my partner’s identity as a local anthropologist certainly facilitated entry into spaces within which I would not normally have been allowed.
Moreover, as a team we were able to enter spaces together that neither of us may have thought to explore without the other person’s knowledge.
In early October of 2016, Roseline and I were brought to a new level of sharing.
Hurricane Matthew-- the strongest storm to hit Haiti in decades-- tore through the country’s southwestern peninsula. Beaux Arbres was one of the towns directly in the hurricane’s path. In spite of being separated by nearly two thousand miles, Roseline and I relayed information to one another as we were slowly able to reach our friends in Beaux Arbres via phone and social media.
We relied on one another to learn about the extent of the damage in the town, to learn how our friends were faring, and to discuss options for helping out. We shared our frustration, our worry,
xii our grief. Kisa nou konn pataje? Nou konn pataje siklòn Matye. What do we share? We share
Hurricane Matthew.
INTRODUCTION
A FRAGILE PARADISE
This thesis examines the ways in which one INGO, Feeding the World’s Hungry, interfaces with the provincial community of Beaux Arbres and its local food system.
In the summer of 2016, the Grand’Anse region of Haiti was breathtakingly lush and beautiful, particularly in coastal municipalities such as Beaux Arbres. The Beaux Arbres that exists in my mind is a landscape dominated by shades of green. Bright green grasses contrast with the deep red soils in the nearby hills. The dark green leaves of sugarcane plants foreground groves of mango, avocado, breadfruit, and banana trees along the dirt road that connects the town of Beaux
Arbres to smaller surrounding villages. Coconut trees grow along the coastline, and their vibrant green palm fronds tower above the sea, a body of water which ranges in color from sharp turquoise to a softer cornflower blue, to a stormy grey. In my mind’s eye, I see people gathering on the beach to play soccer in the sand. Fishers launch motorboats and dugout canoes into the water, and pull the boats ashore once the day’s work is done. A short distance from the shore, some of the town’s residents listen to Haitian pop music, emanating from crackly speakers, as they work weaving fishing nets, cooking food, and doing laundry.
Legend has it that in pre-Columbian times, the Taino people (who were indigenous to
Hispaniola) referred to Beaux Arbres as “paradise”; some say that Beaux Arbres was imagined as the place where people would go after death. Today, the area is fondly called the “Indians’ 2 Paradise.” In the center of Beaux Arbres there is a small plaza where people congregate to converse, play card games and dominos, and buy and sell local consumables (such as drinks and fried plantains) and occasionally imported goods (such as electronics) that come into the town via bus or boat. In the plaza, hand-welded metal benches encircle a sculpture of an “Indian” man.
This larger-than-life figure embodies the idea of the Indians’ paradise. Shoulders pulled back, his head held high and decorated with feathers, the “Indian” sits in front of an idyllic seascape and points to the forested mountains in the distance. The figure gestures to the land’s bounty.
In a country that is generally understood to have experienced massive tree loss and erosion, the green, arboreal landscape of the Grand’Anse is striking. This is not to say that the
Grand’Anse does not experience deforestation and erosion.1 Rather, unlike in many parts of
Haiti, when you are in the town of Beaux Arbres you are surrounded by forest. The ecology of the Grand’Anse is one feature that sets Beaux Arbres apart from the rest of Haiti, and much of
Beaux Arbres’s food system is embedded in its ecological terrain. Many residents of Beaux
Arbres identify themselves as fishers and peasant farmers. Many more fish occasionally and/or keep small gardens. The land and the sea are means of life and sources of livelihood in Beaux
Arbres. At the same time, Beaux Arbres’s geographical location and ecological realities may threaten the survival of its residents.
As a Caribbean nation, Haiti experiences an “inherent climate sensitivity,” which renders it particularly vulnerable to climate variations, and to disasters that may result from changes in
1 The charcoal industry seems to be the greatest cause of deforestation in the region. Much of the charcoal made in the Grand’Anse is sold for consumption in other parts of the country. We often saw big bags of charcoal along the roadside in and around Beaux Arbres; all of the commercial boats and trucks that came into the city left with bags of charcoal. More days than not we saw smoke coming from the mountains, where people were burning logs to create charcoal. As the road connecting Beaux Arbres has slowly been improved, charcoal production (for export to other parts of the country) is increasing.
3 the climate.2 Because of its specific location within the Caribbean, Haiti lies in the primary pathway of seasonal tropical storms, which originate in the Atlantic Ocean.3 At the same time, socio-economic and political factors contribute to vulnerability to disasters.4 It has been well documented that Haiti’s particular economic and political landscape significantly increases its vulnerability to disaster.5 Haiti’s vulnerability to disasters is aggravated by climate change, which has been directly linked to the increased frequency and magnitude of tropical cycles, rising sea levels, and increased periods of both flooding and drought.6 The Maplecroft Climate
Change Vulnerability Index, which considers both geographical and socio-political factors, calculates Haiti to be the most vulnerable country in the world in regards to climate change.7
Moreover, within Haiti, the Grand’Anse department has been identified as indicating a particularly high vulnerability to disasters.8
I was confronted with the realities of the Grand’Anse’s vulnerability to disaster in
October 2016, when the region was devastated by Hurricane Matthew, a Category 4 hurricane.
Like much of the Grand’Anse, Beaux Arbres suffered massive losses of agriculture, infrastructure, and housing. People were killed during the storm, and more died as a direct result
2 Michael A. Taylor et al., “Climate Change and the Caribbean: Review and Response,” Caribbean Studies 40, no. 2 (2012): 169-200. 3 Bhawan Singh and Marc J. Cohen, “Climate Change Resilience: The Case of Haiti,” Oxfam Research Reports, March 2014. 4 See: Elizabeth Marino, Fierce Climate Sacred Ground: An Ethnography of Climate Change in Shishmaref, Alaska (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2015); Anthony Oliver-Smith, “What Is a Disaster?” in The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective, ed. Anthony Oliver-Smith and Susanna M. Hoffman (New York: Routledge. 1999), 18-34; Greg Bankoff, Georg Frerks and Dorthea Hilhorst, Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development, and People (London: Earthscan, 2004). 5 See: Paul Farmer, Haiti After the Earthquake (New York: Public Affairs, 2011); Laurent Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (New York: Picador, 2012); Mark Schuller, Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016). 6 Taylor et al., “Climate Change and the Caribbean: Review and Response,” 169-200. 7 Verisk Maplecroft, Climate Change Vulnerability Index 2012 (2012; Verisk Maplecroft, 2012), https://maplecroft.com/about/news/ccvi_2012.html. 8 Laura M. Glaeser et al., “Haiti Prospective Food Security Assessment,” FANTA 2, November, 2012.
4 of injuries sustained during the storm.9 Many aspects of the reality of life in Beaux Arbres today are not reflected in the ethnographic descriptions and data in this thesis. However, the information I present is highly relevant because it provides a foundation for understanding the community and gauging what has been lost, what has remained, and what might be recovered.
Among other qualities, our ethnographic findings draw attention to some of the town’s strengths, such as relative independence from imported foods and a rich culture of food sharing. In this thesis I argue that it is essential that INGOs and international agencies working in Beaux Arbres do not overlook or undermine the community’s strengths as rebuilding efforts commence.
Overview of Thesis
The first chapter of the thesis engages with the idea of Haiti as “exceptional” and works to deconstruct this historical trope. I question who tells the story of Haitian exceptionalism and how, when, and why. When might it benefit stakeholders (e.g., NGOs, scholars, the media, politicians, policymakers) to describe Haiti as an exception to the rule(s)? When might it be beneficial to view Haiti as exemplifying the ordinary or everyday? I suggest that for NGOs the narrative of exceptionalization is inherently advantageous because it works to justify interventions while simultaneously providing an excuse for interventions that fail. The chapter moves to a discussion of the realities of life in Beaux Arbres and considers the qualities that might differentiate Beaux Arbres from other parts of Haiti.
9 The death toll in Beaux Arbres remains unknown and unreported.
5 Taken as a whole, Haiti relies heavily on foreign food imports; over half of the food consumed in the country is imported.10 In Beaux Arbres, however, many people subsist on foodstuffs that are locally procured. Our ethnographic data suggest that the town has a higher level of self-reliance in regard to food than much of the rest of the country. In the second chapter
I discuss local food and food systems in Beaux Arbres, including the cultural significance of food. Food systems are woven into Beaux Arbres’s social fabric. This chapter centers on my case study of the INGO Feeding the World’s Hungry and engages in an in-depth exploration of the organization’s role in the community and the ways in which its presence and impacts are perceived (or not perceived) by members of the local community. Feeding the World’s Hungry, which adopts the mission of alleviating issues associated with hunger, works with a local fishers’ association in Beaux Arbres. Their interventions are met with a variety of responses, from positive to negative to indifferent/unaware. However, people in Beaux Arbres do talk about hunger and the reasons for hunger and what might be done to mitigate hunger. There is a striking difference in methodologies and priorities when NGO interpretations of “problems” and
“solutions” are compared with local residents’ priorities.
The third chapter of the thesis concerns itself with the study of NGOs. This chapter identifies shifting trends in the ways that NGOs’ relationships with power have been critically analyzed in scholarly writing and argues that the study of NGOs is becoming increasingly sophisticated. The increased nuance within the field is demonstrated by three major shifts in theorizing on NGOs and power: 1) the shift from viewing NGOs as a monolithic category to viewing NGOs as site-specific entities; 2) the reimagining of NGOs as vehicles for resistance,
10 World Food Programme, WFP Haiti: Brief, 2015, http://www.wfp.org.
6 rather than exclusively understanding NGOs as tools of neoliberalism; 3) and the shift from viewing NGOs as “bridges” to viewing NGOs as “intermediaries.”
I add my own theoretical contribution to NGO studies when I suggest studying NGOs through a lens of “haunting,” as described by sociologist Avery Gordon. In Beaux Arbres, people’s descriptions of NGOs and their reported involvement with NGOs speaks to a paradoxical presence and absence of NGOs. The confusion surrounding NGOs in Beaux Arbres is perhaps unsurprising when considered in the context of scholarly NGO studies. I suggest that, in many ways, the tangled conceptualization of NGOs we found in Beaux Arbres mimics scholarship on NGOs within the social sciences. Central themes that emerge in discourse about
NGOs in Beaux Arbres align with themes brought up in scholarly discourse, such as development, collaboration, and the idea that NGOs have the capacity to impact communities in ways that are distinctly positive or negative.
People in Beaux Arbres perceive NGOs as intervening in sectors that they may not prioritize, such as food and hunger, and perceive NGOs as absent from sectors that residents do prioritize, such as building a safe road to connect Beaux Arbres to the rest of the country.
Studying food systems afforded me a close view of the disconnect between the perceived priorities of NGOs and their beneficiary populations. An analysis of this apparent disengagement segues into a discussion of evaluations.
A discussion of formal and informal evaluations is oftentimes missing from discussions of NGOs and their impact. The concluding chapter focuses on the evaluation of NGO projects in local communities. In this chapter I discuss the relationship between evaluation processes and
Hurricane Matthew. I suggest that the hurricane forced a brutal, flash evaluation of society, resiliency, vulnerability, infrastructure, sustainability, and aid networks in Beaux Arbres. At the
7 same time, Hurricane Matthew emphasizes the importance of beneficiary input. INGO interventions must be evaluated by residents of Beaux Arbres if the food sector is to be rebuilt to align with a model of justice.
Methodology and Research Questions
Scope of the Study
The findings presented in this thesis come from my independent research project (which takes Feeding the World’s Hungry as a case study) and Professor Mark Schuller’s NSF-funded longitudinal study on the long-term impacts of NGOs in Haiti. To differentiate between the two projects, I refer to Schuller’s longitudinal study as the “collaborative research project” and the
Feeding the World’s Hungry case study as the “independent research project.” The datasets for both projects were gathered through a mixed-methods approach to research that relied on both quantitative and qualitative methods.
The collaborative research project was conducted between June and August of 2016 in eight different rural field sites across the “Grand South” of Haiti. Eight two-person teams of
Haitian and U.S.-based university students collaborated to conduct ethnographic research aimed at investigating the question What long term changes to local socio-cultural institutions remain following the end of an INGO project?” The field sites were strategically chosen to isolate two variables: whether NGOs at the site were engaged in development work or humanitarian work and whether the site had more NGOs before or after the 2010 earthquake that devastated much of
Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas (Table 1.1). Beaux Arbres, which is located in the
8 Grand’Anse department, was chosen as a field site to represent development-based NGOs that had a greater presence post-2010 (despite the region not being directly impacted by the earthquake). My research partner, Roseline, and I lived and worked in Beaux Arbres from June
23 to August 8, 2016.
Table 1.1: Departments of Haiti by Variable Development (not directly Humanitarian impacted by earthquake) (earthquake-impacted) Limited NGO Grand’Anse (Southwest) Ouest (West) presence before 2010 Greater NGO Les Cayes (South) Sud-Est (Southeast) presence before 2010 Each of the departments represents the location of two field sites. These field sites are not individually named in this thesis.
It is important to note that the research from the collaborative study presented in this thesis represents a cross-section of what will be a five-year longitudinal study. Participating in the collaborative research project enabled me to conduct the independent research project. Data for both projects was gathered concurrently.
International Research Teams
The ongoing collaborative project is methodologically unique because the student research teams are expected to work as academic and professional equals. In addition to researching the long-term impacts of NGOs, our work necessarily explores the question of what
9 it means to be part of a collaborative, international research team. Based on my research experiences, I believe that this research model has the potential to contribute to both Haitian studies and NGO studies. This belief is partially informed by my experiences as a co-panelist at the annual Haitian Studies Association conference in Cap Haïtien in November 2016. Roseline,
I, and another Haitian/U.S. American research team co-presented as part of a panel focused on reimagining ethnographic research methods in Haiti. The director of the research project, Mark
Schuller, chaired the panel.
It has been argued that the field of Haitian studies is at a kalfou, or “crossroads.” Much like the country itself, the branch of academia devoted to Haiti exists at an intersection of the local and the global, national and international, present and past, and the rural and the urban. For centuries a multitude of ethnicities, nationalities, languages, and ideologies have converged on
Haitian soil. In line with this reality, Haitian studies has become a highly diversified and interdisciplinary field. However, there is less collaboration between Haitian and U.S. American scholars than one might imagine.
Within Haitian studies, and the social sciences more generally, special attention is given to (I)NGOs, multi-sited entities that are situated at a crossroads of another sort. NGOs have become, for good or ill, part of Haiti’s political ecosystem, especially after the 2010 earthquake.
In our panel presentation, we asked, What will the future of NGO studies in Haiti look like? What is the future of Haitian studies more broadly? Based on our individual and collective experiences, we proposed that adopting a collaborative international research model can help to cultivate a healthy and productive academic environment. We expressed the hope that, working together, we can simultaneously embrace the “crossroads” and advance along a new trajectory: a road that is distinguished by its collaborative efforts and (cross)cultural fluency.
10
Methods And Research Tools
Each of the eight collaborative research teams was responsible for engaging in direct observation and participant observation, administering surveys, and conducting open-ended interviews. The survey for the collaborative research project (see Appendix A) contained approximately 80 questions that focused on community life (including questions about trust, collaboration, community leaders, and sharing), perceptions of and interactions with NGOs, perceptions of the state and local authorities, the greatest needs within the community, and thoughts about the future. In all eight field sites, survey participants were randomly selected based on geographical location. My research partner, Roseline, and I surveyed a total of 109 people in Beaux Arbres. Overall, 785 people were surveyed from the eight field sites.
Based on local findings from the surveys, each of the eight research teams created a list of open-ended questions for semi-structured interviews at their specific field site. In Beaux
Arbres, Roseline and I created a list of twenty-seven open interview questions (see Appendix B).
We interviewed a total of nine people. Although we asked each of the interview questions at least once, not every interviewee was asked to respond to each of the twenty-seven questions.
Certain questions were tailored for specific individuals. We used what we had learned about the community over the course of the summer to develop a list of twelve potential interviewees. Our sample reflects a group of people whom we perceived to be well established within the community and who had some prior experience with NGOs. We completed a total of nine interviews.11 The interview participants ranged in occupation from people who ran local
11 Because of scheduling difficulties and the limited time we spent in Beaux Arbres, we were not able to interview everyone from our list of potential interviewees.
11 grassroots NGOs, to former and current politicians, to school teachers, to young adults who had worked with INGOs in the community. The only incentive we offered to participants in the interviews and surveys was the chance to share their point of view. These interviews were recorded by us and later transcribed by a professional in Port-au-Prince.
Ethnographic observation was central to the success of our research. I kept a daily field journal where I documented my observations about the town, recorded social interactions, and noted my working hypotheses. I paid special attention to activities related to NGOs for the collaborative research project and recorded information about food production, distribution, and consumption for the independent research project (although there was significant overlap between the two projects). I also constructed research tools for the independent project. I created a short three-part survey (see Appendix C) that asked questions about Feeding the World’s
Hungry, the local fishers’ association with whom the INGO works, and food and hunger in
Beaux Arbres. I surveyed a total of 42 residents in Beaux Arbres. My survey sample was based on a map I created of the neighborhoods in Beaux Arbres. I attempted to have equal representation of participants from each of the seven primary neighborhoods I identified.
However, some neighborhoods are more strongly represented in my data than others. Although there did not appear to be a statistical correlation between neighborhoods and survey responses, it is possible that such a correlation exists. The relatively small sample size limits the usefulness of this particular dataset. In addition to the surveys, I interviewed five fishers from the local fishers’ association (see Appendix D). I recorded and partially transcribed these interviews.
12 Limitations of Research
The research I am presenting has inherent limitations. Specifically, the independent research project was limited by time and my own linguistic and cultural fluency. The research was geographically limited to the town of Beaux Arbres; I did not conduct surveys in the surrounding areas. The independent research project also relies on information from INGO websites, rather than in-person interactions with INGO workers. Considering the its limitations, this work represents a foundation for future research. In the future, I hope to spend a full year in
Beaux Arbres so that I may witness firsthand the seasonal changes in food production (and perhaps seasonal variations in NGO presence). When I return to Beaux Arbres, I intend to build deeper relationships with residents of Beaux Arbres so that my research is more culturally- informed. I also hope to expand the sample size and scope (both geographical and professional) of research participants. Ideally, I will survey and interview significantly more people, including
Haitians and foreigners who are employed by Feeding the World’s Hungry.
Research Questions
Before traveling to Beaux Arbres to conduct fieldwork, I created a series of questions to guide my independent research. The questions focus on the INGO Feeding the World’s Hungry and the local fishers’ association they partner with, the Asosyasyon Pechè (AP). Embedded in each specific research question is the overarching question of whether the responses will be homogeneous or diverse. When writing these questions, I wondered if there would be a division between local stakeholders and community members who are not on the payroll of Feeding the
13 World’s Hungry or the AP. My initial research questions were as follows:
I. What is the relationship between Feeding the World’s Hungry and the Asosyasyon Pechè?
How do Feeding the World’s Hungry and the AP employees, or “stakeholders,” describe
the relationship between the two organizations? How do community members who are
not employed by either organization describe the relationship between the two? Which
organization predates the other? Did the AP form independently of Feeding the World’s
Hungry, or did Feeding the World’s Hungry contribute to the creation of the AP? Data to
answer this question was to be gathered through semi-structured interviews with AP
members.
II. How are hunger and food insecurity perceived in Beaux Arbres?
Is the local population of Beaux Arbres perceived to be hungry and/or food insecure? On
what information are these assessments based? Is there a difference in perception
between local stakeholders and other community members? Data to answer this question
was to be gathered through semi-structured interviews with AP members and a survey of
the general population.
III. How are the impacts of FFP and the AP understood in Beaux Arbres?
How do community members describe the impacts of Feeding the World’s Hungry and
the AP? Is there a difference in perception between local stakeholders and other members
of the general, local population? Data to answer this question was to be gathered through
semi-structured interviews and a survey of the local population.
14
IV. How are the evaluation processes of the FPP and AP understood?
How do community members describe the evaluation processes of Feeding the World’s
Hungry and the AP? Is there a difference in perception between local stakeholders and
other members of the local population? Data to answer this question was to be gathered
through semi-structured interviews with AP members and community leaders.
Over the course of my research, I found that I had additional questions about how people in Beaux Arbres lived, more generally speaking. I became particularly interested in studying the ways in which people procured, distributed, and consumed food. I also became more interested in the ways that the Beaux Arbres community members outside of the AP conceived of the organization. Additionally, I found that questions about processes of evaluation were confusing and tended not to be very productive. As I learned from my daily experiences (and trials and errors with my research), I developed research tools that better fit the reality of Beaux Arbres.
The changes and modifications are reflected in my surveys and interview questions (see appendixes A-C).
CHAPTER 1: HAITIAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND THE LOGIC OF FOREIGN INTERVENTIONS
“The Pearl of the Antilles,” “the first Black republic,” “the poorest country in the
Western Hemisphere,” “a bazaar of the bizarre,”1 the country of Haiti has been assigned numerous epithets over the centuries. Whether positive or disparaging, many of the names attached to Haiti indicate that the island is in some way extraordinary. In the early 1990s, Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot made the case that Haiti is understood through an
“exceptionalist paradigm,” which was developed in the nineteenth century with the intention of making Haiti “recognizable to the world” by emphasizing the country as a largely negative exception to the norm.2
This chapter explores the ways in which Haiti has historically been, and continues to be, constructed as “exceptional.” It has been argued that as a process, exceptionalization has worked to silence and marginalize Haitians both as individuals and as a collective group.3 Inspired by recent scholarship on Haitian exceptionalism, this chapter engages with the idea that many of the
“exceptional phenomena” associated with Haiti are in many ways actually unexceptional.4
Moreover, the thesis suggests that certain phenomena that exist in Haiti can be understood as
1 Paul Farmer, Aids and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 4. 2 Nadège T. Clitandre., “Haitian Exceptionalism in the Caribbean and the Project of Rebuilding Haiti,” Journal of Haitian Studies 17, no. 2 (2011): 148. 3 E.g. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “The Odd and the Ordinary: Haiti, the Caribbean and the New World," Cimarron 2, no. 3 (1990): 3-12; Gina Athena Ulysse, Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2015). 4 E.g. Clitandre, “Haitian Exceptionalism in the Caribbean and the Project of Rebuilding Haiti,”; Schuller, Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti. 16 predictable outcomes of the modern world and its neoliberal processes, so that silencing Haiti is actually a means of silencing a disturbing narrative that implicates many actors outside of Haiti.
The narrative that is being silenced through the exceptionalization of Haiti indicts “the West” as an antihero. Furthermore, the exceptionalization of Haiti allows for “Westerners” to view themselves and their nations as saving Haitians from dire circumstances (e.g., as humanitarian aid workers), rather than viewing themselves as being a source of problems. Nonetheless, the ghosts work their way through the cracks, and the present continues to be haunted by wrongs of the past.
Conceived as the “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,” or (in the words of
Feeding the World’s Hungry) a country that is “materially poor and poor in spirit,” Haiti becomes a “pariah” that demands foreign intervention.5 As anthropologist Jennie Smith states, the system of international aid itself is reinforced “by the ‘aiders’’ construction of the ‘aided.’”6
This chapter is not concerned with the question of whether or not Haiti is, in an objective sense, exceptional so much as the questions of how, when, and why Haiti is portrayed as being exceptional. I examine how specific INGOs and aid organizations describe Haiti as exceptional, and I search for the logic behind these representations. I suggest that for INGOs, reproducing the narrative of exceptionalization is dually advantageous. NGO scholars have argued that there is an understood moral obligation to help those in need,7 and Haiti is repeatedly depicted as being exceptionally needy. In this way, the narratives of an exceptional Haiti may justify interventions
5 Paul Farmer, The Uses of Haiti, 2nd ed. (Monroe: Common Courage Press, 2003), 78. 6Jennie Smith, When the Hands Are Many: Community Organization and Social Change in Rural Haiti (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2001), 31. 7 Liisa Malkki, The Need to Help: The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015).
17 from (I)NGOs and international development agencies. Conversely, Haiti’s exceptionalism may provide a justification for interventions that fail.
Before entering a discussion of how and why INGOs reproduce the discourse of Haiti as
“exceptional,” this chapter explores the origins of the exceptionalist narrative. The following section draws upon the work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot to provide the theoretical and historical context for understanding the exceptionalization of Haiti.
Haitian Exceptionalism and The Silencing Of History
Trouillot’s Silencing the Past and The Odd and the Ordinary
Trouillot’s work in the 1990s, particularly his piece “The Odd and the Ordinary: Haiti, the Caribbean, and the World” and his book Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of
History, are foundational to the ongoing conversation about Haitian exceptionalism within academia8 and helps to constitute the theoretical backbone of this chapter.
In “The Odd and the Ordinary,” Trouillot wrote:
When we are being told over and over again that Haiti is unique, bizarre, unnatural, odd, queer, freakish, or grotesque, we are also being told in varying degrees that it is unnatural, erratic, and therefore unexplainable. We are being told that Haiti is so special that modes of investigation applicable to other societies are not relevant here.9
8Kaima L. Glover and Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken, Introduction, The Haitian Exception: Anthropology and the Predicative of Narrative, ed. Benedicty-Kokken et al. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 1-14. 9 Trouillot, The Odd and the Ordinary, 6.
18 The “exceptionalist paradigm,” as explained by Trouillot, has sparked debates within academic communities and in the past decade there has been a new wave of scholarship within Haitian studies that has both highlighted and problematized the trope of Haiti as exceptional.10
The interrogation of Haitian exceptionalism is in direct conversation with Trouillot’s book, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of Histor,y because, according to Trouillot, exceptionalism itself is a means through which history is silenced.11 The process of silencing history, Trouillot states, has structural roots that go deeper than contemporary political processes.12 At the same time, these structural roots intertwine with contemporary processes.
