Follow the aid

Despite an abundance of aid materials and the good intentions of relief agencies, relief efforts in Thailand following the December 2004 earthquake/tsunami were afflicted by skewed distribution.

Jin Sato, associate professor in the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo, analyzes the factors that skewed relief good distribution in an article in Development in Practice. He discusses how the political and economic turmoil caused by relief efforts themselves constitute an additional risk for victims.

Sato also notes that while the social ramifications of relief efforts are substantial, yet they are often overlooked for three reasons:

most “disaster management” experts are engineers
social analysis requires time
relief organizations are poorly coordinated which prevents the generation of lessons for the future

His recommendations for more effective responses, based on lessons from the 2004-2005 tsunami relief efforts, are:

the selection of goods and distribution mechanisms are of paramount importance
aid efforts should not only supply goods but should focus on strengthening institutional resources that allow recipient communities to more effectively absorb the goods and distribute them fairly
relief agencies should co-ordinate with each other after the emergency stage to develop ways to reduce pre-existing inequalities or dominance

After reading his article, I decided to contact Professor Sato to learn more about him and his involvement in disaster response work. Here is my email interview with him:

Q: What is your background in terms of academic training?

A: My B.A. from the University of Tokyo was in anthropology, and I have a master’s degree in both international relations and public policy from the Kennedy School at Harvard University. My Ph.D. was in international studies (interdisciplinary) at the University of Tokyo, and my dissertation topic was on natural resource governance and politics in Thailand. I did a post-doc at the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University under Jim Scott in 1998-1999.

Since my student years, I have been interested in natural resource governance and foreign aid. The article is a spin off from my interest in the latter.

Q: When you worked as a policy advisor to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Thailand, what were your major responsibilities?

A: I was there to advise on the formulation (and prioritization) of the Environmental Policy 5-year plan, particularly about citizen participation and the role of international assistance (especially that of the Japanese government).

Q: Where were you when the tsunami hit, and what role if any did you play in responding to the tragedy?

A: As you might remember, the Tsunami hit on Dec. 25. I was taking a vacation in Samui Island in Thailand. Since my duty was to advise on environmental policy, I was not sure what to do, but I contacted the JICA office to offer assistance since I could speak the language. They put me on the first assistance survey team to develop livelihood assistance strategy from Japan. But Japanese assistance was too slow, and I don’t think we had any impact at all.

Q: Can you comment on the current situation in Haiti, in terms of how your findings about Thailand might relate to that context?

A: Since I have not been to the field, it is hard to comment. But judging from the news, there was more order and discipline in Thailand where people could wait in lines to receive aid goods. The tsunami hit only the coastal zone and other parts remain intact (unlike the earthquake). This is a huge difference in terms of the availability of assistance and speed of recovery. I suspect that there will be some structural concentration in either damage or assistance due to pre-existing resource inequity.

Image courtesy of Jin Sato.

Go with the flow

Guest post by Laura Wilson

By focusing attention on a single but critical resource, Jessica Barnes sheds light on the complexities of social, economic, and political change in rural Egypt. The resource is water.

Barnes is currently completing her doctorate in Columbia University’s new multidisciplinary Ph.D. program in Sustainable Development. She combines training and perspectives in cultural anthropology, geography, and environmental science to understand the multifaceted world of water in a context where rainfall is extremely scarce and farmers depend on the flow of one river and its tributaries. Her mantra is: follow the water.

In a presentation at the Elliott School of International Affairs on January 27, Barnes described the findings from her research in Egypt on land reclamation from the desert for farming (she focused on the areas around Fayoum). The Egyptian government promotes land reclamation in order to help the country achieve food self-sufficiency and to create agricultural jobs for college graduates who cannot be absorbed by the civil service.

Barnes finds that the new farmers are successful in the “greening” of desert land, and much desert land is now producing food. But such expansion of farming requires water. Reclamation projects are located further from the Nile and its tributaries than the plots of longstanding farmers. Gaining access to irrigation water is difficult, so many new farmers resort to illegal means to obtain water for their farms. Barnes showed a photograph of one farmer’s illegal pipeline.

Long-term farmers said that their lands are no longer productive because the water they normally depend on is being diverted to the reclamation areas. Barnes links this pattern to what David Harvey refers to as “accumulation by dispossession.” The new farmers reclaim land from the desert and earn profits, but they simultaneously deprive long-term farmers of their livelihood. The long-term farmers are forced to abandon their nonproductive land.

Barnes’ ethnographic focus on water, augmented by her use of GIS mapping and long-term multi-level fieldwork, is an excellent example of how a resource-centered approach can yield rich insights of value to international development and environmental policy and programs.

Laura Wilson is a candidate for an M.A. degree in International Development Studies at George Washington University with a focus on gender, human rights, and development. She received a B.S. degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 2007. She is currently the program assistant for the International Development Studies program.

Image: “Egyptian stuff BW” from flickr user Richard Messenger, licensed with Creative Commons.

