Ce chapitre examine les compréhensions haïtiennes des crises, en particulier le séisme de 2010, en contraste avec les représentations médiatiques étrangères. L'auteur critique la tendance à présenter les catastrophes comme des événements isolés, alors que les Haïtiens les perçoivent comme des manifestations d'une crise structurelle enracinée dans l'histoire de l'esclavage et de l'intervention étrangère.

In this article, we contend that the “strong Black woman” archetype constricts expressions of Black womanhood and girlhood and thus limits individual and collective liberation. We maintain that strength need not preclude tenderness, highlighting two forms: wounded tenderness—a raw and aching feeling pointing to the vulnerability of human beings—and liberated tenderness, a practice of meeting woundedness with embodied awareness and gentleness.

Women's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become targets for increasing development funding in recent years, a bigger slice in a bigger overall pie. In addition to being a consequence of gradual shifts within development orthodoxy regarding gender, this targeting of women's NGOs results from two recent trends, gender "mainstreaming" and the scale-up of funding to combat HIV/AIDS.

From Tectonic Shifts : Haiti Since the Earthquake, edited by M. Schuller & P. Morales. Copyright © 2012 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Used with permission of the publisher.

Tous droits réservés. Republié avec l'autorisation du·de la détenteur·rice du droit d'auteur et de l'éditeur·rice, Rienner.

On January 12, 2010, an earthquake in Haiti sent shockwaves across the world, triggering an unprecedented international response. In the months that followed, international news, legal, development, human rights, and solidarity agencies highlighted the issue of gender-based violence, which has by all accounts increased since the earthquake. Despite activists' nuanced understanding and efforts, official responses have been inadequate while reproducing troubling, albeit familiar, discourses that tend to trigger either denial or demonization.

This chapter describes how humanitarian aid is gendered and how this in turn affects Haitian women designated as beneficiaries. It analyses the ways in which gender-based violence (GBV) was defined by international agencies to serve to legitimize foreign control while they render Haitian people intelligible within a foreign moral compass, categorizing beneficiaries who are subject to surveillance and discipline.

This chapter discusses the complex anthropology and history of Haiti and how its inter-connectedness to the rest of the world factors into its unique past and present. Inspired by and in dialogue with Benjamin and Marx, it questions and rethinks the categories of analysis that have defined much of anthropological and historical theory over the past two centuries. Dubois reflects on the problem of understanding Haiti through anthrohistory by returning to a series of early, and often overlooked, works on Haiti by the anthropologist Sidney Mintz.

Different frameworks for building capabilities result in different material outcomes for women in four Haitian community-based organizations: two mixed-gender versus two women’s organizations. This study shows that frameworks deployed by the women’s organizations pay attention to gendered strategic interests by enhancing capabilities and functionings that communities and individuals value. Their frameworks resembled Nussbaum’s (2011, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach.

After Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, over half of U.S. households donated to thousands of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in that country. Yet we continue to hear stories of misery from Haiti. Why have NGOs failed at their mission?

Told through compelling lives of five courageous Haitian women workers, Poto Mitan gives the global economy a human face. Each woman’s personal story explains neoliberal globalization, how it is gendered, and how it impacts Haiti: inhumane working/living conditions, violence, poverty, lack of education, and poor health care. While Poto Mitan offers in-depth understanding of Haiti, its focus on women’s subjugation, worker exploitation, poverty, and resistance demonstrates these are global struggles.