Emphasizing the “unique” nature of Haiti works to isolate the country from the rest of the world while simultaneously silencing the (internally and externally derived) narratives that humanize those who live in Haiti. In “The Odd and the Ordinary,” Trouillot “does not deny the particularities of Haitian history; he simply questions the overinsistence on its singularity.”13
Exploring the ways in which Haiti is positioned as an “exception” necessitates an engagement with historical as well as contemporary narratives of Haiti. Trouillot argues that it is necessary to focus on the processes and conditions that produce narratives in order to see the
“overlap” between “the two sides of historicity”; he further submits that looking at this overlap reveals to us the power structures that promote certain narratives while silencing others.14 In dialogue with Trouillot’s work, Haitian-American anthropologist/artist/activist Gina Athena
Ulysse draws attention to the contradictory relationship between history and present-day media
10 Glover and Benedicty-Kokken, Introduction, The Haitian Exception: Anthropology and the Predicative of Narrative. 11 Yarimar Bonilla, “Ordinary Sovereignty,” Small Axe 42 (2013):154. 12 Michael-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995), 106. 13 Bonilla, “Ordinary Sovereignty,” 152. 14 Trouillot, Silencing the Past, 25.
19 in regards to Haiti. She argues that today’s journalists and reporters fail to address the ways in which history has rendered Haiti vulnerable to disasters and exploitation15 while simultaneously reproducing "narratives and stereotypes dating back to the 19th century.”16 In other words, many of the narratives produced about Haiti appear to be paradoxically trapped in the past while at the same time denying Haiti a historical context. The ways in which history has been “silenced” helps to explain the country’s conflicting representations.
The Intersection of Blood and Sugar: Slavery in Haiti
The exceptionalization of Haiti begins with the story of sugar and slavery in the New
World. The production of sugar relied on a uniquely brutal system of slavery. Sugar, as a commodity, distinguished itself to be especially valuable. At the same time, Haiti, as a key sugar producer, came to be viewed as both desirable and threatening to European colonial forces.
Trouillot says of 18th-century Saint-Domingue that it was not simply a society “that had slaves” but rather was a “slave society.” Slavery itself was the reason for its existence, and economic, cultural, and social organizations were defined by slavery.17 While much of the manual and agrarian labor of the colonial era was exploitative and pitiless, the chattel slavery of the New
World was unique in its brutality. Chattel slavery denied Black slaves the right to life and in this way differed from other forms of labor exploitation, such as indentured servitude. The system of slave labor in the European colonies has been described as the “most dehumanizing, violent,
15 Ulysse, Why Haiti Needs New Narratives, 32. 16 Ibid., 59-62. 17 Trouillot, Silencing the Past, 18.
20 socially regressive form of human exploitation known to humankind.”18 Racism and beliefs of
White superiority were necessary for the perpetuation of the system of slavery. 19 For how else could the systematic abuse of African slaves continue, but by reducing the slaves to commodities, or something less-than-human?
In the centuries between Christopher Columbus’s initial contact with the Caribbean islands in 1492 and the abolition of the slave trade in the mid 19th century, over 12 million
Africans were brought to the “New World” as chattel slaves.20 During this time, hundreds of thousands of slaves were transported to (what would become) Haiti to work on plantations.21
Imports of new slaves continued steadily and at a high volume because the slaves’ death rate was higher than their birth rate. It is estimated that between 5 and 10 % of Haiti’s slave population died each year as a result of disease and overwork.22 The high mortality rate for slaves in Haiti can partially be explained by the fact that the vast majority of slaves worked on sugar plantations, a particularly grueling and dangerous subdivision of plantation agriculture.
During the colonial era, sugar became a highly valuable commodity. From the the 17th century to 1820s, fully 90% of all African slaves in the Caribbean worked in the sugar industry.23’24 Correspondingly, between 1779 and 1789 both the slave population and the
18 Hilary McD. Beckles, Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide (Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2013), 15-18. 19 In his seminal history, Capitalism and Slavery, Caribbean scholar Eric Eustace Williams constructs the argument that slavery was created as a “solution” to the “Caribbean labor problem” (New York: Russell & Russell, 1961), 19-20, 29. Moreover, Williams argues that while plantation labor demanded a system of slavery, slavery itself necessitated racism: "slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery,” Ibid., 7. 20 Keith E. McNeal, Trance and Modernity in the Southern Caribbean: African and Hindu Popular Religious Traditions in Trinidad and Tobago (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011), 46-51. 21 Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, 19-23. 22 Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, 21. 23 McNeal, 46-51. 24 British consumption of sugar increased by approximately 2,500 % between 1650 and 1800; by 1800 approximately 245,000 tons of Caribbean-produced sugar were sold on the world market (Mintz, 1985:73).
21 production of sugar in the region nearly doubled.25 Haiti was an important producer of sugar. In fact, during the 18th century, Haiti produced so much sugar, and at such a high profit margin, as to threaten the economic viability of sugar plantations on other Caribbean islands.26 In the context of the sugar trade, Haiti was viewed as simultaneously desirable and threatening. This paradoxical construction of Haiti as enticing and menacing, as seductive and repulsive, provides the context for the exceptionalization of Haiti.
The Silence and Noise of the Haitian Revolution
Haiti’s “exceptionalism” has historically been both a source of pride for those living in
Haiti (both for its colonizers and, later, for free Haitians) as well as a source of fear for those living outside of Haiti. Importantly, Haiti gained its independence at an especially “terrible cost,” in terms of lives lost, lands damaged, and, eventually, a crippling indemnity that it would owe to
France.27 As the first free, former-slave nation, Haiti was set apart as a “bête noir” or “enfant terrible” (“naughty child”), an institutionalized identity which proved to outlast the institution of slavery in the New World.
The history of slavery and emancipation in Haiti differs from the histories of its
American neighbors. Even before gaining independence from France in 1804, Haiti was associated with insubordinate slaves. During the colonial era, French authorities primarily associated marronage, or the escape from slavery, with Haitians; marronage was viewed as a
25 Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 122-123. 26 Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 113-114. 27 DuBois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, 97-105.
22 collective social threat, a “plague that threatened the very foundations of the plantation world.”28
While there were slave insurrections throughout the New World, from Jamaica to the United
States and from Puerto Rico to Barbados, Haiti was the only country to ever gain its independence through a successful slave revolt.29 Through its successful revolution, Haiti had actualized the worst nightmare of White slave owners everywhere. Haiti’s 1804 independence inspired “dread” in slave-owners across the New World.30
Haiti’s independence could not go unchecked by European colonial powers because to accept (or even ignore) independent Haiti would imply an admission that perhaps the institution of plantation was deeply flawed. Speaking to Western constructions of Haiti’s identity post- independence, Ulysse writes, “Haiti had to become colonialism’s bête noir [roughly translated to
“black sheep”] if the sanctity of whiteness were to remain unquestioned.”31 If slavery, and the
White superiority on which its logic relied, were to continue, Haiti must be constructed as an irrational anomaly. Haiti could not be permitted to stand for progress nor to indicate future trends.
Indeed, Haiti’s path was not indicative of the way that slavery would come to an end in the other Caribbean colonies. Although the logic behind and consequences of the Haitian rebellion were messy and complicated, it can generally be argued that rebellion and, subsequently, freedom from slavery came from within Haiti. In the greater Caribbean, the abolition of slavery and the eventual emancipation of slaves was granted by colonial powers-- it came from above. Even if slavery was doomed to come to an end, the colonizing European
28 Michèle Praeger, The Imaginary Caribbean and Caribbean Imaginary (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 34-36. 29 January 1, 1804, marks the date of Haiti’s independence from France. 30 Williams, Slavery and Capitalism, 202. 31 Ulysse, Why Haiti Needs New Narratives, 26-32.
23 countries exercised their power in granting freedom from slavery, rather than waiting for slaves to rise up (as had happened in Haiti) and claim their freedom by force. The distinction between freedom from within and freedom from above is important to note, because it helps us to understand Haiti’s continuing legacy as a “bête noir.”
The Ongoing Threat of the Bête Noir
Why would the “silencing” of Haitian history (through exceptionalization and other processes) be beneficial to the United States and “The West” in general? What do INGOs that work in Haiti (which can be understood to be products of “The West”) gain from muting the
Haitian people whom they purport to serve? I suggest that, among other objectives, the silencing of Haiti through the (re)production of the exceptionalist narrative works to silence insidious realities of the modern world. Neoliberalism, racism, and the legacy of slavery have been instrumental in the social and economic marginalization of Haiti. At the same time, processes associated with neoliberalism, racism, and the legacy of slavery have created a global system where NGOs emerge as key players.32
The narrative of Haitian exceptionalism operates as a rhetorical device to divert attention from these insidious realities. Bonilla encourages her readers to
…pay attention to how tropes of exceptionalism cast the region’s social processes as odd in the sense of being unreckonable or disconnected from larger global processes disconnected from larger global processes…in foregrounding the exceptional, what is eclipsed?33
32 See Mark Schuller’s work “Gluing Globalization: NGOs as Intermediaries in Haiti, 2007 APLA Student Paper Competition Winner,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 32 (2009):84-104. 33 Bonilla, “Ordinary Sovereignty,” 155-156.
24
The exceptionalization of Haiti obscures realities of the contemporary world that cast “The
West” and its INGOs in a negative (if not damning) light.
Haiti’s full identity and more complete historical narratives can be understood to be silenced because they pose a threat to the “sanctity” of neoliberalism. McNeal has argued that the
Caribbean has always possessed a “precocious modernity” and that, as the oldest site of modernization in the Western Hemisphere, the Caribbean is the “First World’s First World.”34
The Caribbean is constructed as being “underdeveloped” while at the same time it is, historically speaking, the site of the original modern development initiatives in the New World.
However, as the “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,” Haiti poses a threat to our notions of modernity. The grinding poverty, inadequate living conditions, public health crises, and ongoing political violence and instability that mark the daily lives of many Haitians stand in direct opposition to the widely promoted neoliberal vision of modernity. Coupling poverty and exploitation with the modernity of the “First World” inspires the sort of nausea-inducing
“horror” that Joseph Conrad describes in Heart of Darkness and the revulsion that Frantz
Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth evokes. The idea of Haiti as quintessentially modern has been omitted from its history, because to view Haiti as “modern” necessarily causes those of us who have benefited from the global economic structures to question the logic behind, and validity of, the neoliberal system. To use Wallerstein’s schematic, displacing Haiti to the
“periphery” absolves us from the responsibility of reflexive and critical examination of the
“core.” As the Haitianist Beverly Bell eloquently states:
34 McNeal, Trance and Modernity in the Southern Caribbean, 46-51.
25 …underestimating the impact of national and international forces in Haitian history and politics has erroneously led to ascribing the imperiled state of Haiti to a failure of Haitians themselves… to understand that land’s dire domestic situation and its peripheral location in the world system, it is necessary to recall that for centuries, Haiti has been exploited by more powerful international actors. In other words, the majority of Haitians have been excluded from the decisions that have resulted in their country’s crises.35
Haiti may be understood to embody, simultaneously, the dream and the nightmare of neoliberalism.
Foreign Intervention and the Exceptionalization of Haiti
Haiti: “The Poorest Country in the Western Hemisphere”
Among scholars of Haiti, the island is sometimes sardonically referred to as “the only country with a last name”: that is, “Haiti the-poorest-country-in-the-Western-Hemisphere.”36
While it is not factually incorrect to refer to Haiti as the poorest country in the Western
Hemisphere,37 it is important to examine why Haiti is repeatedly reduced to its direst statistics in popular representation. Of all of Haiti’s attributes, why is the poverty rate the label that sticks?
Importantly, the process of naming Haiti as the poorest cements the country in the paradigm of exceptionalism. Calling Haiti the “poorest country” in the Western Hemisphere, the Northern
Hemisphere, or the Americas isolates and excludes Haiti from its geographical region. In other
35 Beverly Bell, Walking on Fire: Haitian Women’s Stories of Survival and Resistance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 8. 36 Bell, Walking on Fire, 9. 37 According the the CIA World Factbook nearly six-million of Haiti’s 10.3 million residents live in poverty, and approximately 24% of the population lives in extreme poverty.
26 words, the “Western Hemisphere” is one thing, and Haiti is something different. This implies that Haiti is a misfit and may in fact be misplaced in the world.
Many of the INGOs and development agencies most often recognized by residents of
Beaux Arbres follow the trend of classifying Haiti as exceptionally poor for its geographic region. When survey participants in Beaux Arbres were asked to list NGOs that they observed in the community, 25 different organizations were cited.38 The most frequently-mentioned
“INGOs”39 were: CARE, CRS, Feeding the World’s Hungry, Médecins du Monde, and USAID
(refer to Table 3.1). Of these five INGOs, Médecins du Monde is the only organization that does not seem to refer to Haiti as “the poorest country in the Western hemisphere” in its literature. In specific articles and fact sheets about Haiti, CARE,40 Feeding the World’s Hungry,41 and
USAID42 each state that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere in their opening paragraphs. Describing their own work in Haiti, CRS notes that the country is the poorest in the
Western hemisphere in its second paragraph.43 The FAO and WFP (which were not frequently cited INGOs but do work in the Grand’Anse) are key sources for data on food insecurity, hunger, and malnutrition in Haiti. Both international organizations cite poverty in Haiti as singular. For
38 It is important to note that not of the organizations participants cited can be classified as INGOs, and not all of the organizations cited seem to (at least currently) work in the community. 39 USAID is an international governmental organization, rather than a non-governmental organization like the others. 40 “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, with the 2010 Human Development Index placing it 158 of 187. As both cause and consequence to this poverty, Haiti is highly susceptible to natural disasters, with environmental degradation (especially deforestation increasing the country’s vulnerability to annual tropical storms and other disasters” (CARE, 2017, “Country Factsheet: Haiti.” http://www.care.org) 41 “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, with 80 percent of the population living below the poverty line” (Feeding the World’s Hungry, 2017). 42 “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 75 percent if its 8.5 million people living at or below the absolute poverty level established by the United Nations Development Programme.” (USAID. 2017. “Country Profile (HIV/AIDS): Haiti.” www.usaid.gov.) 43 “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80% of Haitians living on less than $2 a day…” (CRS, 2017, “Where We Work: Haiti.” www.crs.org).
27 the FAO44 Haiti is “the poorest country in the northern hemisphere.” For the WFP45 “Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas.”
Part of what makes Haiti unique is the fact that it is so often labeled as such. Paul
Farmer’s text The Uses of Haiti helps to provide insight into the trend of “reiterating and reinforcing” the uniqueness of Haiti. In this book, Farmer describes the ways in which the United
States has “used” Haiti to satisfy its economic, political, and symbolic needs in the decades since
Haiti’s independence. His writing speaks to the strategic uses of Haiti’s exceptionalist paradigm when he states, “The historical trope of Haiti as ‘isolated’ or ‘quarantined’ in the first century of its independence are inaccurate… in fact, Haiti was constructed as a ‘pariah’ in such a way that it invited foreign intervention, thereby insuring a pattern of imperialism…”46 In other words, he argues that the quality of singularity imposed on Haiti was not intended to render the country untouchable, but rather was intended to make Haiti accessible. More than just being accessible,
Haiti was constructed in the American imagination as inviting and demanding intervention.
The logic of INGOs, such as Feeding the World’s Hungry, CARE, CRS, etc., relies upon the need for outside intervention in so-called “developing countries.” Exceptional circumstances may provide the needed justification for intervention. In the case of Haiti, everyday realities are oftentimes portrayed as being “exceptional,” and so I argue that, by repeatedly describing Haiti in terms of its “exceptional poverty,” NGOs may justify their ongoing presence in Haitian
44 “…Haiti is the poorest country in the northern hemisphere, with two and a half million Haitians living in extreme poverty. Food insecurity and malnutrition are fairly widespread among the population, particularly affecting children, and there is a need to create employment for the rural populations of this island nation.” (FAO, 2017, ““Boosting Food Security and Creating Employment Through Aquaculture in Haiti.” http://www.fao.org/blogs/blue-growth-blog.) 45 “Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas and its economy has been repeatedly affected by political crises and a series of devastating natural disasters over the last two decades.” (WFP, 2017, “World Food Program USA: Understanding Hunger: Places: Haiti.”www.wfpusa.org). 46 Farmer, The Uses of Haiti, 78.
28 communities. This idea directly relates to Farmer’s conception of Haiti as being constructed as a
“pariah” that invites foreign intervention. On a similar note, Jennie Smith states, “Just as the economic and political agendas of the Haitian state and elite have been fueled by their chronic
‘othering’ of the Haitian masses, so too has aid to Haiti been buttressed by the ‘aiders’’ construction of the ‘aided’” (2001: 31).47
Haitians: Uniquely Resilient
INGOs and foreign development agencies, including those that work in Beaux Arbres, reproduce the narrative that, as an American/Western/Northern country, Haiti is extraordinary in its poverty. Another related, common story is that of the exceptional resilience of Haitians. Faced with surprising (perhaps “inexplicable”) poverty and hardships, the story goes, Haitians are extraordinarily and commendably resilient. Resilience in and of itself is not a negative quality.
However, the discourse on Haitian resiliency has a tendency to be reductionist, essentializing, and to play into the idea of Haitian exceptionalism. Clitandre suggests that, since the 2010
47 NGOs, politicians, and policy makers are not the only actors that benefit from alternately “exceptionalizing” and “normalizing” the case of Haiti. Farmer’s theorizing on the “uses of Haiti” was a partial inspiration for Mark Schuller’s work on the “anthropological uses of Haiti.” Taking the idea that Haiti has long been used by others as a starting point, Schuller urges the anthropological community to adopt a more reflexive stance in regards to Haiti. Simply put, how do anthropologists “use” Haiti to suit their professional or personal needs? Schuller suggests that Haiti is- at times- simultaneously portrayed as exceptional while being used as a “laboratory” to test broad anthropological theories that extend beyond the island’s borders. The trope of “exceptionalism,” he argues has allowed for obfuscation of “the ways in which Haiti has also served as a testing ground, a laboratory, for general anthropological theories, not to mention for international aid, as the two are often linked.” Mark Schuller, “The Anthropological Uses of Haiti: A Longue Durée Approach,” in The Haitian Exception: Anthropology and the Predicative of Narrative, edited by Benedicty-Kokken et al. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 15-33.
29 earthquake, “resilience” has become “the buzzword for this new articulation of Haitian exceptionalism.” 48
Gina Athena Ulysse draws attention to the ways that portrayals of Haitians as “resilient”
(even if these portrayals may be intended to humanize its residents) are “usually skewed.”
Quoting a Haitian-American Florida resident, Brunine David, Ulysse writes:
When they dare to talk about our courage and strength or perseverance, they change the meaning and take all the good from it and leave us with resilience; a kind of people who accept any unacceptable situation, people who can live anywhere in any bad condition that no one else would actually accept.49
Not only are Haitians, as a homogenized group, portrayed as resilient, they are seen as unusual or exceptional in their resiliency. As the quote points out, the portrait of exceptional resiliency has the capacity to dehumanize those who purportedly possess it. Clitandre connects “exceptional resilience” with an “exceptional ability to suffer.” Clitandre quotes Edwidge Danticat who says,
“Haitians are very resilient but it doesn’t mean they can suffer more than other people.”50 If
Haitians are portrayed as having an exceptional capacity for suffering, what are the implications for agencies concerned with alleviating suffering in Haiti?
Some of the most prominent INGOs in Beaux Arbres reproduce the narrative of Haitians’ exceptional resiliency. Literature from USAID, CARE, CRS, and Feeding the World’s Hungry directly speaks to the “resiliency” of Haitians. Feeding the World’s Hungry is an organization that frequently describes the resiliency of Haiti and its people. Upper management officials of
Feeding the World’s Hungry, such as the President/CEO, the Executive Director, and the
48 Clitandre, “The Haitian Exceptionalism in the Caribbean and the Project of Rebuilding Haiti,” 150- 151. 49 Ulysse, Why Haiti Needs New Narratives, 61. 50 Clitandre, “The Haitian Exceptionalism in the Caribbean and the Project of Rebuilding Haiti,” 151.
30 Country Manager of Haiti, have described Haitians as “remarkably resilient,”51 “so resilient,”52
“resilient people,”53 “resilient families”54 in a number of different publications. When reading
Feeding the World’s Hungry news reports and updates on projects in Haiti, the theme of extraordinary resilience in the face of exceptional poverty is apparent. For example, Haitians are described as having a “very resilient spirit in the midst of some of their extreme conditions.”
These “extreme conditions” include what are described as “crude shacks, naked children, and sad-eyed mothers.”55 In 2014, Feeding the World’s Hungry told the story of a young U.S.
American volunteer delivering a speech on the “resilient spirit of the people” of Haiti while at the same time being “troubled by the abject poverty,” such as “that kid with the dirty face and the sad eyes.”56
Haitians are described as being exceptionally resilient in their everyday lives (which are marked by extraordinary poverty) as well as in the face of unusual circumstances, such as large- scale disasters. After Hurricane Matthew swept through southwestern Haiti in October 2016, reports from CARE and CRS spoke of resilience as a defining characteristic of Haitian people. In the southern coastal town of Les Cayes, a CRS employee reported, “People here have been through a lot but they’re resilient.” In the spring of 2011, approximately one year after the
51 “I don't believe a word has been invented for what is happening in Haiti. It is total disaster. But through it all, the people of Haiti have been remarkably resilient despite insurmountable odds.” (Feeding the World’s Hungry, January, 2010) 52 “By the grace of God, the people who live there are so resilient they’ve learned to survive on very little in harsh conditions. We’re so thankful that their cries and prayers for help are now being answered.” (Feeding the World’s Hungry, April, 2012)
53 “…how the charity’s house building-progress has been a blessing to the resilient people of Haiti.” (Feeding the World’s Hungry. August, 2015) 54 “Since Haiti’s earthquake in 2010, these resilient families have struggled to survive in deplorable conditions.” (Feeding the World’s Hungry. May, 2015) 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid.
31 earthquake that devastated much of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas, USAID published an article entitled ,“The Most Resilient People on Earth: Haiti Still Standing After Trio of
Disasters.” They write:
Most Americans know that Haitians are poor and recovery is progressing slowly, but the full story is much more complicated. It’s one of old struggles, new challenges, U.S. commitment and hope …But perhaps the strongest asset is the country's people. It is the Haitians themselves who are making progress toward reconstruction… Haitians may, in fact, prove to be the most resilient people on earth. (my emphases)
By lumping all Haitians together as a group that does well in the face of adversity (i.e., a group that is unique in its resiliency), foreign aid agencies may protect themselves from close scrutinization. After all, the logic goes, foreign aid is better than nothing, and Haitians are already good at living with nothing.
However, the narrative of the exceptional resiliency of Haitians has limitations. In the case of a 2016 CARE report, residents of the town of Jérémie are described as being resilient, but not resilient enough to cope with the devastation wrought by Hurricane Matthew. Jean-Michel
Vigreux, the CARE Country Director in Haiti, said that people in Jérémie were in “utter despair” after the hurricane. This statement is made a context that suggests that, for Haitians, resiliency is normal and that the perceived lack of resiliency in light of the hurricane was abnormal. “Haiti is a country that’s wrought with these recurring disasters, they’re a very resilient people, but right now they’re in shock,” Vigreux said, “…a lot of people have lost their homes, their livelihoods and family members.” In a similar vein, in 2010, Feeding the World’s Hungry reported a perhaps surprising lack of resiliency in post-earthquake Haiti. Upon her return from Haiti, Feeding the
World’s Hungry’s Haiti project manager “reported that she encountered a kind of sadness that she had never seen in the normally resilient people of Haiti.” In these instances, the lack of
32 (perceived) resiliency is described as unusual or exceptional. This speaks to the idea, espoused by Clitandre and Danticat, that Haitians may be understood to possess a greater than normal capacity for suffering. Otherwise, why would it be perceived as odd (rather than ordinary) for
Haitian people to experience shock and sadness in the face of devastating, catastrophic events?
As Farmer and Schuller suggest, Haiti may be used as an “exceptional case” at times when it benefits others to draw attention to the country’s-- and its people’s-- so-called exceptional qualities. However, Haiti might not always be best used as an exception. This may help to explain inconsistencies in the narrative of Haitian resiliency. At the same time, it could be argued that Haiti is often (or always) viewed as “exceptional” but that the defining features of this exceptionalism shift depending on circumstances. When Bonilla speaks to the tension between viewing Haiti as “singularly heroic” and “exceptionally tragic,” her observation can be read to reinforce this point.57 Beverly Bell also warns against this either/or representation of
Haitians. Speaking to the mediation between resistance and repression in the representation of
Haitian people, Bell states, “it would be impossible to present only one or the other, the ongoing victories and the ongoing pain; they exist simultaneously, heads and tails of the same coin.”58
The theme of extraordinary resilience speaks to both heroism and tragedy and being part and parcel of life for Haitians. However, unlike the rest of the Western Hemisphere, the way that these unusual qualities are portrayed as so usual in Haiti speaks to the country’s exceptionalism.
57 Bonilla, Ordinary Sovereignty, 153. 58 Bell, Walking on Fire, xvi
33
Questioning the Exceptionalist Paradigm in Beaux Arbres
Resiliency or Habituation?
From my vantage point, it is difficult to say to what extent people view themselves as
“ordinary” or “extraordinary,” both in terms of being Haitian and being residents of Beaux
Arbres. Based on my interactions with people in Beaux Arbres, it seems that Beaux Arbres’s residents view Haitians as being different from U.S. Americans in many ways and that they view
Beaux Arbres as different than other parts of Haiti, especially the capital city, Port-au-Prince. At the same time, people in urban Haiti most likely view the rural residents of Beaux Arbres as being different. However, the perceived differences do not seem to adopt a discourse of exceptionality. Themes of poverty and resilience were not absent from discussions of life in
Beaux Arbres but they generally did not dominate the conversation, as one might expect from certain media portrayals of Haiti (including those from INGOs). In the following sections I question the notions of exceptional resiliency and exceptional poverty as they relate to Beaux
Arbres, and suggest that the qualities of resiliency and poverty do not illustrate exceptionalism.