Recent sources on Haitian culture and social change

This list is intended to provide a guide to recent resources on culture and society in Haiti for people who wish to be better informed about the context in which the recent earthquake and its devastation are occurring. With apologies, most of the journal articles are not public access.

Furthermore, we really encourage everyone to visit InterAction’s Haiti response page, which includes a variety of ways to help out.

Benoît, C. 2007. “The politics of vodou: AIDS, access to health care and the use of culture in Haiti”. Anthropology in Action 143, 59-68.

Coreil, J. & Mayard, G. 2006. “Indigenization of illness support groups in Haiti”. Human Organization 652, 128-139.

Curci, S. 2008. “Mapping Haitian history: a photo essay”. Journal of Haitian Studies 142, 120-30.

Farmer, P. 2004. “An anthropology of structural violence.” Current Anthropology 453, 305-325.

Farmer, P. E. 2001. “The consumption of the poor: tuberculosis in the 21st century.” Ethnography 12, 183-216.

Farmer, Paul. 1992. AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Farmer, P. E. 2008. “Mother courage and the future of war.” Social Analysis 522, 165-184.

Giafferi, N. 2004. The violence of relations in fieldwork: the Haitian example. Terrain 43, 123-40, 159.

Guilbaud, P., & Preston, M. 2006. “Healthcare assessment study in Les Cayes, Haiti: towards a framework for rural capacity development and analysis”. Journal of Haitian Studies 122, 48-69.

Hastings, A. 2007. “Eradicating global poverty: is it really achievable?” Journal of Haitian Studies 132, 120-134.

James, E. C. 2004. “The political economy of “trauma” in Haiti in the democratic era of insecurity”. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 282, 127-149.

Continue reading “Recent sources on Haitian culture and social change” →

Why is Haiti so poor?

UPDATE 1/14: This post was linked in a story by Discovery News’ James Williams.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola. Following the island’s discovery by Columbus in 1492, Spanish colonialists exterminated the island’s indigenous Arawak Indians. In 1697, the French took control of what is now Haiti and instituted an exceptionally cruel system of African plantation slavery. In the late 1700s, the half million slaves revolted. In what is the only successful slave revolution in history, they ousted the French and established the first Black republic in the Western Hemisphere.

Haiti’s population of over eight million people occupies a territory somewhat smaller than the state of Maryland in the United States. The land is rugged, hilly or mountainous. More than 90 percent of the forests have been cleared. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Extreme inequality exists between the urban elite, who live in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, and everyone else.

The people in the countryside are referred to as peyizan yo (the plural form of peyizan), a Creole term for small farmers who produce for their own use and for the market (Smith 2001). Many also participate in small-scale marketing. Most peyizan yo in Haiti own their land. They grow vegetables, fruits (especially mangoes), sugarcane, rice and corn.

Accurate health statistics are not available, but even rough estimates show that Haiti has the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS of any country in the region. Medical anthropologist Paul Farmer emphasizes the role of colonialism in the past and global structural inequalities now in causing these high rates (1992).

Colonial plantation owners grew fabulously rich from this island. It produced more wealth for France than all of France’s other colonies combined and more than the 13 colonies in North America produced for Britain. Why is Haiti so poor now?

Colonialism launched environmental degradation by clearing forests. After the revolution, the new citizens carried with them the traumatic history of slavery. Now, neocolonialism and globalization are leaving new scars. For decades, the United States has played, and still plays, a powerful role in supporting conservative political regimes.

In contrast to these structural explanations, some people point to problems with the Haitian people: They cannot work together, and they lack a vision of the future.

Opposed to these views are the findings of Jennie Smith’s ethnographic research in southwestern Haiti, which shed light on the life of peyizan yo and offer perspectives on their development (2001). She found many active social organizations with functions such as labor sharing, to help each member get his or her field planted on time, and cost sharing, to help pay for health care or funerals. Also, peyizan yo have clear opinions about their vision for the future, including hopes for relative economic equality, political leaders with a sense of social service, respe (respect), and access of citizens to basic social services.

The early colonizers did not decide to occupy Haiti because it was poor. It was colonialism and its extractive ways that have made Haiti poor today.

Sources:

“Culturama: The Peyizan Yo of Haiti,” in Barbara D Miller, Cultural Anthropology, 5th edition, Pearson. 2009, p. 404.

Smith, Jennie M. 2001. When the Hands Are Many: Community Organization and Change in Rural Haiti. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Farmer, Paul, 1992. AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame.

Image: “Haitian Girl” by Flickr user Billtacular, licensed by creative commons.

Thanks to Samuel Martínez of the University of Connecticut for pointing out that the Haitian Creole plural “yo” means that one should not include an article in front of the noun.

Anthropologyworks 10 best of 2009

The following list was determined by a panel of one, though, as you can see, many of the choices are externally validated. Congratulations to one and all!

