The Haitian Market System

There are two principal market channels in Haiti by which food reaches consumers: the informal internal rotating marketing system that evolved dealing principally in local produce, and the formal import economy that evolved in association with imported goods. These two principal market distribution channels supply a third channel, the increasingly important food preparation specialists. AnyoneRead More

Haiti Anthropology Brief: Cake of Vulnerability and Adaptation to Poverty

Here are a series of diagrams intended to make the prevailing rural Haitian household livelihood strategies easily understandable. The first diagram, above, is what we are calling, “The Cake of Vulnerability.” It is a model reminiscent of Marx’s Infrastructure, Structure and Super-structure description of modern human social organization. Here it is inspired by the moreRead More

A Model for Humanitarian Aid Beneficiary Targeting

Targeting strategies are as old as humanitarian aid, but the formal study of targeting is recent, arguably only beginning in the past decade. To date, much of what is written is unclear. This paper is intended to present a synthesized model of humanitarian aid targeting that will clarify the many ambiguities and differences inRead More

Problems with Household as a Unit of Analysis in Haiti

This post deals with defining the concept of a “household” and a member of a household in Haiti. But before launching into an exploration of the problems with the household as a unit of analysis, some readers may be more interested in other topics regarding household studies in Haiti and can refer to these posts:Read More

The Sexual Moral Economy in Rural Haiti

Rural Haitian women assiduously negotiate sexual acquiescence to men and they do so with the goal of material gain. Ira Lowenthal (1984: 22) first described this behavior in detail when he reported that women in his research community referred to their genitals as intere-m (my assets), lajan-m (my money), or manmanlajan-m (my capital), in additionRead More

Geographic Homogeneity of Poverty in Haiti

It is always very difficult to quantify malnutrition in Haiti. …the data available from actors appears to show that, strictly speaking, there are no pockets of malnutrition. ECHO 2011:24 Although humanitarian aid organizations working in Haiti almost universally target specific departments and communes based on CNSA vulnerability assessments (see CARE 2013a), a longitudinal lookRead More

Failure of the HDVI : Beneficiary Criteria, Indicators, and PMT (Proxy Means Test) in Haiti (Human Deprivation and Vulnerability Index)

To identify most vulnerable beneficiaries, humanitarian organizations in Haiti have often used criteria based on expectations from elsewhere in the world, criteria that are often not based on data, and that, more often than not, fail in Haiti. The best and most controversial flood of examples comes from the World Bank/WFP/USAID supported HDVI (Humanitarian DeprivationRead More

History of Beneficiary Selection and Targeting in Haiti

Here I review the history of humanitarian aid beneficiary targeting in Haiti. I begin in the 1950s and 1960s with the Community councils, move through the 1970s and 1980s looking at gwoupman and the liberation theology movement. Very importantly I show how the revolutionary Liberation Theology movement of the 1970s to 1990s that were intendedRead More

Adapting to Hunger in Haiti: Socialization for Scarcity

I have added this article specifically for the many aid workers who come to help in Haiti but are unaware of the highly patterned and logical strategies of survival that can be summarized under the rubric, “Socialization for Scarcity.” On the one hand, aid workers often mistakenly interpret rural Haitian individuals and households to beRead More

Ethnography of the Haitian Meal

This article explores and elaborates on the observation that under-nutrition and malnutrition in Haiti occur in the context of a sophisticated popular understanding of food nutrition and a high esteem for balanced meals.[i] Popular class Haitians appreciate and in fact deliberately formulate balanced meals. They also blend foods to make highly nutritious folk concoctions forRead More

Ethnography

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