During my summer’s fieldwork in Beaux Arbres I did not commonly, if ever, notice residents referring to themselves, or Haitians in general, as being specifically “resilient,” which might be translated as rezistan, or perhaps rezilyan. Rather, the term I most often heard in regards to challenging situations was abitye, which translates to being accustomed, habituated, or used to something. Although related, there are important differences between being “resilient” and being “habituated.” Resilience implies the capability to actively recover from or adapt to
34 changes,59 whereas habituated might be read as a passive resignation or being inured to one’s situation.60 At the same time, there were instances where the phrase mwen abitye (I am habituated/accustomed/used to) was delivered with pride, and perhaps a hint of a challenge. For example, my ability to do things correctly (or at all) was oftentimes (not unfairly) questioned by people in Beaux Arbres. Frequently, this occurred in the context of a conversation that involved mwen abitye.
For example, there were numerous occasions where I was stopped on the mud path through the woods that led from Beaux Arbres to a neighboring village that hosted a big weekly market and was a popular spot for soccer games and cockfights. A conversation might go along the lines of:
- Where are you going? - I’m walking to the market. - It’s too far and too muddy. You’ll fall. You’ll get tired. You won’t make it. - You’re walking to the market in the mud, too. - I know, but I’m used to it.
Or - How much kleren61 can you drink? - Not very much. - Do you become drunk if you drink a lot? - Yes- and maybe sick. - I can drink a lot of kleren but I don’t get drunk- I’m used to it.
In these cases, abitye referred to an instance where locals had a skill that outsiders might not possess.
59 Resilience is defined as 1) “the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress”; 2) “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2016. 60 Habituation is defined as, “decrease in responsiveness upon repeated exposure to a stimulus.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2016. 61 This is a bootleg liquor made from sugarcane.
35 Sometimes abitye was used to explain instances of going without. For example, during the summer an all-night church service was held at the evangelical church the host family regularly attended. The service was an ecstatic celebration where, I was told, people would
“dance, sing, pray, and God will heal sick people.” The service was held on a Friday night. Like each Friday that summer, my day started with an early morning walk along the muddy road to the market in Kalem. This particular Friday was the birthday of one of the host family’s sons and so there were extra purchases at the market, which translated into extra haggling and carrying extra weight back along the path to the house. The mother, her daughters, and a couple of female friends spent most of of the afternoon preparing a big meal for the son’s birthday. After the birthday celebration at the house, the mother and one of the daughters (both of whom had spent the better part of the day walking, at the market, cooking, and then celebrating) went to the all- night church service to engage in participant-observation. Roseline accompanied the mother and daughter as a participant-observer. The three women left the house at about 7:30 pm and did not return until 4:00 am the following morning. My research partner and the daughter slept for an hour or two before starting Saturday activities. The mother did not sleep at all that night. When I asked them if they were tired, all three women laughed and told me “No, we’re habituated.” In this instance, abitye is connected to being used to going without or being used to suffering. But can abitye be translated to “resilience”? My ethnographic findings suggest a subtle, but important difference between the two terms.
36
Moun Andeyò-S: Outsiders Within
In Haiti, people who live in rural areas are oftentimes referred to as moun andeyò-s, which translates to “people out there” or “the outsiders.”62 Although this chapter has largely focused on the ways that foreigners engage in “othering” Haitians (through processes of exeptionalization and silencing), moun andeyò-s tend to be othered within the country. In the
1990s, Trouillot wrote that, despite the fact that urbanites refer to rural people as moun andeyo-s,
“few have bothered to ask how or why rural people can be moun andeyò-s in a country that is
75% rural.”63 Due to a nearly 4% annual rate of urbanization,64 today just over 40% of Haiti’s population is rural.65 However, Trouillot’s question is still relevant: how is it possible that a country that still has a significant (and, in recent history, a majority) rural population conceptualize this population as being on the “outside”?
In a process similar to the silencing of Haitian narratives through exceptionalization, moun andeyò-s may be silenced because of their status as outsiders, who are “odd” in comparison to the “ordinary” urbanites. “Haitian peasants,” Jennie Smith states, have “been confronted with a variety of dehumanizing stereotypes from sectors of their own society.”66
62 Smith, When the Hands Are Many, 12. 63 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “Haiti’s Nightmare and the Lessons of History,” Haiti: Dangerous Crossroads, ed. NACLA (New York: South End Press, 1995), 125. 64 The trend of urbanization was strong in the 1990s as well. During this time, many Haitians who had formerly worked as rural farmers moved to the city seeking employment. During this time, people went from being largely self-sufficient agriculturalists to a “cheap labor force” for the assembly industry, living on the margins of the country’s big cities (Hooper, 1995: 139-142). 65 CIA, “CIA World Factbook: Central America and Caribbean: Haiti,” https://www.cia.gov (2011). 66 Smith, When the Hands Are Many, 188.
37 Moreover, “constructed as dirt poor, barefoot,67 uncivilized, superstitious, and lethargic, these
‘outsiders’ are rendered wholly incapable of contributing in a constructive way to the oversight of their country’s political system or its economic resources.”68 The stereotypes that Smith describes align with my own observations in Haiti (in Beaux Arbres and elsewhere). For example, once when a local young man in Beaux Arbres catcalled me, a colleague of mine from
Port-au-Prince explained his behavior as the result of being a poor and uneducated country- dweller. His behavior was “lowbrow.” My colleague said that he was in a “different class” than the city-educated Haitians we knew, doctors, lawyers, and graduate students who know better than to behave this way.
This othering of rural populations may be read as a process of undervaluing. The undervaluing of the moun andeyò-s might help to explain violence and tragedy that goes unreported (if not unnoticed) in the countryside. For example, during and after the bloody
Duvalier regimes, violence in the countryside was underreported.69 Despite the fact that the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier (aka “Baby Doc”) was overthrown in 1986, many rural areas continued to be controlled and brutalized by the Tonton Makout-s, Duvalier’s secret police force.70 More recently, in the international reporting on Hurricane Matthew (which underreported the disaster in general), it was difficult to find news reports that mentioned any towns or cities in the south aside from Jérémie and Les Cayes, the capitals of the Grand’Anse and Sud departments, respectively.
67 In Beaux Arbres, Roseline and I noticed that many people were barefoot. Roseline asked a number of children if they had shoes. They assured us that they do have shoes, they just prefer to be barefoot. In fact, they told us, the state school had given them free shoes; they called the canvas sneakers “Martelly shoes.” 68 Smith, When the Hands are Many, 22. 69 Michael S. Hooper, “Model Underdevelopment,” in Haiti: Dangerous Crossroads, ed. NACLA (New York: South End Press, 1995), 167-169. 70 Hooper, “Model Underdevelopment,” 167-169.
38 At the same time, I found that many people in Beaux Arbres expressed love and pride for their town and their community. Although many people wished that Beaux Arbres had some of the amenities that are more common in urban centers (e.g., a road, electricity, access to more
“modern” clothes), there was a sense that living in Beaux Arbres was highly preferable to living in Port-au-Prince. “I don’t like Port-au-Prince,” I was often told. Port-au-Prince has “too many guns,” “too much violence,” “bad food,” “too many people,” and “bad people.” We heard a number of disturbing stories about Port-au-Prince from people who had family members in the capital or who had previously lived there for school or work. Residents of Beaux Arbres shared numerous, sometimes graphic, accounts of robberies and violent crimes. One young man told me that while studying in Port-au-Prince he was afraid for his life every single day. These interactions are significant for two reasons. First, they indicate that rural people may “other” urbanites in a fashion that echoes their own “othering” by these same urbanites. Second, they imply that an identity connected with a more peaceful rural setting may be more valuable than conveniences afforded by life in the city.
“Materially Poor and The Poor in Spirit”: Questioning The Justification of Intervention In Beaux Arbres
The INGO Feeding the World’s Hungry describes itself as “ministering to the poorest of the poor” in the Caribbean and Latin America. The “poor” are understood not only to be
39 “materially poor” but also “poor in spirit.”71 According to their website, the mission of Feeding the World’s Hungry is twofold: to both “bring relief to the poorest of the poor in the countries where we serve” and to “link the church of the First World with the church of the Third World in a manner that helps both the materially poor and the poor in spirit.” In other words, Feeding the
World’s Hungry has twin concerns: they are invested in aiding (perhaps saving?) people’s corporeal and spiritual selves.
As this thesis demonstrates, it can be difficult to establish people’s physical needs, and even more difficult to address these needs effectively. However, there are certain criteria that may be followed to assess material wants, such as asking people what they want (e.g., the survey for the collaborative research project), calculating GDPs, reviewing census data, conducting food security analyses, testing water for pathogens, etc. The question of assessing spiritual health, on the other hand, is less straightforward.
How does a person, or a group of people, come to be classified as “poor in spirit”? And how is spiritual poverty rectified? Feeding the World’s Hungry’s website does not offer much by way of an explanation for this aspect of its mission statement. Perhaps it is assumed that people who are materially poor are also poor in spirit; perhaps they are assumed to be (in Ulysse’s words) “broken.” Perhaps the logic is that when the body is fed the mind may be at peace, that healing the body will heal the spirit. Or perhaps being “poor in spirit” has darker implications.72
71 Feeding the World’s Hungry’s homepage states, “Our work is motivated by our faith in God, spreading His unconditional love, regardless of race, wealth, or creed as we minister to the poorest of the poor in 17 countries throughout the Caribbean and Latin America…. Our mission is to link the church of the First World with the church of the Third World in a manner that helps both the materially poor and the poor in spirit.” 72 Haiti has a long history of being depicted as heathenistic by U.S. Americans. For example, in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, televangelist Pat Robertson said that Haiti had brought the tragedy of the earthquake on itself by making a “pact to the devil.” Although Pat Roberson was criticized for this opinion, he is far from being the only one who associates Haiti with heathenism and devil worship.
40 If the level of aid corresponds to the level of poverty, then Haiti, which received more food aid from Feeding the World’s Hungry in 2016 than any of its other beneficiary countries, might well be considered to be the poorest of the “poorest of the poor.” This reinforces the notion of Haiti being exceptionally impoverished. At the same time, it is not clear that Beaux
Arbres is “exceptionally poor” as far as access to food is concerned. In the following chapter I discuss food, hunger, and practices of food sharing in the community of Beaux Arbres. I suggest that the practice of food sharing in Beaux Arbres challenges the idea that its residents are exceptionally “materially poor” and unusually “poor in spirit.” Not only do people report living off of the land in Beaux Arbres, the town’s residents seem to share food much more often than
Haitians in other parts of the country.
CHAPTER 2: LOAVES AND FISHES OR BREADFRUIT AND PWASON?
Food Systems and INGO Interventions in Beaux Arbres
Unlike NGOs, which are a relatively new phenomenon in Beaux Arbres, fishing and agricultural practices are woven into the community’s social fabric. The research presented in this chapter suggests that people’s relationships with food in Beaux Arbres are unique within
Haiti for two reasons: first, because Beaux Arbres is less reliant on foreign imported foods than other parts of the country, and second, because food sharing practices in Beaux Arbres set it apart from other areas of Haiti. I suggest that while hunger is a real issue in Beaux Arbres, it is a complex problem that demands complex and creative solutions. Importantly, Beaux Arbres does not appear to be unique or exceptional in its hunger and food insecurity.1 On the contrary, I suggest that Beaux Arbres may in fact be distinctive because its relative independence from imported foods and its strong networks of food sharing may increase its capacity for eventual food sovereignty. However, Feeding the World’s Hungry’s interventions in the town do not necessarily align with a model of food sovereignty. Nor do the organization’s interventions indicate that it conceives of hunger (and the solutions to hunger) in the same way as the residents of Beaux Arbres.
1 The FAO’s standard definition of food security is that, “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, “Policy Brief: Food Security,” 2006). 42
Local and Imported Foods
While conducting research, I observed many people growing food at home and/or in nearby garden plots. Every day women in Beaux Arbres sell raw produce in the small local market. Most days, women cook and sell local produce on the street, such as fried plantains and grilled corn. Produce is highly seasonal and over the course of the two months we spent in Beaux
Arbres we saw a number of fruits and vegetables come in and out of season. I learned from local fishers that, similar to produce, fish is seasonal, local, and an important part of many people’s diets. Virtually every day, Beaux Arbres fishers go out on the ocean in small boats to catch fish, which is sold in the local market, on the streets, and sometimes directly from the beach.
There is a small daily market in Beaux Arbres where all types of foods are sold. Every
Monday there is a large market in Beaux Arbres, and people come from the surrounding areas to buy and sell their wares. The marketplace is a convergence of the four categories of food: produce, fish and meat, staple bulk foods, and pre-packaged foods. Produce, fish, meat, and some of the dried stable bulk foods (such as corn, pink beans, green peas) are mostly (if not all) local. Other bulk foods (such as rice, refined sugar, and black beans) and all of the pre-packaged foods (such as crackers, cookies, and sodas) are imported, oftentimes from other countries.
Imported foods, particularly rice, do account for a portion of people’s diets. However, when I asked survey participants, “How do people in Beaux Arbres live?” imported foods were reported as being significantly less important than foods that are locally procured (Table 2.1).
43
Table 2.1: How Do People in Beaux Arbres Live? Means of Living # responses % responses Food from gardens/ farm 38 90% Fishing 22 52% Food from gardens AND 22 52% fishing Market/ Imports 9 21% Commerce 4 9.5% Other/ don’t know 2 4.8%
Four categories of frequently consumed foods in Beaux Arbres are produce, fish and meat, stable bulk foods, and imported, pre-packaged foods. Survey data, along with ethnographic observations, indicates that people rely heavily on local produce and fish for subsistence; 90% of the people I surveyed indicated that people in Beaux Arbres live off of locally produced foods, while only 21% of respondents cited market or imported foods. In Beaux Arbres, the produce, fish, and meat that are locally consumed are mostly (if not entirely) locally produced. While
Haiti as a whole imports over half of the food that it consumes,2 farming and fishing are staples of life in Beaux Arbres.
2 World Food Programme, “WFP Haiti: Brief,” 2015.
44
What Does Beaux Arbres Produce? Exploring The Cultural Significance of Food
Nearly everyone I surveyed and interviewed said that local food (i.e., farming and fishing) provides the means of living in Beaux Arbres. When asked what, specifically, is produced, 95% of the people I surveyed cited viv alimentè, or starchy substantive produce (Table
2.2).
This category of produce incudes plantains, yams, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yucca, and breadfruit. Breadfruit, or lam varitab, is particularly beloved in Beaux Arbres. In Jennie Smith’s ethnographic account of a rural village the Grand’Anse she writes that breadfruit is described in familial terms. “Here,” an interlocutor told her, “breadfruit is our mama and our papa.”3
Although I never heard anyone in Beaux Arbres call breadfruit a mama or a papa, the sentiment behind this statement rings true. In Beaux Arbres, breadfruit may be more intimately connected to life than any other single food item.
In Beaux Arbres, breadfruit is consumed in a number of different ways. During my ethnographic research I saw breadfruit boiled, grilled, fried, and cooked in soup. However, the most popular way to prepare breadfruit is undoubtedly to mash it and make tonm tonm, a regional specialty. The dish is made by boiling breadfruit and then mashing it with what is essentially a large wooden mortar and pestle (imagine a pestle the size of a bucket and a large wooden mortar to match). Prepared in this way, the breadfruit assumes a sticky, doughy texture.
The tonm tonm is often served with sòs kalalou, or okra sauce.4 I always saw tonm tonm served
3 Smith, When the Hands Are Many, 14. 4 The sòs kalalou is made by boiling okra and removing its outer green casing, so that only the viscous seeded filling of the okra remains. Oftentimes the sòs kalalou is cooked up with sand crabs or dried fish.
45 as a large ball on a plate or bowl sitting atop the okra sauce. The proper way to eat the dish is to pull a piece from the doughy mass, dip it in the sauce at the bottom of the plate or bowl, and swallow it whole. When breadfruit is in season tonm tonm is ubiquitous. However, it seems that tonm tonm is also always special. It is loved, it is shared, and it is sorely missed when breadfruit season is over.5 Tonm tonm is an important part of life and an important part of people’s cultural identity.
Table 2.2: What Does Beaux Arbres Produce? Product Product Examples # responses % (Kreyòl) (English) responses Viv Alimentè Starchy/ (breadfruit, plantains, yams, 40 95% substantive potatoes, sweet potatoes, yucca) produce Fwi Fruit (coconut, mango, bananas, 36 86% pineapple, Haitian apricots) Legim Vegetables (spinach/ leaves, eggplant, okra, 14 33% tomatoes, cabbage, carrots) Pwason/ Fwi Fish/ seafood (tuna, marlin, sardines, crabs, 10 24% de lanmè conch, eel) Sereyal Cereal grains (corn, rice, wheat) 6 14% Kan Sugarcane (sugarcane) 6 14% Other: cocoa (4), coffee (2), animals (1), children (1)
Fish is also central to life in Beaux Arbres. Fishers go out on the sea virtually every day in motorboats (provided by Feeding the World’s Hungry) and dugout canoes to fish with nets. In my observation, oftentimes people bring in small amounts of fish that are sold fresh or dried for
5 Many people expressed regret that breadfruit was not preserved for later consumption and spoke of surplus breadfruit “going to waste.”
46 later consumption. However, a few times during my research I witnessed kenbe pwason-s. These
“fish holding” events occurred when there was a large catch. During the kenbe pwason-s people from the town gathered on the beach to help pull large nets full of fish from the sea onto the beach. These were collective activities: fishers and non-fishers alike came to help pull the fish to shore. More people gathered on the beach to purchase fish and to watch the spectacle. There was an order to the commotion, although I never completely understood the system of organization.
There were rules about who bought and sold fish and for what price and who got a cut of what.
However, the nuances were not visible to me. I was informed that the kenbe pwason-s were good for everyone because the price of fish drops dramatically when there is an abundance. When there is a kenbe pwason, I was told, everyone gets to eat fish.
Food Sharing in Beaux Arbres
While sharing between people seemed to be a common practice in all eight of the field sites, people in Beaux Arbres reported sharing food at a much higher rate. In the survey for the collaborative research project, we asked participants if they shared with people who were close to them. Overall, 94% of survey participants reported sharing with at least one person. This percentage was nearly identical to what we found in Beaux Arbres. However, when we asked people to report what, specifically, they shared we found that food sharing was a much more common practice in Beaux Arbres than elsewhere.
While the aggregated data from all eight field sites showed that 50% of participants reported sharing cooked food and 24% of participants reported sharing food from the garden, the
47 vast majority of survey participants in Beaux Arbres reported sharing food: 75% of the people we spoke with reported sharing cooked food, and 80% reported sharing food from the garden. In other words, people in Beaux Arbres share cooked food at 1.5 times the rate of the survey participants overall, and people in Beaux Arbres share produce from the garden at more than three times the rate than the survey overall. The difference between Beaux Arbres and the other field sites is not the fact of sharing it is what is being shared.
Although this chapter has just scratched the surface of the cultural significance of food in
Beaux Arbres, this is an important element to the conversation about food systems in Beaux
Arbres. The processes of procuring, distributing (selling, sharing, and trading), and consuming food speak to the specific culture of Beaux Arbres. The ways in which people interact with food also challenges the idea that Haitians are, categorically, “materially poor” and “poor in spirit.”
There seems to be an inherent contradiction between the notion of desperate, hopeless poverty and the rich culture of cultivating, consuming, and sharing food that I witnessed in Beaux
Arbres.
The next section contextualizes the significance of Beaux Arbres’s relative self- sufficiency regarding food by providing a brief overview of the country’s transition from self- sufficiency to a heavy reliance on foreign imported foodstuffs. As I demonstrate, INGOs and international development initiatives have played (and arguably continue to play) a significant role in this transition to dependency.
48
Food Systems and Interventions in Haiti
This section of the thesis explores historical patterns of foreign interventions in Haiti’s food system and addresses issues associated with food security and malnutrition. The food and agriculture sector provides a particularly illuminating site in which to study NGO interventions in Haiti. Despite the fact that over 50% of the country works in the agricultural sector, Haiti relies heavily on foreign food exports and foreign aid interventions. Today, Haiti imports more than 50% of its food.6 Increased food dependence has been shown to directly impact the increase of instances of hunger and malnutrition.7 Political scientist Jean-Germain Gros asserts that “the story of Haitian agriculture, in all sectors, is the story of decline in the past 30 years.”8 In 1980, agriculture accounted for 65% of export earnings and over 50% of Haiti’s GDP.9 As of 2016, agriculture accounted for slightly less than 25% of the annual GDP10 and less than 10% (perhaps even less than 5%) of the annual export earnings.11
6 World Food Programme, “Understanding Hunger: Places: Haiti.” 7 Michael Carolan, The Sociology of Food and Agriculture (New York: Routledge Press, 2012), 71. 8Jean-Germain Gros, “Indigestible Recipe: Rice, Chicken Wings, and International Financial Institutions: Or Hunger Politics in Haiti,” Journal of Black Studies 40, (2010): 981. 9 Ibid., 982. 10 CIA, World Factbook. 11 OEC, “Country Profile: Haiti.”
49 International Interventions in Haiti
It has been argued that food insecurity in Haiti is worsened by foreign interventions.
According to Jean-Germain Gros,12 international financial institutions, such as the IMF and the
World Bank have been key players in the decline of national food production. Gros states that these institutions have had a “double whammy negative impact” in Haiti by both decreasing agricultural production and weakening the Haitian state. The irony of “development initiatives” ultimately weakening infrastructure is particularly potent in the case of Haiti. In the wake of
WWII, Haiti borrowed money from the World Bank, which was used to create and/or bolster industrialized, state-owned enterprises. This was the beginning of the trend of international financial aid to Haiti, which really gained traction in the 1970s and was based on the
“neoclassical development philosophy of ‘trickle-down’ economics that relies primarily on the construction of physical infrastructure for the promotion of export-led industries to achieve their goals.”13 During this time period, US programs such as Food for Work and Food for Peace encouraged the importation of foreign grains/cereals to Haiti.14 15
In the 1980s, structural adjustment loans (SALs) & structural adjustment programs
(SAPs) were introduced to Haiti. These initiatives began in the 1980s and were offered as a
“remedy” for the “illness” of poverty in the developing world. Loans, which were granted with
12 “Indigestible Recipe,” 2010. 13 John Mazzeo, “Lavichè: Haiti’s Vulnerability to the Global Food Crisis,” NAPA Bulletin 32 (2009): 19. 14 Hooper, “Model Underdevelopment,” 139. 15 For example, U.S. grown and U.S.-subsidized wheat was brought into Haiti, undermining local wheat production and consumption. This literally changed the diets of many Haitians; between 1970 and 1983 wheat imports increased at a rate of 11% annually, by 1984, wheat accounted for 32% of the grain consumed in Haiti (Hooper, 1995: 139).
50 the assurance that they would help to bolster the economy, came with interest rates as well as the commitment to “undertake economy wide policy reforms, especially as these relate to fiscal and inflation stabilization.”16 According to Gros, this begs the question of whether SALs were ever intended to help the “developing nations,” or if they were in actuality an initiative to “remove control of national assets by the state,” making them, effectively, “a full-scale assault on the state.”17 SALs and SAPs are connected to economic plans that are centered on producing food for export, rather than for local consumption. SALs effectively led to the privatization of state- owned enterprises, market deregulation, “liberalization” of trade policies, inflation and currency devaluation, and the rise of exports (rather than “staple food”).18
In 1982, USAID, in conjunction with the IMF, created a plan for Haiti to reallocate 30% of the land used for production of local foods (to be consumed locally) to be used for growing crops for export.19 As Gros questioned the intentions of SALs, Hooper suggests that USAID’s proposed policy was not intended to make life easier for Haitians.
In fact, Hooper says that a 1982 “strategy assessment” from USAID states that they
“anticipate” that their proposed interventions in the food sector will “cause a decline in income and nutritional status, especially for small farmers and peasants… [US]AID anticipates a
‘massive’ displacement of peasant farmers and migration to urban centers.”20 Despite the knowledge that the proposed plan would, in all probability, negatively impact famers and peasants in Haiti, USAID pressed on and encouraged policies aimed at increasing food production for export.
16 Gros, “Indigestible Recipe,” 975-976. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Hooper, “Model Underdevelopment,” 137-138. 20 Ibid., 138.
51 During this time, USAID food initiatives also facilitated government corruption. Under the Duvalier regime, hundreds of millions of dollars were “siphoned off” public funds in Haiti.
This had a “devastating impact” on Haiti’s economy. Between them, Jean-Claude Duvalier, his wife, and their “agents” (i.e., cronies) stole over $500 million from public and treasury monies.21
They skimmed profits and embezzled money from state-owned businesses, from quasi- governmental enterprises, and from fake projects, foundations, and social agencies. Some of these schemes relied on foreign development agencies. For example, in the early 1980s Food for
Peace (an office of USAID) donated and subsidized sacks of flour to Haiti. The government, as it were, charged a $0.93 tax on each bag of flour. The taxes went to a special account controlled by the Duvaliers- and charged an additional $0.93 to grind each bag of flour at the state flour mill
(which was “completely dominated” by the Duvaliers).22
After 1986, “lending conditionalities” were implemented in Haiti, which resulted in
“currency reform” and trade liberalization. As a result, taxes on trade ceased to be a source of revenue for the Haitian state, and Haiti was no longer protected from competition from foreign
(often subsidized) products flooding its market.23 The Haitian gourde, which had been fixed at a
5:1 exchange rate with the US, dropped down to a 7:1 rate between 1986 and 1987, and by 1989 was 12:1.24 As of February 2017, one US dollar is worth approximately 68 Haitian gourde.25 It has been argued that “structural adjustment programs,” such as the development projects supported and implemented by USAID, the IMF, and the World Bank, have had a “crippling
21 Ibid., 135. 22 Ibid., 135-137. 23 Gros, “Indigestible Recipe,” 976-980. 24 Ibid. 25 When I was in Haiti in the summer of 2016, 1 USD was worth a little bit less than 50 HTG.
