Tectonic Shifts: Haiti Since the Earthquake
"A new book, Tectonic Shifts: Haiti Since the Earthquake sets the record straight. To tell the story of the temblor that killed more than 300,000 and displaced 1.5 million, Schuller and Morales include information on the history that has left the island-nation particularly vulnerable.""Part of the challenge for future authors writing on Haiti will be to balance the country’s singularity with its place in broader stories about inequality, domination and struggle. This volume creates an innovative model for how Haitian and foreign voices can work together to meet this challenge.""The Tectonic Shifts in the book’s title are explicitly about political earthquakes in addition to geological ones, primarily because no geological movement can be divorced from political movements where nature’s extremes meet society’s vulnerability. As a contribution to island studies and disaster research, Schuller and Morales have assembled a powerful collection of voices seeking powerful action to do better for their country sharing an island. We need more such in-depth, broad-based research and analysis to truly understand how to deal with disasters afflicting island communities.""One of the things that makeTectonic Shiftsindispensable reading is its commitment to correcting this imbalance..But where else would we read anything like the statement from a May 2011 forum on the housing crisis? More than 40 Haitian grassroots organizations and NGOs and at least 35 committees from the displaced persons’ camps signed on to the forum’s final resolution.""Tectonic Shifts offers no Pollyannaish prescriptions for Haiti. A Hard struggle lies ahead if the country is to find a path of renewal and human development. But hope springs from its pages and from mounting evidence of renewal. Grassroots social and political moveements are growing and their voices are rising...More tectonic shifts are on the agenda in Haiti, this time in the social and political realm. They are too powerful to resist. Their path is sketched out in this important book.""This collection of twelve essays on conditions in Haiti since the devastating earthquake of 2010, explores issues relating to international aid, reconstruction, and the political aftereffects of the disaster. The papers are divided into sections covering geopolitical structures, living conditions, and political restructuring, and individual articles discuss topics such as humanitarianism and intervention in Haiti, disaster capitalism, camps and displacement, sexual violence in NGO camps, civil rights and public health, and just reconstruction and political corruption. Contributors include journalists, NGO professionals, health experts, and academics working in Haiti. Kumarian Press is an imprint of Stylus Publishing."“Tectonic Shiftsoffers insight into nagging questions of why Haiti appears to be persistently stuck in a quagmire of dysfunction and why recovery is so unbearably slow. Not all is hopeless. Essays on Haitians pro-active during the aftermath and empowering grassroots works are also covered."“InTectonic Shifts, Mark Schuller and Pablo Morales along with 46 other authors—more than half, Haitian voices who typically are not included in such volumes— present a case for radical rethinking of natural and human disasters and for reconstruction in relationship to history, power and democracy. This exceptional book explores the horrors of Haitian realities before and after the quake, sheds light on the newest occupation, culture of imperialism, and persistent legacies of exclusion. It bravely exposes the NGOs’ continuation of colonial discourse and refusal to engage with Haitian government and local efforts; demonstrates how colonial and neo-colonial projects and other predatory forms of capitalism have shaped definitions of Haiti; and shows how women’s subjugation, worker exploitation, poverty and resistance remain global struggles.“Tectonic Shiftsis a powerful collection of testimony, analysis, and reporting from those most affected by Haiti's earthquake and the journalists, activists and academics who were there to witness the realities on the ground. In stark contrast to the mainstream media’s characterizations of Haitians and the humanitarian aid complex that has dominated the discourse on Haiti since the quake, this book gives voice to critical perspectives that go deeper than the surface; it offers truth in the place of over-simplified and often racist depictions of Haiti. It is my hope that students, professors, reporters and those who would be in solidarity in Haiti will find in this book a definitive overview of the situation in Haiti today.”“Tectonic Shiftsis the most complete structural survey of the rubble of Haiti's socio-economic, political landscape since that 9/11 of humanitarian disasters, the earthquake of January 12, 2010. Eighty of the best-placed individual and institutional sources demonstrate in a single volume how and why in Haiti more than anywhere else on earth no natural disaster is anything of the sort, why 01/12 changed everything yet nothing in Haiti, why the “international community” and its occupying forces, military, economic and humanitarian must loosen their stranglehold.Tectonic Shiftsalso illustrates why and how the answers to Haiti's problems are the Haitian people whose commitment to constructing a new country, based on the inclusion of all, rather than reconstructing the previous model, based on the exclusion of most, shines throughout these pages like shafts of sunlight through the crevices of the pancaked buildings.”“Tectonic Shiftsis a must read for anyone who has ever heard the word 'Haiti' and would like to know more. Guiding us way beyond the usual narrative tropes and sound bites, thiskonbitof a book peels away at centuries’ worth of misinformation about this much maligned but magnificent country. A phenomenal contribution to Haitian history, politics, culture—and survival—both before and after the earthquake.”“Diverse and wide-ranging,Tectonic Shiftscomplicates a disaster that the international media simplified into just another Haitian tragedy. It is a timely and compelling reminder that the seismic shock of the earthquake demands a paradigm shift in our view of Haiti if we wish that the next two hundred years not be a continuation of the last two centuries.”“Reading about Haiti in the news, which focuses on the perspectives of political and economic elites, in Haiti and abroad, often leaves one baffled. Talking about Haiti with the majority of Haitians who are poor brings refreshing clarity, because they eloquently connect apparently unconnected developments into a single context of centuries of repression and courageous resistance to that repression.Tectonic Shiftsfaithfully conveys this perspective and its clarity, so if you cannot go to Haiti and speak Haitian, read it.”“The full impact of the January 12, 2010 earthquake on Haiti’s society is yet to be felt as the people continue to organize themselves to raise their country from its ashes. This book reminds us not only of Haiti’s potential, but the resiliency of its people to move forward in the midst of the worst disaster that could have fallen on them. The editors have done a great of job of bringing together national and international scholars to help us understand not only how Haiti was destroyed before the earthquake but also what can be done to rebuild it. This is a must read book for everyone who is trying to understand why a 7.0 earthquake on a Richter scale destroyed a whole nation while one that was stronger a few weeks after in Chile barely made a dent on the society.”