We are proud to announce that Who Owns Haiti? People, Power, and Sovereignty, edited by Robert Maguire and Scott Freeman, has been published by the University Press of Florida.
The edited volume builds off of the Focus On Haiti Initiative’s 2014 conference, Who ‘Owns’ Haiti? Sovereignty in a Fragile State, including chapters by speakers at the event and from across disciplines.
The book is now for sale by the University Press of Florida. An excerpt and the table of contents are also available to view online.
Who Owns Haiti? explores the role of international actors in the country’s sovereign affairs while highlighting the ways in which Haitians continually enact their own independence on economic, political, and cultural levels. The contributing authors contemplate Haiti’s sovereign roots from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including political science, anthropology, history, economics, and development studies. They also consider the assertions of sovereignty from historically marginalized urban and rural populations. This volume addresses how Haitian institutions, grassroots organizations, and individuals respond to and resist external influence. Examining how foreign actors encroach on Haitian autonomy and shape–or fail to shape–Haiti’s fortunes, it argues that varying discussions of ownership are central to Haiti’s future as a sovereign state.
“A timely collection of articles by some of the leading and emerging scholars and specialists on Haiti, offering a wide range of critical perspectives on the question and meaning of sovereignty in Haiti.”–Alex Dupuy, coauthor of The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community, and Haiti
“Directly asks the provocative question of ownership and Haitian sovereignty within the post-earthquake moment–an unstable period in which ideas on (re)development, humanitarianism, globalization, militarism, self-determination, and security converge.”–Millery Polyné, author of From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964
“Powerful essays by experts in their fields addressing what matters most to smaller nations–the meaning of sovereignty, and the horrid trajectory from colonialism, to neocolonialism into neoliberalism.”–Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, author of Haiti: The Breached Citadel
Focus On Haiti Initiative 