52 effect on Haiti’s food sovereignty.”26 Beverly Bell describes this shift from farming-for- consumption to farming-for-export in terms of “structural violence.” She states that structural violence is “felt in their daily lives, for example… small farmers’ inability to feed their families due to U.S. and World Bank imposed free-market policies that have destroyed their subsistence production.”27
U.S. Food Subsidies and The Logic of Foreign Aid
An “agricultural subsidy” refers to money that a government gives to farmers so that the price of the commodities they produce may remain low enough to be competitive in the market.
Sociologist and food systems expert Michael Carolan explains that in the United States farm subsidies were initially implemented as a sort of “safety net” for farmers to increase their resiliency so that they could weather environmental and economic changes.28 Carolan argues that today, however, subsidies work to increase income disparities between wealthy and struggling farms. This dynamic, suggests Carolan, is mirrored on a global scale: the high farm subsidies of wealthy nations coupled with low or non-existent subsidies in less affluent nations (such as
Haiti) ensure that wealthy countries stay wealthy and that poor nations stay poor. In wealthy nations, the more farmland one has, the more money is made on subsidies; however, in nations without significant subsidies, farmers’ profits come strictly from agricultural yields. This can have disastrous consequences for developing nations. On a similar note, it has been stated that
26 Myron M. Beasley, “Women, Sabotaj, and Underground Food Economies in Haiti,” Gastronomica 12 (2012): 33. 27 Bell, Walking on Fire, 24. 28 Michael Carolan, The Sociology of Food and Agriculture (New York: Routledge Press, 2012), 21- 28.
53 agricultural subsidies in “developed countries… have always been and remain a threat to developing country food producers and exporters.”29
One of the biggest issues associated with subsidies is that they often produce an overabundance of food. Agricultural subsidies in Europe and the US have led to “levels of production way beyond the capacity [of national markets]” so that the “chronic surpluses… had to be dumped on international markets.”30 Rice is often the go-to example for describing Haiti’s dramatic transition to imported foodstuffs. Before the 1990s, Haiti was nearly self-sufficient with its rice production; however, by 1992 Haiti was consuming more imported (subsidized) US rice than locally produced rice.31 The cheap US rice (oftentimes referred to as diri Miami [“Miami rice”]) flooded the market, and local rice farmers could not compete with the new, artificially low prices.32 The result was that many Haitian rice farmers went out of business, so Haiti became dependent on foreign rice. Currently, Haiti imports over 80% of its rice from the US. The prices of rice have since increased, and Haitians who no longer have the means to produce local rice struggle to pay for the imported American rice. In this example, we see that reducing trade barriers and increasing trade between countries was crippling to Haiti’s food security. The story of foreign intervention in local food systems troubles the question about the role that foreign actors should play in Haiti. If international aid and development organizations have directly contributed to decreasing food security, as this chapter suggests, do these same organizations
29 Brian Gardner, Global Food Futures: Feeding the World in 2050 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 191. 30 Ibid., 180. 31 Mazzeo, “Lavichè,” 119. 32 Whenever we went to the weekly markets in Beaux Arbres and nearby villages we looked for nationally produced diri peyi, or “country rice.” Only occasionally did we find diri peyi for sale. The Haitian rice is more expensive than the imported rice, and its production is limited. However, people express a distinct preference for the diri peyi, even though it is oftentimes difficult to obtain. I was told that the diri peyi is healthier and has more vitamins and nutrients than its U.S.-produced counterpart. “Miami rice is mixed with flour,” I was told. “Miami rice makes you fat”; “Diri peyi tastes better.”
54 provide the best choice for addressing issues associated with food insecurity?
Hunger and Food (In)Security in Haiti
The food system in Haiti is dependent on importing foreign food products.33 At the same time, approximately 30% of Haiti’s population is considered to be food insecure.34 In fact, Haiti, along with Afghanistan and Somalia, is ranked as one of the three countries of the world with the
“worst daily caloric deficit per inhabitant.”35 Poor food access and extreme poverty are important contributing factors to nutritional deficiencies.36 In Haiti, where nearly 60% of the population lives in poverty and approximately 24% of the population lives in extreme poverty, nutritional deficiencies are endemic.37 Nearly 50% of women (aged 15-49) and 65% of children under 5 years of age are anemic and 5% of children are acutely malnourished.38 Low birthweight of infants is a key indicator of maternal malnutrition.39 The most recent data available shows that in
Haiti, 23% of infants are born with a low birthweight.40 Within Haiti’s child population (defined as under 5 years of age), 11.4% are moderately to severely underweight and 21.9% experience stunting.41
Poverty and, subsequently, hunger and food insecurity are serious issues in Haiti.
Approximately 30% of Haitians are considered to be food insecure, although it is unclear if
33 Haiti’s imports more than doubled between 2003 and 2009, despite the fact that the country’s population only grew by about 7% during this time (Mazzeo, “Lavichè,” 119). 34 World Food Programme, 2016. 35 Mazzeo, “Lavichè,” 117. 36 Carolan, The Sociology of Food and Agriculture, 75. 37 WFP, 2016. 38 WFP, 2016. 39 UNICEF and WHO, 2004. 40 UNICEF, 2016. 41 Ibid.
55 “food insecurity” necessarily describes “hunger.”42 Perhaps counterintuitively, rural Haitian households are estimated to be the most food insecure, despite the fact that many rural Haitians work in agriculture; approximately 70% of rural households eat one meal a day.43 In line with increased food insecurity, the effects of malnutrition disproportionately affect Haiti’s rural populations. In an extensive survey of rural households, it was found that 24% of rural children were stunted due to malnutrition, and 9% experienced acute malnutrition.44 However, these facts do not “interpret themselves,” so to speak. While it is clear that food insecurity is an issue in
Haiti, the root cause of this “lack of access to food” remains somewhat obscured. Beaux Arbres is located in an area of the country that (even before Hurricane Matthew) has been determined to have “high food insecurity.”45 However, the methods used to determine food insecurity are not transparent, and it is unclear if specific studies to determine food security have ever been conducted in Beaux Arbres. Did Feeding the World’s Hungry start working in Beaux Arbres as a reaction to a clear, demonstrable need for hunger-related interventions or because of a problem that is more general to Haiti as a country?
42 WFP, 2016. 43 Mazzeo, “Lavichè,” 117. 44 WFP, 2016. 45 GSAN & OCHA, 2013.
56 Case Study: Feeding The World’s Hungry and The Asosyasyon Pechè
Background: Partnership Between the Asosyasyon Pechè and Feeding The World’s Hungry
Feeding the World’s Hungry works with 42 “fishing villages” across Haiti to create “self- sufficiency projects,” including “Beaux Arbres Fishing Villages I&II.” Of this $874 million spent on program services in 2014, approximately $1.6 was spent on “development and self-help projects,” including fishing villages, while $13.2 million was spent on “housing/housing villages.” However, it is unclear how this money was divided between countries and what was allotted for specific projects. According to Feeding the World’s Hungry’s website, in recent years the organization has distributed more tractor-trailer loads of medicines and medical supplies to Haiti than to any other beneficiary country. While it is clear that Feeding the World’s
Hungry does substantial work in Haiti, the organization does not divulge specific information about its projects in Beaux Arbres.
Ethnographic research taught us that, in Beaux Arbres, Feeding the World’s Hungry worked with the AP, a fishing cooperative and community organization with about 60 members.
I was told by multiple people (in interviews, surveys, and casual conversations) that all of the members of the AP are fishers, but not all fishers in Beaux Arbres are members of the AP. As of
2016, the AP46 had existed for over ten years, although it is difficult to know exactly when it was created. In interviews with AP members, people stated that the association was “more than ten
46 At one point there was an organization called “SOP” (Solidarité Pêche); my understanding is that it was temporarily its own organization but that it merged with the AP. Interestingly, SOP is officially registered at the local magistrate building, but the AP did not have comprehensive paperwork on file.
57 years old,” although no one I spoke with was able (or perhaps willing) to say in which year it was created. The AP was created with help from a French man who used to live in Beaux Arbres with his Haitian wife. However, it is unclear if this man was affiliated with an organization or what the name of the organization might have been. The AP has been associated with a number of INGOs over the years; most recently (for the last seven years or so) AP has primarily partnered with Feeding the World’s Hungry.
Feeding the World’s Hungry started working in Beaux Arbres during a period of time when the mayor was engaged in a number of community development projects. Informal interviews indicate that some of the Feeding the World’s Hungry projects blended into other projects that were happening concurrently. For this reason, it is difficult to gauge all of the interventions within which Feeding the World’s Hungry may have played a role. However, the
AP seems to be a common denominator in many, if not all, of Feeding the World’s Hungry’s interventions. In recent years Feeding the World’s Hungry has provided six “fly boats” for the
AP, a “DCP” sonar system that attracts fish, fishing materials (such as nets and buoys), and a number of trainings for members of the AP. Feeding the World’s Hungry has also helped to start a merchants’ association comprised of possibly all women, who sell the fish caught by members of the AP. Feeding the World’s Hungry has also built houses and/or provided construction materials for fishers. However, it is not clear if the primary function of the houses is to support local fishers. It is possible that the INGO’s housing interventions reflect different priorities.
During the course of conversations with people outside of the AP, I was told that the houses provided by Feeding the Worlds Hungry were part of a city-wide beautification project instigated by a former mayor. Feeding the World’s Hungry’s website refers to two “fishing villages” in Beaux Arbres. One of these “fishing villages” presumably refers to a cluster of
58 twenty Feeding the World’s Hungry houses upstream from the ocean, next to the local market.
The houses, although they do not have “Feeding the World’s Hungry” written on them, are identifiable by their architecture, which follows a uniform model. Feeding the World’s Hungry houses look the same all across Haiti. The second fishing village is a bit more ambiguous, however. Part of the former mayor’s efforts to increase tourism by beatifying Beaux Arbres included rebuilding pre-existing houses in the bouchi (butchers) neighborhood, where many of
Beaux Arbres’s fishers (and AP members) reside. My understanding is that Feeding the World’s
Hungry provided the funds and building materials for this project. If the renovated houses in the bouchi constitute one of the “fishing villages,” then Feeding the World’s Hungry did not create the village, but rather modified a pre-existing part of town.
It is also possible that the second of the “fishing villages” has yet to be built. I was told by multiple people, including a number of AP leaders, that Feeding the World’s Hungry has already built twenty houses for the AP, but that they intend on building sixty houses in total, for the sixty members of the AP. The houses provided (or yet to be provided) by Feeding the
World’s Hungry poses a number of questions, such as who inhabits the houses, and how are recipients prioritized?
The official story from the AP seems to be that these houses were created for members of the AP. Some of the fishers I interviewed stated that the houses are, in fact, only inhabited by families who have at least one member in the AP. One AP member I interviewed told me that all of the houses except for one were inhabited by AP members; he explained that an exception was made for a man who provides a lot of services to the community. Other people I spoke to in the community told me that there are numerous people who are not AP members (and possibly not fishers) living in the houses provided by Feeding the World’s Hungry. The people who said that
59 the houses are occupied by non-AP members spoke of political connections that privileged some community members in Beaux Arbres above others. This story is further complicated by the fact that a number of the houses appear to be unoccupied (although I do not have the precise number). In the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, there is a pronounced need for housing in
Beaux Arbres. This fact resurrects the question of when and if Feeding the World’s Hungry will build forty more houses. If so, when? Who will live in the houses, and what processes will determine who is granted residency?
How People Understand/Perceive Feeding The World’s Hungry and the AP in the Community
This section draws on data from the collaborative research project’s survey of 109 residents of Beaux Arbres, the independent research project’s 42-person survey, ethnographic observations, and semi-structured interviews with local fishers and prominent community members to explore how people in Beaux Arbres perceive Feeding the World’s Hungry. Similar to the overall trends we observed in our study of NGOs in Beaux Arbres, Feeding the World’s
Hungry is characterized by its paradoxical presence and absence. Despite the presence of
Feeding the World’s Hungry housing and the yellow boats marked with Feeding the World’s
Hungry’s name and logo, many residents of Beaux Arbres seem to be unfamiliar with the organization. Also in line with our overall findings, women seem to be particularly unfamiliar with the NGO’s activities. Residents who do know of Feeding the World’s Hungry have varied understandings about the work that the organization does and different reactions to the organization and its (perceived) interventions.
60 For the general population in Beaux Arbres, Feeding the World’s Hungry does not seem to be conceived of as a primary NGO. When we asked participants in the survey for the collaborative research project to list NGOs they saw working in the community, only eight participants of 109 (about 7%) cited Feeding the World’s Hungry. Of these eight, only one person described Feeding the World’s Hungry as the primary or most important NGO in Beaux
Arbres. We also conducted household surveys in some of the Feeding the World’s Hungry houses. Eight of the individuals who participated in the survey for the collaborative study inhabited Feeding the World’s Hungry houses. Of these eight individuals, no one spoke of
Feeding the World’s Hungry at any point during the survey. In fact, only two of the eight people with whom we spoke said that they observed NGOs working in Beaux Arbres.47
It is noteworthy that people living in Feeding the World’s Hungry houses appeared to be less aware of NGOs than the general population represented in our survey. While nearly 50% of survey participants in Beaux Arbres reported seeing NGO activity in the town, only 25% of the survey participants from Feeding the World’s Hungry houses reported seeing NGOs working in the community. Neither of the participants who had seen NGOs spoke about Feeding the
World’s Hungry or mentioned housing, support for fishers, or food aid as NGO activities.
Although people were unlikely to mention Feeding the World’s Hungry when asked about NGOs in general terms, I found that when asked directly about Feeding the World’s
Hungry people were slightly more likely to recall having heard of the organization than not
(Table 2.3).
47 The observed NGOs that were reported were the Red Cross and an unnamed NGO that worked on building roads. Neither participant had met with any NGOs.
61
Table 2.3: Have you Heard of “Feeding the World’s Hungry”? # Total % Total #Women % Women #Men % Men Respondents Respondents Yes 23/42 55% 8/20 40% 15/22 68% No 19/42 45% 12/20 60% 7/22 32%
In my survey of 42 residents, I found that 23 people had heard of Feeding the World’s
Hungry and 19 had not. However, a deeper analysis of my findings reveals a gender divide regarding awareness of Feeding the World’s Hungry. While fifteen (over two-thirds) of the men
I spoke to stated that they had heard of Feeding the World’s Hungry, only eight (less than half) of the women I spoke with had heard of the organization. Additionally, the women who had heard of Feeding the World’s Hungry were significantly more likely than their male counterparts to say that they didn’t know what Feeding the World’s Hungry was and/or that they didn’t know what Feeding the World’s Hungry did.
When asked the question, “What is Feeding the World’s Hungry?” twelve of the male participants provided an answer other than “I don’t know,” but only three of the eight female participants provided an answer other than “I don’t know” (Table 2.4). When asked, “What does
Feeding the World’s Hungry do?” three of eight women responded that they did not know, and three of fifteen men responded that they do not know (Table 2.5).
62 Table 2.4: What Is Feeding the World’s Hungry? Response # Total % Total #Women %Women #Men %Men Respondents Respondents Organization/ 8/23 35% 2/8 25% 6/15 40% Association (unspecified) NGO 7/23 30% 1/8 13% 6/15 40% Foreigners 3/23 13% 1/8 13% 2/15 13% Organization/ 2/23 8.7% 1/8 13% 1/15 6.7% Association (Haitian) Don’t Know 8/23 35% 5/8 63% 3/15 20%
Table 2.5: What Does Feeding the World’s Hungry Do in Beaux Arbres? Response # Total % Total #Women %Women #Men %Men Respondents Respondents Provide support 11/23 48% 1/8 13% 10/15 67% for fishers Provide food 5/23 22% 2/8 25% 3/15 20% Provide houses 4/23 17% 1/8 13% 3/15 20% Provide boats 3/23 13% 0/8 0% 3/15 20% Catch Fish 3/23 13% 1/8 13% 2/15 13% Other* 5/23 22% 4/8 50% 1/15 6.7% Don’t know 6/23 26% 3/8 38% 3/15 20% Table X.x *Other responses: provide educational support, provide employment, provide support in agriculture, provide financial support, provide support for local organizations.
These findings, coupled with our general findings in Beaux Arbres indicate that NGOs intersect with the male sphere more than the female sphere. This potential exclusion of women may be particularly problematic when it comes to food, a domain within which women of Beaux
Arbres are intimately involved.
63 The function and form of Feeding the World’s Hungry are understood differently by different actors in Beaux Arbres. Comparing data from the semi-structured interviews conducted with AP members and data from the two surveys (from the collaborative and independent research projects) suggests that AP members have a different perspective on Feeding the World’s
Hungry than members of the community taken as a whole. I also noted a uniformity in responses from interviewees that was not present in the survey data. For example, each of the AP members
I interviewed described Feeding the World’s Hungry as providing boats, housing, and training support for fishers who are members of the AP. Responses from survey participants about
Feeding the World’s Hungry varied from “support for fishers,” to “catching fish,” to “providing agricultural support,” to not knowing what the organization does (Table 2.5).
The understandings of what Feeding the World’s Hungry is vary as well. Each of the AP members I interviewed described Feeding the World’s Hungry as an “NGO.” When I asked one of the fishers what made Feeding the World’s Hungry an NGO, he replied that they are an NGO because they help people. I then asked if the AP was an NGO because they also help people (for example, by using Feeding the World’s Hungry boats as ambulances). The fisher stated that, no, the AP is an association that helps people, but it is not an NGO. He clarified that NGOs help provide financial support for the associations that help people in the community. However, less than half of the people I surveyed defined Feeding the World’s Hungry as an NGO (see Table
2.4). Men were more than twice as likely as women to describe Feeding the World’s Hungry as an NGO.
Unlike the uniform answers I received to questions about the role of Feeding the World’s
Hungry, the question, “Is Feeding the World’s Hungry still here?” elicited different answers from the AP members. At least two of the AP members I interviewed stated that Feeding the
64 World’s Hungry was not currently in Beaux Arbres but that they would be returning to continue their development work. One person I interviewed told me that Feeding the World’s Hungry was not currently in the town but that he thought the organization would be returning. One AP member told me that Feeding the World’s Hungry had, “unfortunately,” left and would not be returning. Unsurprisingly, the people I surveyed were also unsure about Feeding the World’s
Hungry’s ongoing presence in Beaux Arbres. Of the 23 people who indicated that they had heard of Feeding the World’s Hungry, slightly less than half of them thought that Feeding the World’s
Hungry was still operating in Beaux Arbres, while the others thought that Feeding the World’s
Hungry was gone or they were not sure. Women and men were about equally likely to say that they “didn’t know” if Feeding the World’s Hungry was still in the community. On the one hand, responses to questions about awareness of Feeding the World’s Hungry (including how the organization might be classified and what work it engages in) reveal differences between genders and between people who were members of the AP as opposed to members of the overall community. On the other hand, confusion about the current positioning of Feeding the World’s
Hungry in the community (i.e., whether it is present or absent) seemed to span across gender and membership lines.
Hunger in Beaux Arbres: Proposed Causes And Solutions
Each of the 42 participants who participated in the short survey for the independent research project on Feeding the World’s Hungry, the AP, food, and hunger in Beaux Arbres
65 stated that there are people who are hungry in Beaux Arbres. However, about half of the respondents stated that there is enough food in Beaux Arbres to satisfy the needs of the community. When asked, specifically, why people in Beaux Arbres were hungry, no one gave the simple response “Because there is not enough food.” The three most common responses (by a large margin) to the question of what explains hunger in Beaux Arbres were: people have no money or not enough money, there is no work or people are unable to find work, and seasonal variation in food/crops (see Table 2.6). The issues of money and work are tied to two of the most prioritized needs within the community, an improved road and work.48
Table 2.6: What Explains Hunger in Beaux Arbres? Response Number of % respondents respondents (x/42) No money/ not enough money 32 76 No work/ people are unable to work 22 52 Seasonal variation of food sources 17 40 People don’t want to work 3 7.1 Food is transported out of Beaux 3 7.1 Arbres Weather 3 7.1 No freezers for preserving fish 2 4.8 No aid 2 4.8 Other 7 17
48 According to information gathered from the collaborative research project’s survey.
66 In surveys, interviews, and casual conversations, the desire for a road was explained as providing a solution to a number of different issues.49 For example, people opined that if there was a more reliable route leading out of Beaux Arbres it would be easier to transport and sell products, which would result in more entrepreneurial opportunities for Beaux Arbres residents. A better road would also enable more people to work in the nearby town of Jérémie, where there may be more prospects for employment.
It is clear that there is a discrepancy between the way that people in Beaux Arbres conceive of hunger and its causes and solutions and the framework for understanding hunger and food aid adopted by Feeding the World’s Hungry. Feeding the World’s Hungry provides (albeit limited) housing, fishing boats, and training for fishers while the community is asking for increased opportunities for employment and easier access to surrounding areas. I interpret different proposed solutions to hunger as gesturing towards two different, dominant principles of hunger: the neo-Malthusian principle and the principle of hunger as caused by poverty.
The neo-Malthusian paradigm, scientist and famine specialist Jenny Edkins says, is based on the idea that hunger is the result of too little food and/or too many people. In this model,
“global food shortage” is conceived of as the “problems,” while “the modernization of agriculture” is considered to be the “solution.” In other words, the neo-Malthusian approach lends itself to technocratic understandings of food and hunger (wherein hunger is rendered a technical solution that can be solved with the appropriate technological interventions). Feeding
49 Nearly half (46%) of the people whom we surveyed in the comprehensive survey of 109 Beaux Arbres residents cited work itself as a need within the community. After the road, which was ranked as the top priority by most survey participants, clean water and work tied for the second most cited priority need. Food, on the other hand, was only cited as a need within the community by about 15% of the survey participants and was one of the lowest ranked priority needs (only about 1% of respondents cited food as the top priority within the community). Support for fishers and housing were ranked even lower as needs within the community.
67 the World’s Hungry’s interventions indicate a neo-Malthusian framework so that the “problem” of hunger is understood to be a dearth of fish, and the “solution” to this hunger is understood to be new technologies and more modern amenities for fishers.
On the other hand, residents of Beaux Arbres appear to conceptualize hunger and its possible solutions differently. The data about the proposed causes of and solutions to hunger in the community suggests that people in Beaux Arbres understand hunger as a “wicked problem” that is connected to poverty. “Wicked problems” are described as problems
for which stakeholders do not agree on the problem or its causes; each attempt to create a solution changes the problem; solutions are not right or wrong, just better or worse; solutions must be tailored to the situation; and they cannot be solved by people from any one discipline alone; multidisciplinary approaches are required50
The causes of hunger and possible solutions proposed by residents of Beaux Arbres indicate that hunger is, indeed, a complicated issue that merits a multidimensional solution. In other words, the local understanding of hunger issues in Beaux Arbres cannot be “solved” by means of technical solutions.
While approaching hunger as a multidimensional issue is necessarily more difficult than approaching it from a neo-Malthusian angle, I argue that the multi-dimensional, hunger/poverty model is ultimately more productive. Moreover, I suggest that Feeding the World’s Hungry’s interventions promote a technocratic model of “food security,” whereas a serious consideration of Beaux Arbres residents’ model of hunger may promote “food sovereignty.” It has been argued that “food security” may reduce hunger to a “simple adequacy of supplies and nutritional content, with the food itself produced and delivered under any conditions.”51 “Food
50 Neff, Introduction to The US Food System, 17. 51 Mark Edelmen et al., “Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Food Sovereignty,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 41, no 6 (2014): 914.
68 sovereignty,” on the other hand, is a more dynamic concept. Food sovereignty is generally concerned with individuals’ rights to culturally and nutritionally appropriate food; oftentimes food sovereignty is connected with advocacy for food systems that are “both food securing and ecologically sustainable.”52
52 Ibid., 921.
CHAPTER 3: BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE: NGOS IN BEAUX ARBRES
During the course of a summer’s fieldwork in Beaux Arbres, my research partner,
Roseline, and I found that there was much confusion surrounding the presence and impact of
NGOs in the community. This chapter explores local understandings of NGOs and argues that the confusion regarding NGOs in Beaux Arbres mirrors scholarship on NGOs within the social sciences. In many different spheres NGOs are a source of ongoing, and at times heated, debates.
Central themes that emerged in discussions of NGOs in Beaux Arbres align with themes that dominate scholarly discourse on NGOs. For example, development, collaboration, power, and the capacity to significantly change/impact communities (for better or for worse) are defining themes of NGOs in both Beaux Arbres and scholarly literature. In this chapter, I discuss the challenges of defining and studying NGOs in terms of scholarly discourse and local understandings before moving to a discussion of discrepancies between local priorities in Beaux
Arbres and the perceived NGO interventions.
What is an NGO?
The deceptively simple question, “What is an NGO?” underscored much of our research in Beaux Arbres. We asked survey participants, interviewees, neighbors, acquaintances, and friends many questions about NGO activity in the community. We asked people about the NGOs 70 they encountered in the area, what they thought about specific NGOs and their interventions, and whether people believed that NGOs have a place in the community. We asked broader questions about what NGOs do and what (if anything) they should do. We asked if people had confidence in NGOs and if they believed that NGOs could provide solutions to what had been identified as problems in the community. Our inquiries were met with a broad range of responses. Some1 of the community members we spoke with in Beaux Arbres worked directly with local or foreign
NGOs, some people reported having received direct support from NGOs, and some people told us that they had “never heard of an NGO” before speaking with us. Many people were somewhere on the spectrum between having extensive personal knowledge of NGOs and never having heard of an NGO. Across this spectrum we found that people’s understandings of NGOs, expectations of NGOs, and reactions to NGOs varied greatly. Many of the responses pointed to confusion about what precisely NGOs are, which suggests that NGOs are a source of debate in the community.
Similar to the residents of Beaux Arbres, social scientists also have a difficult time pinpointing a definition of NGOs. According to NGO specialists Schuller and Lewis, the term
“nongovernmental organization” can, in a broad sense, be understood to refer to a group of non- state actors who are active in development work; however, the size, scope, and financial background of NGOs vary greatly from group to group.2 The wide variation between NGOs may explain why attempts to classify and categorize NGOs can become convoluted and confusing.3
1 We interviewed approximately 10 individuals who had personal experience working for or in collaboration with NGOs. Nine survey participants reported receiving services from NGOs. Approximately one third of the survey participants stated that they did not know what an NGO was. 2 Mark Schuller and David Lewis, “Anthropology and NGOs,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology, ed. John L. Jr. Jackson (2014). 3 E.g., Lester M. Salamon and Helmut K. Anheier, Defining the Nonprofit Sector: A Cross-National Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992).
71 The “trick” to a productive study of NGOs, William Fisher argues, “is to differentiate among forms of organizing while avoiding reified and reductionist uses of the concept NGO.”4
However, this is easier said than done. Drawing on Fisher’s work, NGO specialists Bernal and
Grewal argue that, rather than possessing a constructive definition, NGOs have come to be defined through the negative, so that NGOs are understood as not being the state and not being the government.5 Defining NGOs by what they are not leaves open the question of what an NGO is. Moreover, the question of what an NGO is is directly related to the question of how NGOs should be studied.
In the following sections I review classic and recent literature about NGOs and note emerging trends within the field. I suggest that approaches to studying NGOs are necessarily becoming more nuanced and therefore better suited to exploring and conveying on-the-ground realities. I then offer my own suggestions about how the study of NGOs may be approached.
While much of the literature on NGOs takes organizations’ presence for granted, I suggest that
NGOs and the power they exert may be more insidious, and oftentimes invisible. I draw a parallel between NGOs and ghosts and suggest that part of NGOs’ power comes from their going unseen. The discussion NGOs and power is contextualized by Foucault’s conceptualization of power. Foucault’s theorizing on power has been influential to the field of NGO studies but, I argue, some of the nuance has been lost over the years. In the following section I briefly
4 William F. Fisher, “Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices,” Annual Review of Anthropology 26 (1997): 449. 5 Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal, Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
72 overview Foucault’s description of power as a means of reintroducing these theories to the ongoing conversation about how NGOs are best studied.
Theoretical Orientation: Foucault and Power
Of the many theorists who write about power, Michel Foucault’s work lends itself to the exploration of power in the context of NGOs because the power associated with NGOs, like the organizations themselves, is understood as a process that exists in and impacts both physical and metaphysical realms. Importantly for Foucault, “symbolic” and “real” are not mutually exclusive terms when it comes to discussing power. He tells us that, “when a kind of power is exercised, the manner in which it is exercised-- which must be visible, solemn, symbolic-- must only refer us to that kind of power which is exercised in reality and not to some other kind of power which is not exercised in reality at that particular time.”6 In other words, Foucault warns against limiting power to a theoretical or ideological domain; power must be studied, he suggests, as it exists in the real world. While power is necessarily symbolic, it manifests itself in the material world. Foucault’s work employs the Western institutions of prisons and psychiatric hospitals and the effects of human sexuality to ground his theories and hypotheses in material settings. But the real-world contextualization of Foucault’s writing on power is not limited to the examples provided in his work. In some instances, Foucault’s theories are grounded in case studies of
NGOs and international development projects. For example, Foucauldian ideas of power
6 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 34.
73 (particularly his writing on governmentality7) inform much of anthropologist James Ferguson’s analysis and critique of development initiatives in Lesotho.8 Similarly, anthropologist William F.
Fisher draws upon Foucault’s conception of politics and power in his discussion of the politics and “antipolitics” of NGO policies and practices.
Foucault’s discussions of power being enacted upon, and as well as located in, the human body demonstrate that Foucault’s model locates power everywhere. Power is found in both the subconscious and in the literal, organic human body.9 “The individual,” he tells us, “is an effect of power, and at the same time… is the element of its articulation.”10 Power, therefore, cannot be confined to one (theoretical or material) realm, nor can power be understood to reside in the hands of the elite. Power exists within the everyday actions, attitudes, and discourses of all people.11 We are never “outside” of power because power is invariably “always already there.”12
On the one hand, this broad dispersal of power is liberating because it means that all people everywhere are imbued with the potential to enact resistance through the power that they possess. On the other hand, Foucault’s concept of power may be read as disheartening because
7 Foucault provides a tri-part definition of the idea he coins “governmentality”: 1) Governmentality represents the “ensemble” formed by the institutions, procedures, and processes that enable governmental power; this type of power targets a specific population through “apparatuses of security.” 2) Governmentality (or, government power) has, through the course of history, superseded other forms of power, such as sovereignty; this trend of increased governmentality has resulted in the creation of “a whole series of specific governmental apparatuses,” as well as the creation of a “whole complex of saviors” (original emphasis). 3) Governmentality can be understood as the result of the historical process by which justice (e.g., the “state of justice” in the Middle Ages) was “governmentalized” or transformed into an administrative state (e.g., during the 15th and 16th centuries) (1978: 112-113). 8 James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine:“Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 9 Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 125. 10 Ibid., 98. 11 Ibid., 39. 12 Ibid., 141
74 modes of domination (through power) are subtle and insidious; repressive systems of power are difficult to eradicate and easy to inadvertently reproduce.
Five key features define Foucault’s concept of power. The first characteristic of
Foucault’s concept of power is that it does not view power as being material in and of itself; rather, Foucault looks to the material consequences and effects of power to tease out its symbolic nature. Foucault’s work appreciates the subconscious levels at which power is embodied.
Humans’ subconscious selves affect their conscious actions, even if they are unaware of the processes at work. The second characteristic is that power is generally a productive, rather than a negative or destructive, force. Foucault argued against his theoretical predecessors (and, in some cases, contemporaries) that power cannot be understood strictly in terms of force or coercion: why would people comply with forces that were constantly beating them down? Power structures are, Foucault suggests, most effective when people are willing participants.
Third, Foucault calls for power to be studied diachronically, or in relation to the historical processes from which it was produced. His work argues that a synchronic or ahistorical approach to studying power is inherently repressive because it both denies the importance of traditional and local knowledge and denies people any sort of historical significance. For Foucault, power is understood to be fluid, dynamic, and multi-sited. This segues to Foucault’s fourth characteristic of power: power is best understood as a series of relationships. One of the groundbreaking aspects of Foucault’s work is its emphasis on the mechanisms of power and power as a series of relationships between people who may or may not have been included in the chronicles of history. When power is located in relationships, people at all levels of society (in the past as well as the present) are understood to be agents of power.
75 Foucault’s fifth characteristic of power is that it must be considered as it relates to both discourse and knowledge. Knowledge, like power, is everywhere at all times. It permeates all aspects of life; everyone has knowledge, and knowledge is constantly shared and transferred between people and parties. “Discourse” in the Foucauldian sense is a system of knowledge and therefore a system of power. Foucauldian discourse “determines the limits of thinking and acting” and is “specific to places and times.” For Foucault, power and knowledge are interchangeable so that power is knowledge and knowledge is power.13 Because knowledge and power are integrated, neither can be confined to being, respectively, immaterial or material; they are simultaneously material and symbolic.14 Knowledge and power create discourse and discursive practices. Discourse, in turn, disseminates and produces knowledge and power. The first chapter of this thesis describes discourses produced by NGOs themselves about Haiti and argues that the strategic exceptionalization of Haiti is imbued with power. In the following section, I review discourses (produced from the social sciences) about NGOs.
How are NGOs Studied?
This section begins with a review of how NGOs have been studied and introduces three trends in changes in NGO studies. First, the section looks at theories of the interaction between
13 Foucault states that “the exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power,” so that “modern humanism is therefore mistaken in drawing this line between knowledge and power. Knowledge and power are integrated with one another…” Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 52. 14 For example, Foucault inverts the idiom of a “body of knowledge” and instead focuses on the body as a source of knowledge, or the knowledge of body; he looks at the “knowledge of the body” that is made possible by exerting power over the corporeal body (Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 59).
76 development and power to explore the overarching shift from viewing NGOs as a monolithic category to viewing NGOs as site-specific entities (with unique relationships to power structures) that require site-specific research to be fully understood. Second, the section examines the shift from viewing NGOs singularly as tools of neoliberal domination to viewing NGOs as potential vehicles for resistance in a neoliberal landscape. Finally, the section addresses the shift from viewing NGOs as “bridges” to viewing NGOs as “intermediaries,” a transition that I argue is partially engendered by the methodological shift from anthropological critiques of power to ethnographic engagements with NGOs and development.
Despite the fact that NGOs have been in existence since at least as far back as the late
18th century,15 the scholarship on NGOs and INGOs16 is a relatively emergent field in academia.17 Increased NGO activity and greater visibility of NGOs18 has led to a closer examination of the the accountability, effectiveness, and discursive practices of NGOs.19 This has, in turn, produced an emergent field of humanitarian studies in the social sciences.20 This section looks at the ways that social scientists have approached the study of NGOs and identifies
15 The major events that demarcate the emergence of contemporary humanitarian aid delivered by INGOs were the unified response to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the formation of the Red Cross in 1863, and the abolition of slavery and movement of administrators and missionaries to “care for colonial populations.” Erica Bornstein and Peter Redfield, Forces of Compassion: Humanitarianism between Ethics and Politics (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2011), 13-17. 16 International nongovernmental Organizations, or iNGOs, can generally be understood as nonstate actors who work in development in at least two countries. Generally speaking, INGOs are associated with having more financial resources and a more professionalized structure than their local NGO counterparts. 17 Thomas Davies, NGOs: A New History of Transnational Civil Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 177. 18 NGOs are a multibillion dollar industry; by the beginning of the 21st century NGOs were distributing between twelve and fifteen billion dollars annually. Bernal and Grewal, Theorizing NGOs, 1. 19 Lisa Markowitz, “Finding the Field: Notes on the Ethnography of NGOs,” Human Organization 60 (2001):40. 20 Michael Barnett, “Humanitarian Governance,” Annual Review of Political Science 16 (2013): 379- 398.
77 emerging trends as a means of identifying key theoretical themes that guide my own exploration of the ways that NGOs are perceived in Beaux Arbres.
Although an exact definition of NGOs proves to to be elusive, social scientists generally understand NGOs to have a dynamic relationship with power. In Foucauldian terms, NGOs have the dual capacity to possess and produce power. However, specific understandings and interpretation of the relationships between NGOs and power are diverse and sometimes contradictory. Preeminent NGO scholars range from identifying NGOs as “fig leafs” or disguises for power,21 to conduits or apparatuses of power,22 to unapologetic reproducers of power structures,23 to potentially sources of power for their beneficiaries.24 At the same time, it is difficult to create a comprehensive theory of NGOs, Bernal and Grewal tell us, because different
NGOs represent vastly different political positions and agendas.25
First, I argue that there has been a shift from viewing NGOs as a monolithic category to viewing NGOs as site-specific entities. In the 1990s, there was a trend in anthropological writing on NGOs to categorically understand NGOs as working to uphold asymmetric power structures.
James Ferguson explored the question of why development agencies continue to implement projects in Lesotho when it seems that they are doomed to failure and ultimately suggests that the answer may lie in what he terms the “global development apparatus.” This “apparatus” is a system of control that may work without subjects and focuses its energies on serving “power” rather than “the powerful,” so that NGOs may be understood to foremost support structures of
21Antonio Donini, The Golden Fleece: Manipulation and Independence in Humanitarian Action (Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2012), 3. 22 Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine. 23 James Petras, “Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America,” Monthly Review 49 (1997): 10-17. 24 Bernal and Grewal, Theorizing NGOs. 25Ibid., 2.
78 power. Although individual actors may possess and disseminate power, they are understood to be transitory in the broad scheme of things; it is power itself (as a system or a structure) that is the prime beneficiary of, and the driving force behind, the global development apparatus.
Ferguson describes this system as an “anti-politics machine,” or a system that creates and reinforces state power, while simultaneously depoliticizing this power.26 Although the “anti- politics machine” was inspired by Ferguson’s fieldwork in Lesotho, the theory is applied to development projects more generally. On a similar note, McMichael wrote that today's international development projects must be understood as part of a larger “development project” born of the European colonial legacy. In the post-WWII era, when countries gained their independence from colonial powers, they also assumed the status of being “underdeveloped,” which primed them for Western interventions in the form of development projects.27 In each of these cases (i.e., Ferguson and McMichael), NGOs and development initiatives are conceived of as a relatively homogeneous category.
Although the overarching idea of development as a means by which power is exerted over (and stripped from) marginalized populations remains salient, the homogenization of the
NGO/development category has been problematized in some recent scholarship. As Lisa
Markowitz states, NGOs assume a “jagged, shifting form,” and so the ways that we study them must be reimagined; anthropologists in particular are tasked with reconfiguring “schemes for defining both units of analysis and the links between them” in the field of NGO studies.28
26 Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine. 27 Philip McMichael, “The Development Project (Late 1940s to Early 1970s),” in Development and Social Change (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge, 1996), 15-43. 28 Markowitz, “Finding the Field,” 41.
79 Saida Hodžić expands upon the argument against a homogeneous understanding of
NGOs when she suggests that the academic critique of “NGOization” has itself become rigid and monolithic. Hodžić challenges the mainstream critique of NGOs, specifically feminist NGOs, which she refers to as the “NGOization paradigm.” In her words, the paradigm “hinges on an anti-institutional critique, while having itself become a stable and closed circuit of truth claims…”29 As such, the NGOization paradigm fails to align with tangible, ethnographic evidence, and it cannot account for the nuances of specific NGOs and the human interactions that they engender. Ultimately, Hodžić calls for a new method of analysis for NGOs that moves away from the NGOization paradigm and approaches analyses of NGOs as context specific.
Rendering NGOs as monolithic structures (and issuing a standard, monolithic critique against them) is counterproductive because is bars the possibility of NGOs affecting different potential outcomes in discrete societies. Similarly, assuming a static relationship between NGOs and neoliberalism limits the potential for change and resistance in local populations. This speaks to my second argument, that there has been a shift in theorizing about NGOs from viewing
NGOs as necessarily being tools of neoliberal domination to viewing NGOs as potential vehicles for resistance in a neoliberal landscape. This shift, I argue, allows the possibility (and accounts for the existence of) a diversity of outcomes regarding NGO interventions.
James Petras stated that NGOs had become the “community face” of neoliberalism.30
Specifically, he argued NGOs disempower individuals and undermine local social movements by promoting anti-statism, acting as de-politicizing forces, coopting local leaders, and refusing to
29 Saida Hodžić, “Feminist Bastards: Toward a Posthumanist Critique,” in Theorizing NGOs:States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism, ed. Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 223. 30 Petras, “Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America.”
80 critique their donors. Not only do NGOs promote neoliberalist agendas, Petras argues, they reproduce hierarchical, neoliberal class structures. How we are to interpret this fact, however, may be more complicated than the paradigm presented by Petras. Recent trends in anthropological theorizing of NGOs demonstrate a need for a more refined study of the relationships between NGOs, neoliberal processes, and power. Bernal and Grewal identify ubiquity and inexorability from neoliberal and state powers as widespread features of NGOs.
They argue that contemporary NGOs are a product of neoliberalism and that, in turn, they may reproduce neoliberalism. However, the authors argue that NGOs must be considered in the specific geopolitical and historical context within which they emerge.
My third argument is that there has been a shift from viewing NGOs as static “bridges”
(that allow ideas and people to move from one place to another) to viewing NGOs as dynamic
“intermediaries” (so that the ideas and people on either “side” are interacting with and changing one another). David Mosse argues that the anthropological study of international development has itself developed over time, from critiques of “development” as a form of globalization, to ethnographies of the practices of international development, to ethnographies of the actors working within development projects.31 Ethnographic fieldwork reinforces the importance of individual actors and looks to local actors to understand the greater sociopolitical landscape.
For example, in her ethnographic text on expatriates in Nepal, Heather Hindman argues that expatriates working in Kathmandu can be described as “global middlemen” who are engaged in a Latouric process of mediation between diverse actors. Rather than acting as
“bridges” that transport “metropolitan goals to local conditions,” expatriates are engaged in a
31David Mosse, “The Anthropology of International Development,” Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (2013): 227-246.
81 transformation and translation of information from one party to another.32 Ethnographic engagements, such as Hindman’s, remind us that both local communities and NGOs are comprised of individual actors. On a similar note, Mark Schuller argues that NGOs play an active, dynamic, and complicated role as global intermediaries.33 He submits that NGOs work as a “glue” that holds together a world system that has been fractured by neoliberalism. Drawing upon information gathered through original ethnographic research in Haiti, Schuller argues that the “gluing” of globalization is four-fold: NGOs legitimize globalization; NGOs undermine state capacity; NGOs reproduce structural and financial inequalities; NGOs produce a semi-elite class, thereby creating more distance between the elite and the impoverished. However, there is inherent power in this semi-elite NGO class, and this power can be used to inspire change or to maintain the status quo.
While social scientists remain highly critical of the perceived and potential abuses of power, depoliticization, and reproduction of asymmetrical power structures in the field of international development and NGOs, many social scientists are not willing to entirely dismiss the potential value of NGOs. Antonio Donini puts it succinctly when he states, “Unlike some critics, we respect the essential humanitarian values of those who devote their energy to reducing the suffering of others. We are wary of losing healthy babies as we deal with the bathwater….”34
There is wisdom in this argument; as this chapter demonstrates, many scholars suggest that
NGOs’ impacts are complex and varied and may both help and harm beneficiary populations. At the same time, however, Donini’s statement begs the (double-barreled) question of how the baby
32 Heather Hindman, Mediating the Global: Expatria’s Forms and Consequences in Kathmandu (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), 13-15. 33 Schuller, “Gluing Globalization.” 34 Donini, The Golden Fleece, 12.
82 may be distinguished from its bathwater and who is best poised to make this distinction. In the following section I offer an alternative model for studying NGOs and suggest that NGOs can be studied as ghost-like figures.
Haunting and the (In)Visibility of NGOs in Beaux Arbres
NGOs As Haunting Entities
During the course of our fieldwork, I was struck by the spectral quality that NGOs in
Beaux Arbres possess: NGOs were simultaneously there and not there. Like ghosts, NGOs in
Beaux Arbres appeared to be defined by their paradoxical absence and presence. I came to see
NGOs as shadowy figures. In the summer of 2016, there were no NGO offices in Beaux Arbres, there were no foreign NGO workers living in the town, and NGOs did not seem to be a topic of everyday conversation. At the same time, NGOs do have a notable presence, which is at times visible. Occasionally, NGO employees would come to visit the local health clinic, or walk or drive through the town. However, these visits were short, sporadic, and did not seem to elicit much of a reaction from people with whom we spoke. From time to time, we would notice an
NGO logo on a sign, painted on the side of a building, or printed on an out-of-town SUV. We also found that NGOs occupy a space in the consciousness of some, but not all, of Beaux
Arbres’s residents.
Like ghosts, NGOs appeared to be visible to some members of the population, yet invisible to others. Of the people we surveyed, just under half of the participants reported seeing
NGOs work in the community. Some of the NGOs that were cited as working in the community
83 were likewise invisible to us. Despite keeping a daily record of observed NGO activity, residents’ accounts of NGOs working in the area did not always align with our observations. For example, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) was one of the five most frequently cited NGOs in the survey for the collaborative research project. However, outside of conversations, we never encountered any evidence of CRS in the community. CRS was effectively invisible to us; it existed only in stories. At the same time, other organizations that were never mentioned in the course of interviews and surveys did have visible signs of existing within the community. For example, the logos for INGOs Bridges to Prosperity and UKAID (organizations that were never mentioned as working in Beaux Arbres) were printed on a beach-side sign for a “Project to
Reinforce Community Resilience.”35 Finding NGOs to be spectral in Beaux Arbres raises many questions about how they are to be best studied and understood. How does one explore and interrogate that which is simultaneously, paradoxically, absent and present? This line of questioning also speaks to dynamics of power. Do the ghost-like qualities of NGOs strip them of power or increase their power?
I draw upon Avery Gordon’s text, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological
Imagination, to approach answers to these questions, and I suggest that Gordon’s work lends itself to the creation of a productive framework for the study of NGOs. In Ghostly Matters,
Gordon contends that the phenomenon of haunting may be employed as a paradigm for understanding the complexities of social life. In society, Gordon states, what people see is not always the same as what they know; there is a constant negotiation between the material and the
35 We were never able to identify the “Project to Reinforce Community Resilience.” Searches for the project on the Bridges to Prosperity and UKAID websites turned up empty; neither Bridges to Prosperity nor UKAID specifically mention working in Beaux Arbres, although each organization speaks of working in Haiti.
84 abstract.36 Sometimes we must look to imprints, or negative spaces, to understand material forms. A footprint in the sand indicates the recent presence but current absence of someone walking barefoot on the beach. A discarded fishing net, still wet from the ocean, glistening fish scales caught in its weave, speaks to the freshly caught fish that it recently contained. A UNICEF logo on the side of an empty water tank denotes the contact of cement and paintbrush at one point in time. But when was the logo painted? And by whose hand? Gordon’s proposed research method of “finding the shape described by her absence,” perfectly captures the “paradox of tracking through time and across all those forces that which makes its mark by being there and not being there at the same time.”37
Because NGOs are simultaneously “there” and “not there” in Beaux Arbres, tracing
NGOs necessarily has an element of ghost-hunting. In a sense, Beaux Arbres may be understood as being haunted by NGOs. Although the ghosts that dwell in human consciousness are divers and vary across cultures, there is something about the idea of ghosts that may be understood as being timeless. For much of human history, ghosts have occupied spaces in religious beliefs and practices, legends and folklore, and artistic representations across the globe. Ghosts are ancient.
However, to speak of ghosts can be to tread through territory that is both “treacherous” and
“fragile.”38 “What kind of case,” Gordon asks, “is a case of a ghost?” She suggests that the case is one of
…merging the dead and the living, the visible and invisible, it is starting with the marginal (that which is usually excluded, banished, or never noticed in the first place)… it is not a case of dead or missing persons…. But of the ghost as a social figure. It is often a case of inarticulate experiences, of symptoms and screen memories, of spiraling affects, of more than one story at a time, of the traffic in domains of experience that are anything but transparent and referential. It is a case of modernity’s violence and wounds, and a case of
36 Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 194. 37 Ibid., 6. 38 Ibid., 6.
85 the haunting reminder of the complex social relations in which we live. It is a case that teaches a lesson (or two) about how to write what can represent that haunting reminder, what can represent systematic injury and the remarkable lives made in the wake of the making of our social world…39 (my emphases)
Discussions of ghostly matters and hauntings may be interpreted as suggesting ignorance, profanation, or insanity. Rather than being indicative of superstition or psychosis, however,
Gordon chooses to conceptualize haunting as a “generalizable social phenomenon” within which ghosts may be understood to be “social figures.”40 She suggests that we look ghosts in the face, as it were, because learning “how to make contact with what is without doubt often painful, difficult, and unsettling” is crucial to understanding and possibly changing the realities of social life. However, for social scientists to truly identify hauntings and grapple with ghosts, it is necessary to “change the way we have been doing things.”41
NGOS As Haunted Entities
Not only do NGOs haunt the community of Beaux Arbres, NGOs themselves may be understood as entities that experience haunting. NGOs are a product of a world system that has led to the construction of some people as “aiders” and others as “aided.” The ghosts produced by slavery, by social inequality, by the systematic, historical devaluation of Haitian bodies,42 are
39 Ibid., 25. 40 Ibid., 7-8. 41 Ibid, 23. 42 Slavery relied on a racist rhetoric that stripped African slaves of their humanity and rendered them as commodities. The notion of Africans, or those of African-descent, having inexpensive and expendable bodies was an integral part of the slavery plantation system. For French plantation owners in Saint-Domingue/ Haiti, it was oftentimes cheaper to work their slaves to death, and then purchase more from Africa, than it would have been to try to keep all of their slaves alive and encourage them to have children (DuBois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, 21). The idea of the Afro-Caribbean population as “cheap” has a long history and is yet to be eradicated (e.g., Faye V. Harrison, “The Gendered Politics and Violence of Structural Adjustment: A View from Jamaica”; Umi Vaughn, Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance; Farmer, The Uses of Haiti). For
86 part and parcel of the NGO paradigm.43 I argue that all INGOs may experience hauntings from the past and that this may be particularly true in the case of Haiti. The haunting of NGOs by the ghosts of Haiti’s past are connected to the processes (described in Chapter 1) of silencing history through its exceptionalization.
Historically, Haiti has transitioned from being a threat to the prosperity of competing colonial powers, to a threat to the institution of slavery, and, more generally, a threat to what
Ulysse calls the “sanctity of whiteness.”44 Ulysse suggests that the “sanctity of whiteness” is haunted by the colonial legacy of Haiti and threatened by the ways that the neoliberal economic system has negatively impacted Haiti. Today’s sociological world, Avery Gordon argues, is haunted by the legacy of slavery. Haiti, as a former slave colony, embodies what Gordon refers to as a “seething presence.” Haiti, as part of the New World, reminds us of the unresolved horrors of slavery.
Slavery has ended, but something of it continues to live on, in the social geography of where peoples reside, in the authority of collective wisdom and shared benightedness, in the veins of the contradictory formation we call New World modernity, propelling, as it always has, a something to be done.45
example, in the 1920s a news ad appeared in U.S. press promoting Haitian labor. Potential investors were told that Haitian labor was cheap; while a day’s labor costs about $3 per person in Panama, it would cost only 20 cents per laborer, per day, for the same amount of work to be executed in Haiti (Farmer, The Uses of Haiti, 83). 43 Haitian lives are further devalued by the historical omission of mass deaths that have occurred in its history. While Americans generally know that Haiti suffered an earthquake within the last decade, most people do not have a conception of the high body count. Many Americans are similarly unaware of the tens of thousands of deaths and murders orchestrated by the Duvalier regimes, which were intermittently financially supported by the United States (Farmer, The Uses of Haiti, 92-93). When Hurricane Matthew swept through southwestern Haiti in October of 2016, killing hundreds (likely 1,500+), destroying tens of thousands of homes, devastating crops, and washing away important infrastructure, it was hardly addressed in U.S. and international media. 44 Ulysse, Why Haiti Needs New Narratives, 26-32. 45Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 139.
87
The phantom of slavery haunts the modern world; the wound has been hidden, not healed. Gina
Athena Ulysse makes a similar point when she states that the Haitian Revolution itself is
“unfinished.” The “recognition and uncompromised acceptance of our [Haitian] humanity” is described as the “unfinished business of the Revolution.”46
NGOs are in the business of finishing that which is perceived to be unfinished. NGOs also occupy a privileged position where they are able to dictate which aspects of social and economic realities are incomplete and therefore in need of finishing (i.e., through foreign interventions). Understanding NGOs that work in Haiti as being haunted affords us a new understanding of the “uses of Haiti.” When NGOs focus on poverty in Haiti, hunger in Haiti, lack of technology in Haiti, etc., they necessarily divert attention from the “unfinished business” of granting Haitian people their humanity. In the following section I briefly set aside the discussion of haunting to provide a brief overview of the space that NGOs occupy in Haiti. I then return to an in-depth discussion of NGOs in Beaux Arbres and bring ghosts back into the picture.
NGOS in Haiti: Republic of NGOs? Invasion of NGOs?
Haiti, which has a disproportionately large number of NGOs per capita, has been dubbed the “Republic of NGOs” in recent years.47 Foreign scholars and Haitian nationals alike have argued that the presence of so many NGOs effectively undermines the authority of the Haitian state while furthering foreign neoliberal agendas. For example, Jennie Smith, an ethnographic
46 Ulysse, Why Haiti Needs New Narratives, 51-53. 47 Farmer, Haiti After the Earthquake.
88 researcher in the Grand’Anse, describes NGOs as a “sort of shadow state” that has “amassed a great deal of power in Haiti in recent years.”48 On the one hand, the phenomenon of the
“Republic of NGOs” could be viewed as having arisen from a place of need because the Haitian government is understood to be unable to provide necessary social services for its people. On the other hand, NGOs can be understood as having risen as a direct consequence of foreign laws and policies, such as the US Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which barred direct investment in
Haiti’s public sector,49 or the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s that removed trade taxes and tariffs.50
Although the term “Republic of NGOs” has a sardonic ring to it, the term “invasion” of
NGOs,” by which many Haitians refer to the phenomeno,n may be a more apt description.51 The late Haitian professor, activist, and author Janil Lwijis wrote:
…in the 1970s NGOs became a symbol diffused throughout every corner of the country. The propaganda succeeded in controlling our thought, because today the majority of Haitian organizations function in the form of community development projects. That is, they take a social problem (be it political, economic, or cultural) out of its local realities and turn it into a situational problem for foreign actors to solve. Using their intellectual capacity, they create a project to execute with foreign capitalist funding.52
As Lwijis states, NGOs are more than just an external means through which development initiatives are carried out. The rhetoric of NGOs, including the reliance on global capitalism, has been internalized by many Haitians involved in the world of community development.
48 Smith, When the Hands Are Many, 27. 49 Farmer, The Uses of Haiti. 50 Hooper, “Model Underdevelopment”; Gros, “Indigestible Recipe.” 51 Yolette Etienne, “Haiti and Catastrophes: Lessons Not Learned,” in Tectonic Shifts: Haiti Since the Earthquake, ed. Mark Schuller and Pablo Morales (Sterling: Kumarian Press, 2012). 52 Janil Lwijis, “NGOs: What Government Are You?” in Tectonic Shifts: Haiti Since the Earthquake, ed. Mark Schuller & Pablo Morales (Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2012), 70.
89 Similarly, our data indicates an internalization of the NGO dependency narrative. In the collaborative survey, we asked questions to gauge people’s confidence in NGOs, the state, and local authorities. We found that survey participants were significantly more likely to have confidence in NGOs than either the state or local authorities.53 Participants also expressed that they had significantly more confidence in NGOs’ abilities to solve problems than local authorities’ abilities to solve problems. In some instances, people in Beaux Arbres expressed the view that Haitian people themselves may be barriers to potentially successful NGO interventions.
For example, Frankie, a fisher and net maker in Beaux Arbres, talked about a fatal accident involving a local man and a motor boat donated by Feeding the World’s Hungry.54 A few years ago, Frankie said, during the town’s annual August fèt nan lanmè (seaside party), this man was swimming in the ocean. Like other people at the party, he had been drinking. The man swam too close to the Feeding the World’s Hungry boat and got caught up in the propeller. His body was badly sliced by the propeller’s blades, and he died shortly thereafter. Frankie’s interpretation of this story was essentially that the man had ruined a good thing. Feeding the
World’s Hungry gave boats to the AP and now, because of the deceased man’s actions, the boats can’t be used for parties or events in the same way that they once were. While Frankie did not believe that NGOs always provide effective aid, he stated that NGOs help a lot. Haiti, he said, is a move peyi ki bezwen anpil èd, a “bad country that needs a lot of aid.”
53 Of the respondents who answered the yes/ no question “Do you have confidence in _____,” 86.8% stated that they did have confidence in NGOs, 52.5% stated that they have confidence in local authorities, and 47.0% stated that they have confidence in the state. 54 Informal interview 07/07/16.
90 On numerous trips to Haiti I have heard different people suggest that foreign interventions fail because there is something (uniquely) wrong with Haitian people. This story is told by both Haitians and foreigners. Although I was never able to speak with any international
NGO workers in Beaux Arbres, I have heard aid workers elsewhere in Haiti attribute the failure of NGO projects to the perceived shortcomings of Haitian beneficiaries. For instance, in the summer of 2014 a U.S. American missionary in Port-au-Prince told me about a job-training workshop that she was helping to coordinate and facilitate for women in the city. She said that international programs that try to hire Haitian women or connect Haitian women with external employment opportunities tended to have unsatisfactory results. The problem with Haitian women, the missionary told me, is that they don’t understand how to do a full day’s work. On a similar note, in Jennie Smith’s work with international agencies in the Grand’Anse, she found a
“fairly consistent descriptive image of the Haitian poor.” Haitians were frequently portrayed by means of four characteristics, so that they were: 1) understood to possess a dependency mentality
(or“slave mentality”),2) viewed as being fatalistic to the point of apathy and/or resignation, 3) seen to be unable to constructively or analytically examine their own situations; 4) were resistant to cooperation and working for the “collective good.” Each of the provided examples perpetuate the story that NGOs provide solutions to Haitians and that the Haitian people ruin what they are given. 55
55 Smith, When the Hands Are Many, 31.
91 NGOS in Beaux Arbres
Locating NGOs in Beaux Arbres
In the case of Beaux Arbres, we found that NGOs often occupied a space between the tangible and the imaginary. What does it mean, in practice, to approach NGOs as ghostly forms? to find oneself haunted (or perhaps to allow oneself to be haunted)?56 What does the absence, or negative space, created by NGOs reveal about the organizations themselves and the communities within which they dwell? Gordon hypothesizes that, in the context of human cultures, “haunting is a shared structure of feeling, a shared possession, a specific type of sociality,” and this specific type of sociality is that of “living with ghosts, a sociality both tangible and tactile as well as ephemeral and imaginary.”57 In Beaux Arbres, we found shared conceptions of what NGOs are, what they do, and what they are capable of, which suggests the type of shared “feeling” or
“possession” that Gordon describes. At the same time, there were many differences between people’s perceptions. I suggest that the confusion and conflict surrounding the perception acts as its own narrative. The ambiguity associated with NGOs is its own form of haunting.
Before exploring the ways that NGOs are perceived in the community of Beaux Arbres, it is important to first address which NGOs figure into this discussion. The question of which
56 “Reckoning with ghosts,” Gordon states, “is not like deciding to read a book: you cannot simply choose the ghosts with which you are willing to engage.” In other words, we do not choose ghosts; rather, ghosts choose us. “When a ghost appears, it is making contact with you; all its forceful if perplexing enunciations are for you.”56 However, there is an element of self-determination for the haunted: “To be haunted is to make choices within those spiraling determinations that make the present waiver,” while, at the same time, “to be haunted is to be tied to historical and social effects.” (Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 210)
57 Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 210.
92 NGOs work in Beaux Arbres proved to be more difficult to answer than I had first imagined.
When my research partner and I administered the general survey, we found that some of the
INGOs we believed worked in Beaux Arbres were not in fact perceived as working in Beaux
Arbres. At the same time, we learned about a number of INGOs that have a strong presence in
Beaux Arbres that we were not aware of before conducting ethnographic fieldwork. I cannot name with certainty all of the NGOs currently working in Beaux Arbres or state definitively which organizations have left Beaux Arbres and which organizations were never there in the first place. Nevertheless, some NGOs certainly dwell in the consciousness of Beaux Arbres residents, and an in-depth exploration of observed and perceived NGO interventions illuminates shared
(and divergent) understandings of NGOs within the community.
Nearly half of the people we surveyed in Beaux Arbres indicated that they were aware of
NGOs operating in their community. Of the 106 people who answered questions about NGOs,
49% (52 individuals) responded that they saw NGOs working in Beaux Arbres. I was surprised to discover that this percentage revealed itself to be higher than the average of the eight field sites, where only 36% of the total 775 participants reported seeing NGOs work in their community. Of the 52 respondents who reported seeing NGOs work in Beaux Arbres, 45 were able to name one or more NGOs that they believed worked in the community. Within this group, there were 31 respondents who listed two or more NGOs that they believed worked in Beaux
Arbres. We asked these 31 respondents to choose one NGO that they would “place above the others” in terms of importance.
Overall, we were given names of 25 different entities that residents of Beaux Arbres identified as NGOs working in the community. The 25 entities represent a collection of international nongovernmental organizations, local nongovernmental organizations, local or
93 national governmental organizations, and a few organizations that we were never able to place.
Table 3.1 lists the groups that were cited and notes the frequency ranking of the group, the number of respondents who named the group in the survey, the number of respondents who listed the group as the most important NGO in the community, and how the group is classified
(according to our research model). We learned that USAID, Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the
World), Care International, CRS, and Fondation Paradis Des Indiens are the top five most frequently cited NGOs 58 in Beaux Arbres. USAID, Médecins du Monde, Care International,
CRS, and Feeding the World’s Hungry are the top five most frequently cited INGOs working in
Beaux Arbres.
Before starting the summer’s fieldwork in Beaux Arbres, my research partner Roseline and her colleagues learned about INGOs in Beaux Arbres through interviews with prominent community members. They heard of twelve INGOs that worked in Beaux Arbres: ACDI/
VOCA, ACTED, CARITAS, CRS, Chaîne de l’Espoir International, FAO, Feeding the World’s
Hungry, Médecins du Monde, NPH International, Pathfinder, Red Cross (International and
German), and USAID. We found that seven of these organizations were mentioned in interviews and observed during our ethnographic fieldwork: ACTED, CARITAS, FAO, Feeding the
World’s Hungry, Médecins du Monde, the Red Cross, and USAID. Two INGOs were mentioned in surveys, but we did not physically observe their presence in the community: CRS and
Pathfinder. There were three INGOs that we expected to see in Beaux Arbres that were never mentioned in surveys and that we never observed working in the community: ACDI/VOCA,
58 These five organizations were the most frequently cited when we asked about NGOs. However, USAID is not actually an NGO because it is a U.S. government agency. This thesis considers government- sponsored development projects in its discussion of NGOs because, despite organizations such as USAID, UKAID, and UNICEF not being nongovernmental, they are widely conceived of as being NGOs in the common understanding of NGOs in Beaux Arbres.
94 Chaîne de l’Espoir International, and NPH International. Table 3.2 lists the INGOs we were aware of before starting the summer’s fieldwork along with the number of respondents who named the INGO and how/whether we observed the presence of this INGO in the community.
Table 3.1: Groups Described as “NGOs” in Collaborative Survey
Name of Group # respondents Frequency # respondents Classification who named this ranking (out who listed this as of Group59 group as an of 16) the most NGO in survey important NGO in the community
USAID (United States 25 1 11 IGO Agency for International Development) Médecins du Monde 23 2 9 INGO (Doctors of the World) CARE International 13 3 INGO CRS (Catholic Relief 9 4 INGO Services) Fondation Paradis 9 4 4 Local NGO Des Indiens (The Indians’ Paradise Foundation) Feeding the World’s 8 6 1 INGO Hungry ACTED (Agency for 5 7 0 INGO Technical Cooperation and Development) Pathfinder 5 7 2 INGO International DINEPA (national 4 9 Governmental Bureau of Water & Organization Sanitation in Haiti) in Haiti
59 The classification of organizations, particularly non-profit, not-for-profit, and non-governmental organizations, is contentious. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, this thesis adopts a simple classification scheme that identifies the geographic reach of an organization (local, national, or international) and differentiates between governmental and non-governmental organizations.
95 Table 3.1 Continued. FAO (Food and 4 9 INGO Agriculture Organization of the UN) IRC 4 9 INGO (International Rescue Committee) AMAGA (a local 2 12 1 Local association of governmental politicians & organization leaders) in Grand’Anse CARITAS 2 12 INGO International Croix Rouge (Red 2 12 1 INGO Cross) MSH 2 12 Unclear Ayiti Futur 1 16 Unclear CAPAJ 1 16 Unclear
CCSA 1 16 Unclear Local community 1 16 People connected to leaders local organizations, not physical organizations IMH 1 16 Unclear Intenasyonal 1 16 Unclear (International) Medsen san 1 16 INGO Fwontyè (Médecins sans Frontières/ Doctors Without Borders) Mission 1 16 INGO Mennonite OMS 1 16 Unclear SOFA (local 1 16 Local NGO chapter of national women’s NGO) UNICEF (United 1 16 IGO Nations Children’s Fund)
96
Table 3.2: INGOs We Believed Worked in Beaux Arbres
INGO # Frequency Observed presence of NGO in Community: respondents ranking (of who named 16) this NGO in survey USAID 25 1 USAID partners with local organization Fondasyon Paradis des Indiens. Attended USAID-sponsored event on 08/08/16
Beaux Arbres’s local clinic is supported by USAID. USAID logos are visible in the clinic.
Médecins 23 2 Beaux Arbres’s local clinic is supported by Médecins Du monde du Monde (Doctors of the World). Médecins du Monde logos are visible in the clinic.
Sign for food production program visible on the side of the road entering Beaux Arbres. Médecins du Monde France is cited on the sign along with FAO and a number of state agencies. CRS 9 4 None Feeding the 8 6 Feeding the World’s Hungry boats and Feeding the World’s World’s Hungry houses highly visible in community. Hungry ACTED 5 7 Noted ACTED vehicles in Beaux Arbres on 07/28/16- 07/30/16.
ACTED logo (alongside UNICEF, UKAID, and DINEPA) noted on a dam a few miles outside of the town of Beaux Arbres in the Sobalize region. Pathfinder 5 7 None FAO 4 9 Sign for food production program visible on the side of the road entering Beaux Arbres. FAO is cited on the sign along with Médecins du Monde France and a number of state agencies. CARITAS 2 12 07/30/16 Met a Haitian man in Beaux Arbres who works for CARITAS. Man lives in Jeremie but visits Beaux Arbres periodically for work. Croix Rouge 2 12 Croix Rouge Allamande/ Croix Rouge Haitienne sign (International/ describing a project to reduce vulnerability visible on Allemande) the side of the road entering Beaux Arbres.
97 There were seven INGOs that we became aware of in Beaux Arbres through our ethnographic work. CARE International and IRC proved to be relatively visible in Beaux Arbres; people mentioned both of these organizations in surveys, and there were a number of CARE and
IRC logos displayed around the town. Other organizations had a less perceptible presence in the community. For example, (with one exception) Bridges to Prosperity, UKAID, and UNICEF were not mentioned by survey participants, but their insignias can be found in a few places around town. Doctors Without Borders was mentioned by a lone survey participant, but we never saw physical evidence of the organization in Beaux Arbres; perhaps Doctors Without Borders had worked in Beaux Arbres at one point in time, or perhaps the participant confused Doctors
Without Borders with another INGO, like Médecins du Monde. Also noteworthy is the
Mennonite Mission, who were responsible for building and running a clinic in town- that was only mentioned by one of the survey participants. Table 3.3 gives an overview of the INGOs we learned about through our ethnographic work and describes our observations of these groups and the number of respondents who named the group in the survey.
98
Table 3.3: INGOs We Learned About Through Ethnographic Work in Beaux Arbres INGO #respondents Frequency Observed presence of NGO in Community: who named Ranking this NGO in survey CARE 13 3 CARE logo on a beach-side sign for “Project to Reinforce Community Resilience” along with logos from UKAID, Bridges to Prosperity, IRC, and state agencies.
CARE logo and UNICEF logo on the side of a water tank near Feeding the World’s Hungry houses IRC 4 9 IRC logo on a beach-side sign for “Project to Reinforce Community Resilience” along with logos from UKAID, Bridges to Prosperity, CARE, and state agencies. Medsen 1 16 None sans Frontiers Mission 1 16 Clinic (look at map!) Mennonite UNICEF 1 16 UNICEF logo and CARE logo on the side of a water tank near Feeding the World’s Hungry houses.
UNICEF logo (alongside ACTED, UKAID, and DINEPA) noted on a dam a few miles outside of the town of Beaux Arbres in the Sobalize region. UKAID 0 n/a UKAID logo on a beach-side sign for “Project to Reinforce Community Resilience” along with logos from CARE, Bridges to Prosperity, IRC, and state agencies
UKAID logo (alongside UNICEF, ACTED, and DINEPA) noted on a dam a few miles outside of the town of Beaux Arbres in the Sobalize region. Bridges to 0 n/a Bridges to Prosperity logo on a beach-side sign for Prosperity “Project to Reinforce Community Resilience” along with logos from UKAID, CARE, IRC, and state agencies
This data speaks to the absence and presence of NGOs in Beaux Arbres. First and foremost is the nearly 50/50 split opinion about whether or not NGOs work in Beaux Arbres. We found that NGOs have made an imprint on Beaux Arbres yet are perceived as absent by many of the town’s residents. The character of NGOs, as described by people who did report seeing
99 NGOs in the community, also speaks to an absent sort of presence, or conversely, a present sort of absence. We found that certain NGOs initially reported as working in Beaux Arbres were never mentioned in surveys or interviews, nor did we observe signs of their presence in the community. Other NGOs went largely (or completely) unnamed in surveys and interviews, despite the presence of their signs and logos around town. A number NGOs were mentioned frequently by survey participants and noted in interviews, although we saw little to no evidence of their being in Beaux Arbres. Still other NGOs were mentioned with significant frequency and did have an observable presence in Beaux Arbres. Feeding the World’s Hungry boats line the beach shores, people live in homes built by Feeding the World’s Hungry, SUVs marked with the
ACTED logo make appearances in town, and signs from USAID and Médecins du Monde are displayed in the local clinic, which both organizations sponsor. When taken together, it is clear that NGOs do have a presence in and impact on the community in Beaux Arbres.
Interpreting Ghosts
Even if people did not perceive NGOs as working in Beaux Arbres, many still had opinions and conceptualizations of NGOs, although some either did not have opinions or were reluctant to speak with us about them. On a few occasions we heard people express that they were familiar with the idea of NGOs but that NGOs did not exist in Beaux Arbres. These respondents understood NGOs to provide services in other towns and cities, such as Port-au-
Prince and Jérémie, but not in their town. During the course of a survey, a young man in his early twenties told us that he believed NGOs could resolve problems and that he had confidence in
100 NGOs but that there were no NGOs in Beaux Arbres. “They haven’t come yet,” he told us.60
This sentiment suggests that NGOs may be seen as more powerful because of their perceived absence: that they are seen as a force that solves problems elsewhere, but not here.
A shared feeling among the participants of the general survey was that NGOs have the capacity to provide help, even if NGOs are not perceived of as working in Beaux Arbres and/or people are confused about what NGOs are and what they do. For example, an elderly man told us that he did not know exactly what NGOs were but that he would “accept them” and believed them to be capable of resolving the community’s needs.61 Similarly, an elderly woman told us that she had confidence in NGOs and believed that they could solve problems in the area, despite the fact that she described NGOs as unnamed entities that come and go.62 Overall, when asked if
NGOs are capable of resolving the needs in Beaux Arbres, nearly 96% of survey participants responded that yes, NGOs are capable of resolving key issues. Importantly, people were more likely to say that NGOs are less capable of resolving issues than the state or the local authorities.63 The apparent disconnect between tangible interactions with NGOs and physical signs of NGOs and people’s expectations of NGOs’ capabilities is perplexing and invites further investigation.
60 Survey notes 07/26/16, Tè Blanch region of Beaux Arbres. 61 Survey notes 07/28/2016, hillside near Foundation Paradis des Indiens. 62 Survey notes 07/06/2016, near town center. 63 An overwhelming 90.1% of survey participants stated that they believed the state could resolve the pressing issues in the community, and 65.2% of participants stated that they believed the local authorities could resolve pressing issues.
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Perceptions of NGOs Within the Community
In Three Words: Exploring The Popular Understanding of NGOs In Beaux Arbres
To better understand how people in Beaux Arbres conceptualize NGOs, we asked survey participants in the collaborative project to list three words that came to mind when they thought about NGOs. It is important to note that, while the majority of participants (76/109) listed at least one word, nearly one third of participants (33/109) chose not to participate in the exercise. All but one of the people who did not participate said that they “did not know” three words to describe NGOs or that they “did not know” what an NGO was.64 This “not knowing” about
NGOs may be understood to speak to a more general lack of visibility of NGOs in the community. In other words, this data speaks to the idea of NGOs as spectral beings that do not quite take form. At the same time, only about a third of the people who participated in the exercise listed three words; most participants listed one or two words, rather than three. The trend of listing less than three words may speak to a spectrum of engagement with NGOs: people have one or two things to say about NGOs but are hard-pressed to come up with three descriptive terms. However, the listing of less than three terms might suggest that participants were confused
(or irritated) by the exercise itself. It is worth noting that we asked people to list three words that came to mind when they thought about NGOs towards the end of the survey. Most of the participants had already spoken to us for over twenty minutes (and in the case of a few participants for over an hour) by the time we presented them with this exercise.
64 Of the 32 participants who said that they “did not know,” 26 were female and 6 were male.
102 Overall, the 109 people we surveyed produced a list of 75 different words to describe
NGOs. The most frequently mentioned words by a large margin were èd65 (“aid”) and travay66
(“work”), words that were listed 21 times and 19 times respectively. The words “development,”
“activity,” “organization,” and “health” were the next most common words. Each of these words was listed five or six times, so that approximately one in fifteen people used the word
“development” to describe NGOs, approximately one in fifteen people used the word “activity” to describe NGOs, etc.
Many of the words provided, although different, represented common themes. During my subsequent data analysis, I grouped responses by theme to better understand how survey participants might define NGOs. The themes that emerged in the three-word exercise overlap with themes in the formalized discourse on NGOs and NGO studies. Namely, participants in the survey described NGOs in terms of: 1) aid, giving, or improvements; 2) activity/action or work;
3) as being positive for the community (e.g., being a “good thing); 4) as being negative for the community (e.g. being dishonest or ineffectual); 5) in terms of collaboration; 6) in terms of development (Table 3.4).
Similar to scholars and specialists working in NGO studies, people in Beaux Arbres tended to describe NGOs in terms that were both material and abstract. On the one hand, NGOs are understood as performing specific tasks such as providing work opportunities, intervening in the health sector, or holding meetings or workshops. Some of the impacts that NGOs have on communities were described in terms of material intervention, such as the positive “helping children” and the negative “wasting money” or “full pockets.” NGOs are also understood as
65 Èd, the Kreyòl translation of “aid” is a noun; ède is the verb “to aid.” 66 Travay, like its English translation, “work,” may be both a noun and a verb. The work associated with NGOs could be describing NGOs as providing jobs or NGOs as doing jobs.
103 impacting the community in less tangible ways. Some of the interpretations of NGO impacts on communities are positive (e.g., “hope,” “good thing,” and “efficacious”), while other participants had a much less positive view of the ways that NGOs impacted communities (e.g., “wasteful,”
“hypocrisy,” “not serious”).
Table 3.4: Words to Describe NGOs Grouped by Common Theme Theme Responses Included Responses Included (English) # Responses (Kreyòl) Aid/ Giving/ amelyorasyon, amelioration, assistance, giving, 34 Improvements asistans, bay, bay èd, giving aid, giving work, aid, bay travay, èd, èd sustainable aid, helping children, dirab, èd timoun, aiding, service, support, care ede, sèvis, sipò, swen Activity/ aksyon, aktivite/ fe action, activity/ doing activities, 29 Work aktivite, fèt, travay, celebration, work, good work, bon travay, bay giving work travay Positive for bon bagay, bon sèvis, good thing, good service, good 11 Community bon travay, efikas, work, efficacious, happy/ kontan, lespwa, content, hope, respect, respè, satisfaksyon satisfaction Negative for boule kòb, pa serye, “burning” money, not serious, 9 Community blofe, echèk, gaspiye, bluffing, failure, wasting, gaspiye kòb, ipokrizi, wasting money, hypocrisy, full plen pòch pockets Collaboration kolaborasyon, collaboration, participation, 8 patisipasyon, tèt putting heads together ansanm/ tèt kole Development avanse, devlopman, advancing, development, 8 konstriksyon construction
104 A number of people spoke of NGOs as being harmful to the community in more explicit terms. For example, one young man told us that NGOs break up communities and disrupt community activities by bringing projects that they never complete.67 In a casual conversation, a local community leader told me that NGOs “have no place in Haiti” because, above all, NGOs make money at the expense of the people who are “most vulnerable.” 68 A number of people we encountered presented a less straightforward view of NGOs, such as the man who stated that
NGOs are similar in that “many of them have a lot of money” but different in that “some are good, and some are thieves.”69 The sentiment, “Beaux Arbres needs a lot of help from NGOs,”70 was expressed, in so many words, by numerous people in the town.
The discussion of power is central to the way that people understand NGOs. Mosse alerted our attention to the shift from theoretical engagements with power to ethnographic explorations of power in the field of NGO studies.71 Ethnographic studies of NGOs exemplify this trend. Moreover, these studies reveal that, when examined ethnographically, the power dynamics of NGOs reveal themselves to be highly complex and dynamic. Even not discussed in explicit terms, the notion of power haunts dialogues about and discussions of NGOs held with residents of Beaux Arbres. People in Beaux Arbres indicate that NGOs have the power to make changes, whether positive, negative, or somewhere in between. NGOs are understood by some as having the capacity to bring development projects, to aid, to provide work, to collaborate with locals; other people understand NGOs to merely pretend to do these things. The next section explores what people see NGOs as doing (or not doing) in Beaux Arbres.
67 From survey data on July 24, 2016. 68 From fieldnotes on July 23, 2016. 69 From survey data on July 28, 2016. 70 From survey data on July 26, 2016. 71 Mosse, “The Anthropology of International Development.”
105
What do NGOs Do? What Should NGOs Do?
A common critique levied against NGOs is that they pursue their own, pre-determined, agenda rather than collaborating with locals to meet the needs of the community (e.g., Ferguson,
1990; Petras, 1997). This section approaches the discussion of NGOs’ agendas in Beaux Arbres in two ways: first, by looking at what people believe that NGOs should do and whether or not they believe that NGOs meet these expectations; second, by examining different domains of intervention and comparing the community-reported highest priority needs in Beaux Arbres with perceived NGO interventions. We found that, while there is significant overlap between what people in Beaux Arbres believe NGOs should be doing and what people perceive NGOs as doing, there is also much disparity between expectations of NGOs and perceived NGO interventions.
In a survey of 109 residents of Beaux Arbres, 73 people told us what role they thought
NGOs should play, and 36 people did not know what role NGOs should play in the community or chose not to respond. Of the 73 people who answered the question there was a diversity of responses. Responses ranged from very general (e.g., “NGOs should give aid”) to highly specific
(e.g., “NGOs should provide the means to preserve fish” and “NGOs should maintain political neutrality”). In analyzing the response, six key themes emerged: 1) NGOs should give aid/help people/generally improve the quality of life; 2) NGOs should create activities for people, including providing work and creating business opportunities; 3) NGOs should do development projects/create infrastructure; 4) NGOs should collaborate with locals and/or Haitians to provide aid; 5) NGOs should provide support for public health concerns; 6) NGOs should focus on
106 children/youth. In my data analysis I grouped responses by theme to analyze the data to better understand the role that Beaux Arbres residents believe NGOs should play and whether or not the NGOs in fact play this role (Table 3.5).
Table 3.5 Responses by Theme: What Role Should NGOs Play? Do NGOs Do This? Theme # of Responses # who say # who say NGOs # who say NGOs do do not do this they do not this know if NGOs do this Give aid/ help people/ 40 24 12 4 generally improve quality of life Create activities 19 8 11 0 (including creating jobs/ creating business opportunities) Do development 16 12 3 1 projects/ create infrastructure Collaborate with 14 8 4 2 locals/ Haitians to provide aid Provide support for 6 2 2 2 health concerns Focus on children/ 4 3 1 0 youth
Overall we found that people were more likely than not to say that NGOs did the job that they were supposed to do, but by a narrow margin. When asked, “Is this what NGOs do,” 51% of
107 participants said yes, 40% said no, and 9.3% said “I don’t know.” The answer to the question, “Is this what NGOs do” is not uniform across categories. For example, twice as many people said that NGOs do give aid as said that NGOs do not give aid. At the same time, slightly more people thought that NGOs did not create activities72 than thought NGOs do create activities. When it came to providing support for health concerns, people were equally divided in their opinions that
NGOs do this, NGOs do not do this, and not knowing if NGOs do this. Overall, people who thought that NGOs should do development projects or create infrastructure were most likely to say that NGOs do, in fact, do this sort of work. The few people who said that NGOs should but do not do development/infrastructure projects talked about the lack of a viable road and hospital in Beaux Arbres.
We also asked people to list the biggest needs in the community and then, of the listed needs, to choose the one that they understood to be the greatest priority. Over 65% of the 109 survey participants stated that Beaux Arbres needed a better road, and almost 46% of participants cited the road as the greatest need in the community. Through interviews and casual conversations, we learned that people associated the road (and ease in transportation) with increased access to health,73 commerce, work, education, and material resources. The next most commonly cited needs in the community were potable water and work. Interestingly, despite the fact that more than half of the people we spoke with said that electricity was a need in Beaux
Arbres, less than 5% of people cited electricity as the highest priority (Table 3.6).
72 The “activities” created by NGOs include employment and business opportunities. 73 If there was a better road, people said, then it would be easier for pregnant women and sick and injured people to access the healthcare they need. We heard a number of truly disturbing stories about women going into labor on the back of motorcycles on the bumpy road to Jérémie and stories of people dying on the unnecessarily long route to the hospital. A number of people I met during the course of fieldwork were injured in minor motorcycle accidents on the oftentimes treacherous route from Beaux Arbres to Jérémie.
108
Table 3.6 Community Needs in Beaux Arbres Specific Community Need % who cite this need % who say this need is the top priority Road 66.1 45.7 Potable Water 61.5 12.4 Work 45.9 12.4 Health 39.4 9.5 Monetary Credit 32.1 5.7 Electricity 56.0 4.8 School 33.0 3.8 Other 54.1 3.8 Support for Fishing 4.6 1.1 Food 14.7 1.0 Agricultural Support 8.3 0.0 Help with violence in 6.4 0.0 community Help with flooding 5.5 0.0
Using the same domains of intervention, we asked people who had reported seeing NGOs work in Beaux Arbres where NGOs intervened. Participants reported seeing the most NGO interventions in the domains of food, water, work, and health. The NGO interventions can be understood to be reflective of NGOs’ priorities, or at least their priorities as conceptualized by
Beaux Arbres residents. Comparing the perceived priorities of NGOs with the community needs as prioritized by survey participants in Beaux Arbres paints a complicated picture (Table 3.7).
Potable water, work/employment, health, and school seem to be prioritized at similar rates. That is, important but not the most important. There are great discrepancies in the domains of the road and food, however. The road was most frequently cited as the top priority for the community, yet
109 less than 7% of the people we surveyed reported seeing NGOs do work related to building or improving the road in Beaux Arbres. Nearly half of the people with whom we spoke reported that NGOs intervene in the food sector in Beaux Arbres. At the same time, food was one of the lowest ranked priorities for people living in Beaux Arbres. This finding is particularly relevant to the case study of Feeding the World’s Hungry, an organization that prioritizes providing food to those seen as being in need.
Table 3.7: Comparing Community Priorities and the Perceived Priorities of NGOs in Beaux Arbres Domain of % participants Priority ranking % participants priority intervention report NGO for NGOs (based describe domain ranking for intervention in on community as top priority participants domain perceptions) Food 48.9 1 1.0 10 Water 41.3 2 12.4 2 Work 17.8 3 12.4 2 Other 17.8 3 3.8 8 Health 17.4 5 9.5 4 School 11.9 6 3.8 7 Monetary 8.9 7 5.7 5 Credit Road 6.7 8 45.7 1 Agricultural 6.7 8 0.0 11 Support Support for 4.4 10 1.0 9 Fishers Electricity 0.0 11 4.8 6 Violence 0.0 11 0.0 11 Flooding 0.0 11 0.0 11
110 Perception of NGOs’ Work in Beaux Arbres
Although there were significant discrepancies between perceived INGO interventions and community-identified priorities, many residents of Beaux Arbres expressed the belief that NGOs have the capacity to provide needed aid and interventions. When asked if they believed NGOs to be capable of “resolving the needs in the area [Beaux Arbres],” nearly 96% of survey participants responded in the affirmative. This data seems to suggest that people believe NGOs do not solve key issues in the community, even though they have the capacity to provide solutions. However, this does not translate into a lack of faith in NGOs (Table 3.8).
Table 3.8: Perception of INGOs’ Role in Beaux Arbres Question: % “yes” % “no” % “do not #respondents know”
Do you see NGOs 49.1 50.9 n/a 106 working in this area? Are NGOs capable of 95.6 4.40 n/a 91 resolving the needs in this area? Do NGOs bring 46.8 16.5 36.7 109 solutions to this area? Should NGOs stay in 53.2 7.30 39.4 109 this area? Do you have 54.1 8.30 37.6 109 confidence in/ trust NGOs?
111 Although over a third of the people we surveyed were unsure if they had confidence or trust in NGOs, only about 8% unequivocally stated that they did not have confidence or trust in
NGOs. This number is perhaps surprising in light of the many responses that described NGOs in negative terms. A majority of people (54.1%) stated that they did have confidence or trust in
NGOs. When broken down by gender, the data reveals that women are less likely to have seen
NGOs in the community and about equally likely to have confidence in NGOs as their male counterparts (Table 3.9).
Table 3.9 Perception of INGOs’ Role in Beaux Arbres by Gender Overall/ Question: % “yes” % #respondents Women “no”
Overall Do you see NGOs 49 51 106 working in this area? Women Do you see NGOs 41 59 53 working in this area? Overall Are NGOs 96 4.4 91 capable of resolving the needs in this area? Women Are NGOs 96 1.7 53 capable of resolving the needs in this area?
These findings are particularly interesting when compared with Jennie Smith’s ethnographic study of development and democracy in peasant communities in the Grand’Anse.
112 Smith found that rural Haitians’ associations with NGOs were largely negative. According to
Smith, aid is often understood by rural Haitians in the Grand’Anse as “undermining the interests of Haitians,” many of whom “see foreign-sponsored development and democratizing initiatives as inherently exploitative strategies” that effectively create dependency and undermine grassroots efforts for social change.74 Smith paints a very jaded portrait of local understandings of NGOs when she reports:
I cannot count the number of times rural Haitians have told me that when aid workers, government officials, and missionaries ask for money, it’s in the name of the poor; but when it is spent, it is the aid workers, government officials, and missionaries who truly benefit.75
At the same time, Smith found that local community leaders continued to work with INGOs. To explain the decision to seek funding from a foreign organization, one of Smith’s interlocutors analogized, “If you are thirsty, and the only water you’ve got is putrid, you’re obliged to hold your nose and drink.”76
Why, fifteen years later, did we find confidence (or at the very least, an absence of lack of confidence) where Smith found mistrust? There are a number of possible explanations for the differences in our findings. One possibility is that the Grand’Anse is not homogeneous, and so it is natural that data from Beaux Arbres would differ from the data collected in a different part of the regional department. Another explanation is that the general attitude towards NGOs has changed in recent years in this region, perhaps because NGOs have slipped further into the shadows. Another possibility is that people we surveyed were not entirely forthcoming with us. It is possible that, in spite of our claims to the contrary, survey participants associated us with
74 Smith, When the Hands Are Many, 30-31. 75 Ibid., 37. 76 Ibid., 38-39.
113 NGOs and foreign aid and believed that we had the potential to provide aid. It is possible
(perhaps probable) that people are more likely to state that they believe NGOs possess the power to enact the changes they wish to see if they believe they are speaking with people who may be able to help them. It is also possible that the explanation lies in a combination of these factors, and perhaps other factors as well. Future research is required to fully interpret these findings.
Clearly, the people with whom we spoke with in Beaux Arbres perceive differences between their own priorities for their communities and the priorities of NGOs working in the area. At the same time, there was a strong expression of support for/confidence in NGOs. These findings beg the double-barreled question: What might account for the differences between local priorities and perceived INGO interventions, and why do people continue to have faith in NGOs despite these discrepancies? Based on the literature review in this chapter, I propose six possible explanations: 1) NGOs think that they know better than the residents of Beaux Arbres; 2) the possibility that NGOs are so effective at their interventions that they solve problems that might otherwise be considered a top priority within the community (e.g., residents of Beaux Arbres do not perceive access to food as the most pressing issue because NGOs have eradicated hunger); 3) people are confused or ill-informed about what NGOs do, and so they misunderstand how and where NGOs are intervening; 4) there is a lack of communication between the general population and NGOs; 5) the primary priority of NGOs is not actually to provide the most needed aid in the most effective manner; 6) NGOs have particular, specific talents and so there is the potential for misfits between any given NGO and the community within which it works. These possible explanations gesture towards issues associated with evaluations of NGO interventions.
When initially designing this independent research project, I was interested in systems of evaluation. I wondered, how do NGOs evaluate themselves? How are they evaluated by
114 community members and local stakeholders? Who is included in the processes of evaluation, and who is excluded? Ultimately, this line of questioning did not prove to be as productive as I had hoped it would be. I found that the only people with whom I spoke who had anything to say about formal evaluations (concerning Feeding the World’s Hungry) were fishers associated with the AP. Of the five fishers I interviewed, everyone seemed to think that there had been some sort of formal evaluation process that included members of the AP, although they themselves were not included in these processes. If NGOs themselves are understood to be spectral forms in
Beaux Arbres, the bureaucratic evaluation systems associated with the NGOs are almost entirely invisible. This finding is interesting in and of itself because it poses its own set of questions, namely, why local stakeholders would be excluded from NGOs’ evaluation processes, and what the intention of evaluations is, if they are not designed to reflect or include local input.
In the concluding chapter of this thesis I present a brief review of theories on NGOs’ evaluation systems as a means of addressing some possible reasons that local stakeholders in
Beaux Arbres were not generally included in evaluation processes. I then turn to a discussion of
Hurricane Matthew, which I suggest represents its own type of evaluation process.
CONCLUSION: GRAPPLING WITH GHOSTS, LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
This thesis concludes with a discussion of processes of evaluation in the context of
Hurricane Matthew. Evaluation processes, I argue, are related to Hurricane Matthew in two specific ways. First, I argue that Hurricane Matthew can be understood as an evaluation in its own right. Life in Beaux Arbres was brutally tested by the deadly winds that toppled buildings, ripped roofs from houses, and uprooted trees; by the heavy rains that caused mudslides, flooded fields, and washed away parts of the road; and by the ensuing months of uncertainty, hunger, and disease. Second, I argue that formal evaluations of NGO interventions tend to exclude beneficiaries. In the case of Beaux Arbres, excluding local residents from providing feedback to
NGOs may prove to have grievous consequences. In the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, as
Beaux Arbres is working to rebuild its damaged food system, beneficiary input is crucial.
Hurricane Matthew
We do not, Avery Gordon suggests, choose the ghosts in our lives. Rather, the ghosts choose us. We may decide to confront these ghosts head on, or we resign ourselves to being haunted indefinitely. The moment has arrived to address Hurricane Matthew, a tragedy that both haunts and contextualizes the work presented in these pages. Like many of my U.S. American and Haitian friends and colleagues, I spent much of the first week of October glued to my phone 116 and computer, watching as Hurricane Matthew approached, enveloped, and moved on from the southwestern part of Haiti. With my working knowledge of the municipality and the greater region of the Grand’Anse, I knew that the area did not possess the infrastructure to withstand an event such as Matthew. As anthropologist and writer Laura Wagner, who has lived and worked in the Beaux Arbres area, aptly stated, “It is surreal to hope that the people you care about have lost only their homes and livelihoods.”1 Days after the hurricane, when communication was finally established with people in Beaux Arbres, the news was devastating: people reported that the majority of the buildings in the area had been wrecked, that crops and livestock had been wiped out, and that there was no access to food, clean water, and much-needed medical treatment.
Initial reports from international governmental organizations, such as OCHA and
USAID, confirmed that the Grand’Anse, along with the southwestern Sud and Nippes departments, were in serious trouble. On October 10, six days after Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti,
OCHA reported that 2.1 million people in Haiti had been affected by the hurricane and that nearly 1.5 million of these people were in need of humanitarian assistance. In the Grand’Anse, it was estimated that over 76% of the population was in need of humanitarian assistance. The
OCHA situation report attributes 372 deaths to Hurricane Matthew. The report also states that preliminary results from a food security assessment indicated that almost 100% of the crops in the Grand’Anse were destroyed. USAID published a report on Haiti a week later that cited the same numbers of people affected (i.e., over two million) but reported the death toll as having climbed to 546 people.
1 Laura Wagner, “Chronicle of a Disaster Foretold,” Medium: Duke University, October 2016.
117 Today, it is still unclear how many fatalities Hurricane Matthew caused; the death toll seems to range from the Haiti’s official count of 546 people to triple that number.2 Despite the ambiguity surrounding the total number of deaths, there seems to be a consensus about the need for humanitarian aid in the southwest. The most recent OCHA situation report, published in
March of 2017, states that 1.4 million people are currently in need of humanitarian assistance. Of the 2.1 million people who were affected by Hurricane Matthew, an estimated 1.5 million were need of food, security, and nutrition aid as of April 2017.
The devastation wrought by Hurricane Matthew, I suggest, implies a different type of evaluation. When the Category 4 hurricane tore through southwestern Haiti, with gusts of wind peaking at over 170 mph, it exposed strengths and weaknesses in the impacted regions. As numerous scholars have suggested, disasters often reveal hidden truths about the locationswhere they land.3 Disaster scholar Anthony Oliver-Smith writes:
Disasters are totalizing events. As they unfold, all dimensions of a social structural formation and the totality of its relations with its environment may become involved, affected, and focused. These dimensions express consistency and inconsistency, coherence and contradiction, cooperation and conflict, hegemony and resistance…. Like few other phenomena the internal complexity of disasters forces us to confront the many and shifting faces of socially constructed realities. 4
The dimensions of social reality exposed may be painful, haunting, and unflattering. And they are a brutal evaluation of vulnerability. Disasters cause us to ask, who is vulnerable? And why?
2 Less than a week after Hurricane Matthew, on October 10, Reuters reported over 1,000 deaths in Haiti. According to a report issued on October 13, 2016, by the Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology, Hurricane Matthew killed approximately 1,600 people in Haiti. 3 E.g., Elaine Enarson, Women Confronting Natural Disasters: From Vulnerability to Resilience (Boulder: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2012); Loretta J. Ross, “A Feminist Perspective on Katrina” in The Women of Katrina: How Gender, Race, and Class Matter in an American Disaster, ed. Emmanuel David and Elaine Enarson (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012), 15-20; Clyde Woods, “Katrina’s World: Blues, Bourbon, and the Return to the Source,” in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina: New Paradigms and Social Visions, ed. Clyde Woods (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). 4 Oliver-Smith, “What Is a Disaster?” 20-21.
118 Many scholars who work in disasters have concluded that poverty, race, gender, access to transportation, and geographic location are correlated to vulnerability. Moreover, it is argued that vulnerability is linked to historical processes.5 This thesis has demonstrated that much of Haiti’s history has been strategically erased, in many cases silenced through processes of exceptionalization. I suggest that the silencing of history and the silencing of vulnerability are two sides of the same coin.
Wrapped up in the phenomenon of silencing is the question of the significance of human life. Media coverage of disasters often reflects upon the greater issue of “whose lives count.”6 It has been suggested that media coverage, in conjunction with other factors, may affect the volume of humanitarian aid delivered to areas in crisis.7 In the case of Beaux Arbres, what was revealed by Hurricane Matthew? While more research is required to adequately address this question, I conclude with a few thoughts on the matter. In the case of Hurricane Matthew’s impact on Haiti, both media coverage and humanitarian aid have been deficient. This indicates a further silencing of Haitian people in general and the moun andeyo-s who live in the Grand’Anse in particular.
The relief efforts following Hurricane Matthew have been severely underfunded.
According to OCHA, as of March 16, 2017, the humanitarian response plan for Haiti has received only 15% of the $291.3 million requested for funding. The requested funding covers twelve sectors of humanitarian aid, including food security, emergency shelters, and cholera
5 E.g., Sarah Taylor, “The Construction of Vulnerability Along the Zarumilla River Valley in Prehistory,” Human Organization (2015):296-307; Craig E. Colton, “Vulnerability and Place: Flat Land and Uneven Risk in New Orleans,” American Anthropologist 108 (2006): 731-734; Marino, Fierce Climate Sacred Ground. 6 W. C. Adams, “Whose Lives Count? TV Coverage of Natural Disasters,” Journal of Communication 36 (1986): 113–122. 7 Gorm Rye Olsen et al., “Humanitarian Crises: What Determines the Level of Emergency Assistance? Media Coverage, Donor Interests and the Aid Business,” Disasters 27 (2003): 109-126.
119 relief and prevention. The amount of funding per sector ranges from $92.9 million requested for food security, nutrition, and agriculture to $2.1 million requested for logistics.8 Food security, nutrition, and agriculture is the sector that has been most highly prioritized. This sector has received the most funding both in terms of dollars spent and percentage of requested funds met
(although the funds received still fall far short of the amount requested). Food security, nutrition, and emergency agriculture have received $28.4 million, or 30.6% of the requested funds. As a point of comparison, the sector that requested the second most funding is emergency shelter and essential non-food items, which received $5.8 million (14%) of the $41.3 million requested.
Taken together, this information indicates two important elements. First, there is space for humanitarian agencies to intervene in the Grand’Anse because of the established, significant need for humanitarian aid. Second, the food and agriculture sector is being highly prioritized in the relief efforts. These realities not only contextualize the research presented in this thesis, they imbue it with a sense of urgency. It seems likely that INGOs, such as Feeding the World’s
Hungry, that work in the food sector will have an increased presence in places like Beaux
Arbres. It is essential that we ask questions about what NGOs are doing in Beaux Arbres and to whom these NGOs are accountable.
8 The funding per sector/ requested funds for each sector (in millions of dollars) are: food security, nutrition, and emergency agriculture (28.4/92.9); emergency shelter and essential non-food items (5.8/41.3); cholera (0/34.7); early recovery and livelihoods (0/25.7); health (0.6/25.7); education (1.8/16.8); camp coordination and camp management (0/14.9); water, sanitation, hygiene (1.6/14.7); protection (1.1/13.6); nutrition (0/6.7); coordination (0.1/2.2); logistics (0.2/2.1).
120 Evaluation Processes and NGOs: Evaluating What, And for Whom?
Evaluations of NGOs often circumvent beneficiary input. Scholarly engagements with formal evaluation processes imply that the evaluations are tailored for donors, often at the expense of beneficiary populations. In this section, I present evidence that indicates that some
NGOs’ evaluation processes may in fact have a negative impact on their beneficiary populations.
According to Mark Schuller, in the case of NGOs in Haiti, the “technical discourse” adopted by
NGOs regarding performance measurements “excludes several sets of actors, most notably intended beneficiaries or ‘target population,’ from evaluation processes.”9 At the same time, the structures and policies of donors are effectively excluded from critique.10 In Christian N.
Vannier’s assessment of NGOs in southern rural Haiti he argues that an “audit culture” has developed in the region, wherein community-based organizations (CBOs) must be “culturally audited” by NGOs before these NGOs agree to a partnership.11 This audit culture effectively depoliticizes CBOs because NGOs will not work with local organizations who are determined
(through the “auditing process”) to be “political” in nature.12 Audit cultures also appear to have a dynamic relationship with neoliberal governmentality because they represent a “shift in governance from a direct supervisory role to an indirect role premised on the organizational norms of the free market.”13 NGOs in southern rural Haiti engage in processes of cultural
9 Mark Schuller, “Seeing Like a ‘Failed’ NGO: Globalization’s Impacts on State and Civil Society in Haiti,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 30 (2007): 68. 10 Ibid., 67-89. 11 Christian N. Vannier, “Audit Culture and Grassroots Participation in Rural Haitian Development,” PoLAR 33, no. 2(2010): 282-305. 12 Ibid., 295-297. 13 Ibid., 284
121 auditing of CBOs so that when they themselves are audited they live up to the expectations of their donors. Performance measures, target indicators, and evaluations are all key features of the official auditing processes to which NGOs undergo.14
Similar observations have been made regarding NGOs in other parts of the world. For example, Esther Mebrahtu reviews the monitoring and evaluation systems of eight British
INGOs working in Ethiopia; in each of these cases monitoring and evaluation systems were employed as a means of “strengthening accountability and institutional learning.”15 However, her study found that monitoring and evaluation systems oftentimes produced complex results and that the monitoring and evaluation systems themselves were not uniformly understood within the distinct organizations. Reading Mebrahtu’s article, one could easily come to the conclusion that the formal systems of monitoring and evaluation reveal more about tensions and misunderstandings within hierarchical INGO structures than they reveal about the goals and priorities of beneficiary populations in Ethiopia. Mebrahtu states, “Despite rhetorical evidence to the contrary, respondents readily acknowledged that the widespread use of qualitative and/or grassroots indicators is a long way from being realized.”16 In Mebrahtu’s case study of INGOs in
Ethiopia, she found that monitoring and evaluation reporting “can sometimes involve staff
‘framing a story’ that adheres more closely to donor guidelines than to reality.”17
The trend of prioritizing donors’ goals over the goals of beneficiary populations emerges as a theme in a literature review of academic engagements with NGOs. Schuller, Vannier, and
Mebrahtu give credence to this argument. Alexander Cooley and James Ron suggest that NGOs
14 Ibid. 15 Esther Mebrahtu, “Perceptions and Practices of Monitoring and Evaluation: International NGO Experiences in Ethiopia,” Development in Practice 12 (2002): 501-517. 16 Mebratu, “Perceptions and Practices of Monitoring and Evaluation,” 515. 17 Ibid.
122 are engaged in a sort of “scramble” to beat one another out for external funding.18 One of the consequences of this phenomenon is that NGOs are at the mercy of their donors’ wills. Similarly, the writers of Sangtin, a group of Indian village women employed by an INGO, came together to publish the text Playing with Fire, which outlines their experiences working for a large NGO and their successes and frustrations within this context. In this text, they report that, among other findings, appeasing donors takes priority over helping the beneficiaries of the NGO.19 James
Petras similarly argues that NGOs in Latin American refuse to critique their donors, thereby revealing that the NGOs’ priorities do not align with those of the beneficiary population.20 In a more general review of INGOs, Niaz Murtaza puts it succinctly when he states that, “despite rhetoric to the contrary, NGO accountability is weakest to the communities and strongest to the board and donors.”21
This discussion speaks to the hypothesis, presented in the previous chapter, that the primary priority of NGOs is not actually to provide the most needed aid in the most effective manner. There are a number of proposed alternate priorities that NGOs may possess. For example, NGOs may “infantilize” their beneficiary populations as a means of fostering a neoliberal economic system and perpetuating grand-scale systems of power.22 At the same time, as this literature review suggests, perhaps the primary objective of any given NGO is always
18 Alexander Cooley and James Ron, “The NGO Scramble: Organizational Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action,” International Security 27 (2002): 5-39. 19 Richa Nagar and Sangtin Writers, Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism Through Seven Lives in India (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). 20 Petras, “Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America.” 21 Niaz Murtaza, “Putting the Lasts First: The Case for Community-Focused and Peer-Managed NGO Accountability Mechanisms,” Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 23 (2012): 123. 22 Ilionor Louis, “Enfantilizasyon moun ki benefisye èd ONG te pote apre tranbleman de tè 12 janvye 2010 la,” paper presented at the International NGO Training, DeKalb, Illinois, May 2016.
123 self-preservation (although this priority does not necessarily preclude the possibility of other, alternate priorities; they may coexist). Moreover, if NGOs are viewed as prioritizing the satisfaction of their donors, whose funds keep the groups in business, over the satisfaction of their beneficiaries, it may be argued that NGOs ultimately benefit from providing less than effective aid. Perhaps if NGOs were to do their jobs too well, they would put themselves out of business.
Speaking about international interventions in Haiti, Beverly Bell writes that poverty may be understood as an “underlying grid” to macroeconomic policy structures that at once prioritize
“profits for the wealthy” and satisfy the “conditions” of international donors.23 Ignoring the underlying grid of poverty leads to the oversimplification of complex, multidimensional problems, such as hunger. As this thesis has demonstrated, a simplified, neo-Malthusian model of hunger contrasts with local understandings of hunger in Beaux Arbres. Based on the case study of Feeding the World’s Poor and other ethnographic findings from the two research studies, I believe it is essential to adopt and maintain a critical and analytic approach to understanding INGO interventions.
As a direct result of Hurricane Matthew, the food system is compromised in Beaux
Arbres today. Crops have been wiped out, and all reports indicate that people are experiencing high levels of food insecurity (if not hunger and malnutrition). Faced with a weakened system, I contend that NGOs have the potential to either work to rebuild the local, unusually self-reliant food system or to undermine this system. If Beaux Arbres is flooded with foreign imports and efforts are not made to rebuild the farms, I fear that the community may lose the deep, rich
23 Bell, Walking on Fire, 100-101.
124 connection with food that we witnessed during our summer research. Disaster specialist Michael
Eric Dyson reminds us that there is a difference between charity and justice:
…charity is episodic and often driven by disaster. What is needed are structures of justice that perpetuate the goodwill intended in charity. Justice allows charity to live beyond crisis. Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.24
Will the NGOs providing disaster relief in post-Matthew Haiti follow a model of charity or a model of justice? Continued research in Beaux Arbres is critical to promoting justice over charity.
24 Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2005): 205.
125
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APPENDIX A
SURVEY FOR COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT
133 Kreyòl English A. Prezantasyon moun kap viv nan zòn nan ak relasyon ki genyen antre yo. 1. Depi kilè w rete bò isit? How long have you lived here? 2. Kijan w wè evolisyon zòn nan? How do you see the area evolving? 3. Èske moun nan zòn sa konn fè tèt ansanm? Do people in this area get together/ unite? 4. Èske nan zòn bò isit moun byen youn ak lòt? Are people in this area on good terms with one another? 5. Èske ou gen konfyans nan vwazen / vwazin w? Do you trust your neighbors?
B. Rezo sosyal moun nan 6. Tanpri ban mwen non 3 moun ki pi pwòch w Please name three nan zòn nan? people you feel closest to. 7. Pou premye moun nan, Se kijan w rankontre For the first avèk li premye fwa? person, how did you meet this person? 8. Chak kilè nou kwaze? How often do you meet? 9. Èske ou konn pataje avèk li? Do you share with him/her? 10. Kisa ou konn pataje? What do you share? 11. Chak kilè? How often? 12. Èske li konn pataje avèk ou? Does he/she share with you? 13. Kisa ou konn pataje? What do you share? 14. Chak kilè? How often? 15. Si w gen pwoblèm, èske w ka konte sou li? If you have a problem, can you count on him/her? 16. Pou dezyèm moun nan, se kijan w rankontre For the second avèk li premye fwa? person, how did you meet this person? 134 17. Chak kilè nou kwaze? How often do you meet? 18. Èske ou konn pataje avèk li? Do you share with him/her? 19. Kisa ou konn pataje? What do you share? 20. Chak kilè? How often? 21. Èske li konn pataje manje avèk ou? Does he/she share with you? 22. Kisa ou konn pataje? What do you share? 23. Chak kilè? How often? 24. Si w gen pwoblèm, èske w ka konte sou li? If you have a problem, can you count on him/her? 25. Pou twazyèm moun nan, se kijan w rankontre How did you meet avèk li premye fwa? this person? 26. Chak kilè nou kwaze? How often do you meet? 27. Èske ou konn pataje manje avèk li? Do you share with him/her? 28. Kisa ou konn pataje? What do you share? 29. Chak kilè? How often? 30. Èske li konn pataje manje avèk ou? Does he/she share with you? 1. Kisa ou konn pataje? What do you share? 2. Chak kilè? How often? 3. Si w gen pwoblèm, èske w ka konte sou li? If you have a problem, can you count on him/her?
CH. Lidè zòn nan 4. Se kijan ou fin konnen nouvèl? How do you get news? 5. Se kiyès wap tyeke pou konnen sak pase nan Who do you seek zòn nan? out to find out what’s happening in the area? 135
6. Depi gen yon pwoblèm nan zòn nan, se kiyès ki When there’s a kapab rezoud li? problem in the area, who can resolve it? 7. Dapre ou menm, ki pi gwo bezwen nou nan zòn What do you think nan? the three most pressing needs in the area? 8. Èske pwoblèm sa yo kapab rezoud? Can these problems be resolved? 9. Kijan? How? 10. Èske otorite lokal yo kapab rezoud pwoblèm sa Can the local yo? authorities resolve these problems? 11. Èske leta kapab rezoud pwoblèm sa yo? Can the state resolve these problems? 12. Èske ONG kapab rezoud pwoblèm sa yo? Can NGOs resolve these problems?
D. Relasyon moun nan avèk ONG 13. Èske w wè ONG kap travay nan zòn sa yo? Do you see NGOs working in the area? 14. (si wi) Ki ONG? (if yes) Which NGOs? 15. Èske w te gen chans rankontre yo? Did you have the opportunity to meet with them? 16. (si wi) Kilè w te kwaze avèk yo pou premye (if yes) When was fwa? the first time you met with them? 17. Se kilès ki mennen w nan ONG sa a? Who put you in contact with this NGO? 18. Se kilès ki w te konn wè anndan ONG sa a? Who did you meet with in this NGO? 19. Èske w te resevwa yon sipò nan men ONG sa Did you receive a? support from this NGO? 136 20. Èske tout moun nan zòn nan jwenn? Did everyone in the area get support? 21. Sak esplike sa a? What explains this? 22. Ki denye fwa ou te wè yon aksyon kolektif nan What was the last zòn nan? time you saw a collective action in the area? 23. Dapre ou menm, èske aksyon sa yo efikas? Do you think these actions are effective?
E. Enplikasyon moun nan aksyon sivik 24. Èske w fè pati yon asosyasyon oubyen yon Are you a member òganizasyon? of an association or organization? 25. (si wi) Ki asosyasyon? (if yes) What association? 26. Chak kilè asosyasyon an reyini? How often does the association meet? 27. Ki aksyon asosyasyon nan poze? What actions does this association take? 28. Èske asosyasyon an konn fè rasanbleman? Does this association have general meetings? 1. Èske asosyasyon an konn fè manifestasyon? Does this association organize demonstrations? 2. Ou menm, èske w patisipe nan yon Have you manifestasyon? participated in a demonstration? 3. Poukisa (poukisa pa)? Why (why not)?
F. Pèsepsyon moun nan sou ONG ak lòt aktè 4. Kijan ou wè ONG yo? What do you think about NGOs? 5. Ban mwen twa mo ki nan tèt ou lè ou panse sou Name three words ONG. you associate with NGOs. 137 6. Dapre ou menm, ki wòl ONG yo dwe jwe? What do you think NGOs’ roles should be? 7. Èske se sa yo fè? Is this what they do? 8. Èske ONG yo pote solisyon pou zòn nan? Do NGOs bring about solutions for this area? 9. Èske ONG yo dwe rete nan zòn nan? Should NGOs stay in the area? 10. Epi pou otorite lokal yo, kijan ou we yo? What do you think about the local authorities? 11. Ban mwen twa mo ki nan tèt ou lè ou panse sou Name three words otorite lokal yo? you associate with the local authorities. 12. Dapre ou menm, ki wòl otorite lokal yo dwe What do you think jwe? the local authorities’ roles should be? 13. Èske se sa yo fè? Is this what they do? 14. Epi pou leta, kijan ou we leta? What do you think about the state? 15. Ban mwen twa mo ki nan tèt ou lè ou panse sou Name three words leta? you associate with the state. 16. Dapre ou menm, ki wòl leta dwe jwe? What do you think the state’s roles should be? 17. Èske se sa li fè? Is this what it does? 18. Èske ayisyen konn fè tèt ansanm? Do Haitians get together / unite? 19. Èske w gen lespwa sou lavni a? Do you have hope for the future?
(Written by Mark Schuller) APPENDIX B
OPEN-ENDED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT 139
Kesyon ouvè (Open-ended interview questions)
OUVÈTI Mwen salye ou, e deja mwen ap di w mèsi paske ou aksepte pale avèk nou. Kòm ou te konnen nou nan komin nan kad yon rechèch nou te gen pou n ranpli kèk kesyone e fè kèk entèvyou se pou rezon sa a ki fè nou rankontre anko pou nou fè ti pale. Ou konnen se pa tout bagay nap kapte ou byen gentan ekri pandan wap pale. Nan sans sa nou ta renmen anrejistre vwa ou pou n ka genyen enfòmasyon yo. Èske ou dakò pou m anrejistre vwa ou? Si mwen poze w yon kesyon ki pa kle pou ou, tanpri di mwen e mwen ka klarifye kesyon an. Epi, si w deside nan nenpòt le pou fini ak entèvyou a, pap gen pwoblèm. Patisipasyon w konplètman volonté. Èske w gen kesyon pou mwen avan nou kòmanse? (Good morning/ afternoon. Thank you again for agreeing to speak with us. We will ask you some interview questions and have a conversation about the area. Do you mind if we record the interview, so we don’t have to write while we are conducting the interview ? If we ask you a question that is unclear, please let us know and we will clarify the question. If you decide at any time that you are want to end the interview, that is no problem. Your participation is completely voluntary. Do you have any questions for us before we begin ?)
1. Pou n koumanse, èske w kapab pale nou de komin sa a? (To begin, can you tell us a bit about this area/ commune?) 2. Èske moun nan zòn nan konn gen tèt ansanm? (Do people in the area get together/ unite?) 3. Kèk moun pale sou konfli politik nan Beaux Arbres. Èske gen sa a tout bon? Si wi, depi kilè sa koumanse? Ki enpak konfli sa a genyen nan mitan popilasyon bò isit? (Some people have spoken about political conflict in the area. Is this your impression? If yes, when did the conflict begin? What impact has the conflict had on the local population?) 4. Lè nou poze kesyon sou “otorite lokal” yo, prèske tout moun site katèl ____. Ki evalyasyon w sou katèl sa a? (When we asked questions about the “local authorities,” many people spoke about a specific politician, ______. Can you speak more about this?) 5. Dapre ou menm, kisa “ONG” vle di? Ki definisyon ou gen sou ONG? (In your opinion, what does « NGO » mean ? How would you define “NGOs” ?) 6. Nan kesyone nou yo, nou wè anpil moun gen konfyans nan ONG menmsi yo pa vreman enfòme sou kisa ONG yo yè epi kisa yo fè. Sak esplike sa a? Kijan w wè sa a? Men nou wè depi moun pi byen enfòme, yo gen mwens konfyans ant ONG. Sak esplike sa a? (During the course of our surveys, we observed that many of the people who expressed confidence in NGOs were not well informed 140 7. / clear about what NGOs are or what they do. Can you help to explain this? How do you read this information? We also found that people who were well-informed about NGOs tended to have less confidence in them. Can you help to explain this?) 8. Nan kesyone nou pase yo, nou tande moun yo di ONG kapab pote yon amelyorasyon, men yo pa ka pote chanjman oswa rezoud pwoblèm. Kijan ou menm wè sa a? (During the course of the survey, we heard some people say that NGOs could ameliorate the situation in the area, but that they could not resolve problems. How do you understand this?) 9. Nou kapab wè yon gwo diferans nan repons fanm ak gason. Yon pil fanm di konsa yo pa konn anyen sou ONG. Yo pa wè yo ditou. Ou ka wè sa a? Sak esplike sa a? (We observed a difference in men’s and women’s responses to our survey questions. More women said that they did not know anything about NGOs, nor did they see them working in the area. Have you observed this? How would you explain it?) 10. Gen kèk moun ki di se popilasyon akèy la ki devye objektif ONG yo. Ki sa ou ka di nou sou kesyon sa a? (There are some people who say that the host/ beneficiary population has different objectives than NGOs. What do you think about this?) 11. Nou tande kèk moun di peyizan yo te konn mete men yo ansanm pou travay. Men akòz ONG toujou peye pou yo travay, sa lakòz travay kominote a paka mache. Sa w panse? Sak esplike sa a? (We have heard some people say that peasants get together to work collaboratively. However, because NGOs sometimes pay people for this type of work, people are less likely to come together to work on theur own. Have you observed this?) 12. Gen kèk moun ki pale nou sou jalouzi, lè tout moun pa jwenn èd ONG. Kijan w menm wè sa a? (There are some people who speak of jealousy because not everyone receives aid from NGOs. Have you witnessed this?) 13. Dapre kesyone – epi li evidan – pwoblèm wout sanble pi ijan, pi enpòtan pou popilasyon an. Kijan kesyon sa a kapab rezoud? Kijan w evalye sak pase aktyèlman la? Gen kèk moun ki di konsa, ONG pou kont li, otorite lokal pou kont li, leta pou kont li, pa ka rezoud pwoblèm sa a. Fòk yo fè yon sèl. Kisa ou panse de sa a? Èske sa posib? Kijan? (Through our questionnaire it became evident that the road is the most important issue for the population. How can the question of the road be resolved? How would you evaluate the situation? Who is responsible for building the road? Can the road be built? when?) 14. Nan kesyonè nou, apa wout, nou wè priyorite yo se dlo, kouran, sante, travay, ak lekòl, men entèvansyon ONG yo pa koresponn ak sa a. Dapre w menm, sak eksplike sa a? (Apart from the road, we saw th 141
15. at potable water, electricity, work, and school were top priorities within the community. However, NGO interventions do not seem to correspond to these priorities. What might explain this?) 16. Moun nan ___ ak nan ___di yo pa janm we prezans ONG nan zòn yo. Kisa w panse ki fe sa a? (People living outside of the town of Beaux Arbres said that they never saw NGOs in the area. What do you think about this?) 17. Èske gen òganizasyon lokal ki travay avèk ONG? Si w konnen ban nou non yo epi nan ki domen yo travay. (Are there local organizations that work with NGOs? If you know of some, would you please give us their names and tell us about the domains within which they work?) 18. Èske ou ka ban nou yon ti enfòmasyon sou program Feeding the World’s Hungry nan kesyon sa l fe nan komin nan? (Can you give us some information about the program Feeding the World’s Hungry, and tell us about what they do here?) 19. Èske tout moun ki rete nan Kay Feeding the World’s Hungry se Pechè? (Is everyone who lives in a Feeding the World’s Hungry house a fisher?) 20. De kisa moun Beaux Arbres viv? Gen kèk moun ki pale de 90% moun Beaux Arbres grangou. Kisa w ka di nou sa a? (How do people in Beaux Arbres live? There are some people here who say that 90% of the population here in Beaux Arbres is hungry. What can you tell us about that?) 21. Kisa pèch la reprezante pou nou nan Beaux Arbres? (What does fish represent for people in Beax Arbres?) 22. Kèk moun pale sou pwoblèm estokaj. Tout moun rekòlte menm lè ; se sak fè yo pa ka vann lam, pa egzanp. Anpil manje gate. Èske ta ka gen yon solisyon pou sa a? (Some people spoke about problems with storage and say that food goes to waste when there is a surplus. Do you think there could be a solution to this problem?) 23. Anpil moun pale de Fondasyon Paradi de Endyen kòm poto mitan komin Beaux Arbres. Kisa w ka di nou sou sa a? (Many people spoke of a local grassroots organization as being a pillar of the community in Beaux Arbres. What can you tell us about that?) 24. Malgre nou we gen anpil lekòk nan Beaux Arbres men anpil moun di lekòl se yon gwo problèm. Kisa ou ka di nou sou sa a? (Despite the fact that we see many schools in Beaux Arbres, many people spoke of education as a pressing need. What can you tell us about this?) 25. Gen kek moun- sitou fanm- ki pale sou AVEK oubyen PA kòm asosyasyon ki pèmèt yo fè aktivite. Ki kote PA soti? 142
26. (Some people, especially women, speak of AVEK and PA as being organizations that facilitate economic activity. Where did these groups come from?) 27. Anpil moun idantifye sante kòm pwoblèm men yo marye ak kesyon wout. Kisa ou ka di nou sou sa? (Many people identify health as a problem in the community, and they merge this with the issue of the road. What can you tell us about this?) 28. Nou remake genyen anpil lo chabon ak anpil planch nan Beaux Arbres. Kisa ou panse sou zafè sa a? Èske kantite lo chabon ap menm jan, ogmante, oubyen bese? Sa k eksplike sa a? (We have noticed that a lot of charcoal and wood for construction comes from Beaux Arbres. What do you think about this? Has the quantity of charcoal and wood coming from the region increased or decreased? What explains this?) 29. Kijan ou konprann kesyon koupe bwa pou fè chabon oubyen fè planch lan nan Beaux Arbres? (How do you understand the question of cutting trees to make charcoal or boards for construction here in Beaux Arbres?) 30. Kisa ki kòz moun yo ap koupe bwa yo konsa? (Why do people cut down trees here?)
FÈMEN Mèsi anpil pou tout repons ou yo. Èske w gen yon bagay ou ta renmen ajoute? Èske w gen kesyon pou nou? (Thank you for your responses. Do you have anything else you would like to add? Do you have questions for us?)
APPENDIX C
SURVEY FOR INDEPENDENT RESEARCH PROJECT
144
1) Have you heard of the organization “Food for the Poor”? Eske w te tande sou òginizasyon nan ki rele “Food for the Poor”? (if yes) (si “wi”) a. What do they do? (choose: housing, food, helping fishers, transportation, give money, give food, “other”) Se kisa “Food for the Poor” fè nan zòn nan? b. Are they still in Abriko? Èske “Food for the Poor” toujour la? c. Is Food for the Poor an NGO? Èske “Food for the Poor” se yon ONG?
2) Have you heard of the organization “APA”? (if yes) Eske w te tande sou òginizasyon nan ki rele “Asosyasyon Pechè Abriko,” oubyen “APA”? a. What do they do? (choose: housing, food, helping fishers, transportation, give money, give food, “other”) Se kisa “APA” fè nan zòn nan? b. Are they still in Abriko? Èske “APA” toujou la? c. Is the APA an NGO? Èske “APA” se yon ONG?
3) Hunger in Abriko Sije manje a nan Abriko a. Are there people who are hungry in Abriko? Gen moun ki grangou nan Abriko? b. In your opinion, does Abriko produce enough food for everyone who lives in the area? Dapre w menm, èske Abriko pwodui ase manje pou chak moun ki rete nan zòn nan? c. Can fish satisfy Abriko’s food requirements? Èske pwason yo ka satisfè bezwen manje nan Abriko?
APPENDIX D
OPEN-ENDED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR INDEPENDENT RESEARCH PROJECT 146
A. Lavi Pechè (Fishing Life) 1. Depi konbyen lane ou fè pèch? (how long have you fished ?) 2. Kombyen souvan eske ou fè pèch? (how often do you fish ?) 3. Kimoun te monte ou kommen fè pèch? (who taught you to fish ?) 4. Eske w renmen fè pech ? Poukisa « wi » oubyen non? (do you like fishing ? why or why not ?) 5. Eske w fè lòt travay pou jwenn lajan? Kisa lòt travay sa a ye? (do you do other work to make money? What work ?)
B. Sije manje a ak pwason nan (Food and fish) 1. Chak kilè nou genyen “kenbe pwason” nan Abriko? (when are there “fish holdings” in Abriko?) 2. Eske kalite pwason chanje mwa pa mwa? (does the type of fish change month by month?) 3. Èske w konn jwenn menm kantite pwason jounen jodi a parapò ak sa ou konn jwenn oparavan ? (si gen chanjman) sak esplike sa a ? (do you catch the same amount of fish now as you did in the past ? If no, what exlains this ?) 4. Gen moun ki grangou nan Abriko? (are there people who are hungry in Abriko?) 5. Dapre w menm, èske Abriko pwodui ase manje pou chak moun ki rete nan zòn nan? (In your opinion, does Abriko produce enough food for everyone who lives in the area?) 6. Èske pwason yo ka satisfè bezwen manje nan Abriko? (Can fish satisfy hunger in Abriko?)
C. Sije APA (Asosyasyon Pechè Abriko) 1. Depi kilè APA travay nan Abriko? (how long has APA worked in Abriko?) 147 2. Eske w kapab pale sou kijan APA te mete sou pye : Kiyès ki te kreye APA? (Can you talk about how the APA was started ? who created the APA ?) 3. Poukisa yo kreye APA? (why was the APA created?) 4. Kisa APA ap fè nan Abriko? (what does the APA do in Abriko?) 5. Èske gen kèk pechè nan Abriko ki pa patisipe nan APA? (are there fishers in Abriko who do not participate in the APA?) 6. Sa eksplike sa a? (what explains this?) 7. Dapre ou menm, èske APA yon “ONG”? Poukisa wi oubyen non? (in your opinion, is the APA an NGO? Why or why not?)
D. Sije travay FFP (Food for the Poor) (FFP’s work in Abriko) 1. Depi kilè FFP travay nan Abriko? (how long has FFP worked in Abriko?) 2. Lè FFP te koumanse travay nan Abriko, kisa yo te fè? (when FFP started working in Abriko, what did they do?) 3. Lè FFP te fenk rive an Abriko, ki moun yo te patisipe nan pwojè yo, fòmasyon yo…? (When FFP came to Abriko, who participated in their projects, their trainings etc.?) 4. Kounye a, kisa FFP fè an Abriko? (Today, what does FFP do in Abriko?) 5. Kijan moun yo sèvi ak kay FFP yo? Ki moun yo rete nan kay yo kounye a? (which people are served by the FFP houses? Who lives in the houses now?) 6. Kijan moun yo sèvi ak bato FFP? Ki moun yo itilize bato sa yo? (which peope are served by the FFP boats? Who uses these boats?) 7. Dapre ou menm, èske FFP yon “ONG”? Poukisa wi oubyen non? (In your opinion, is FFP and NGO ? Why or why not ?)
E. Relasyon ant FFP & APA (Relationship between FFP and APA) 1. Dapre ou menm, èske prezans FFP a te chanje APA a? (In your opinion, has the presence of FFP changed the APA ? 148 2. Poukisa “wi” oubyen “non”? (why yes or no?)
F. Kesyon sou evalyasyon (mezi) nan FFP (Questions about evaluations and FFP) 1. Èske w te wè FFP te fè yon evalyasyon fòmèl sou pwojè yo an Abriko? (have you seen FFP do a formal evaluation on their projects in Abriko?) a. Si wi, ki moun te patisipe nan evalyasyon sa a ? (if yes, which people participated in this evaluation ?) b. Si non, èske w panse pechè nan Abriko yo ta renmen patisipe nan yon evalyasyon konsa? (if no, do you think fishers in Abriko would have liked to participate in an evaluation like this ?) 2. Èske w sipòte [gen respè pou.] FFP? Poukisa “wi” oubyen “non”? (do you support/ have respect for FFP ? Why yes or no ?) 3. Èske w panse tout moun nan Abriko sipòte FFP? Poukisa “wi” oubyen “non”? (do you think that everyone in Abriko supports FFP ? Why or why not ?)
G. Kesyon demografik yo (Demographic questions) 1. Seks? (sex?) 2. Pechè? (fisher?) 3. Manm APA? (member of APA?) a. (Si “wi”) Depi kilè? (if yes, since when?)