Best Student Essays in Public Anthropology: The public anthropology award winners of 2009 are 19 students in Diana French’s Anthropology 100 class, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan.
Best Anthropology Song … or was it the only one? Certainly the only one performed at the AAA meetings.
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8035515&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
Best Long-term Field Research: Olga Linares, of the Smithsonian’s Tropical Research Institute in Panama, has been doing fieldwork in three regions of Senegal for 40 years. She has witnessed many changes including a doubling of the number of poor people, declining rainfall, abandonment of rice fields and effects of the drop in currency value. She describes how Senegalese women farmers creatively cope with these changes.
Best Contribution to Anthropological Ethics: the AAA-commissioned report (PDF) on the Human Terrain System was submitted in November; the product of many months of work by several contributors, it condemns the role of anthropologists in U.S. military operations.

Best Special Issue of a Journal: Social Science and Medicine, Volume 70, issue 1 (requires login), edited by Catherine Panter-Brick of Durham University, contains 20 articles on conflict, violence and health. I will be assigning several of them in my spring medical anthropology seminar.
Best News About One of My GW Colleagues: Patty Kelly, research professor of anthropology, is co-winner of the Sharon Stephens Prize and runner-up for the Victor Turner Prize for her book, Lydia’s Open Door: Inside Mexico’s Most Modern Brothel.
Best New Journal: Collaborative Anthropologies, edited by Luke Eric Lassiter.
Best Anthropology Conference: The September meeting of the Society for Medical Anthropology at Yale University. Although I wasn’t able to attend, my colleagues who did have praised the plenary speakers, rich array of papers, impressive attendance and organization, including meals for the attendees.
Best Kinship Story: The President of the United States’ mother was a cultural anthropologist, and Duke University Press published a revised version of her dissertation, Surviving against Odds.
Best Public Impact: A shared shout-out to Antonio N. Zavaleta, professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, who received the Premio Otli Award from the Mexican government for his work improving the quality of life for Mexican citizens living abroad, and to Patricia Easteal, associate professor in the University of Canberra’s faculty of law, who won the Australian of the Year Award for her efforts in advancing human rights and justice in Australia. More info here.

Loser op-ed of 2009: Jared Diamond

UPDATE: The following essay has been slightly revised to take into account a reader’s correction.

Should we be on tip-toes waiting for big business to save the earth? How long can we hold that pose? My feet hurt already.

Jared Diamond (Wiki, UCLA bio 1, UCLA bio 2), often mistaken by the media as an anthropologist, published the op-ed “Will Big Business Save the Earth” in The New York Times on December 5.

He makes a pitch that big business will save the earth. Stating that his current feelings are “nuanced,” he notes the acceleration in the “embrace” of “environmental concerns” by “chief executives” and offers evidence for this in Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola and Chevron.

He provides three paragraphs extolling the virtues of Wal-Mart and one describing the problems Coca-Cola faces in securing a local supply of clean water. Nothing at all about Chevron. This is bad, I think. I can count to three: What’s going on?

Okay, so he can’t count, and he lost track of his third example. Never mind that his first two examples are not convincing.

In the case of Chevron, he describes one oil field project in Papua New Guinea on which Chevron lavished huge expenditures as a showcase of its moral high ground. It can never be replicated in every situation due to the impossibly high costs involved. It is a practice dubbed by enviro critics as “greenwashing.”

How about timing? Does he not pay attention to major events in the world related to large corporations and what havoc they have wreaked? Like, Bhopal?

The New York Times published Diamond’s op-ed almost exactly 25 years after the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India: December 3, 1984.

Union Carbide has still not done the right thing by the people of Bhopal in all these 25 years. And it’s difficult to imagine what the “right thing” is considering the devastation at the time and the fallout, in all respects — human, environmental — that continues to the present.

Has Jared Diamond heard of Bhopal? Or has he been bought? If so, that’s not nuanced.

For more information, see this special issue on Bhopal from Global Social Policy. Image: “Clean up Bhopal Now” by Flickr user Joe Athialy, Creative Commons licensed.

Accountability lost

by Barbara Miller

A category of local conflict in Peru is called conflictos mineros, mining conflicts. The existence of this specific term reflects the frequency of such conflicts in Peru following neoliberal economic reforms in the early 1990s. Fabiana Li, now a Newton International Fellow based at the University of Manchester, conducted research for her doctoral dissertation in anthropology at the University of California at Davis on mining accountability and conflicts in Cajamarca, Peru. In an article in PoLAR, she shows how the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) documents and its approval process skew the outcome in favor of the mining companies.

Public mechanisms of evaluation and record-keeping are supposed to hold corporations accountable to local people. Li describes and analyzes the proceedings of a public workshop and a public hearing about the expansion of the country’s largest gold mine. The EIA is intended to serve as an instrument through which risks are made visible to the public. The risks that are shared with the public, however, are those that engineers can manage with mitigation plans. Furthermore, the EIA entrusts companies to carry out background studies on the landscape and the “social component,” to establish the “baseline” characteristics of the site, and to conduct monitoring as the project progresses.

Such company-sponsored studies, not surprisingly, provide a carefully constructed partial picture, erasing or framing out problematic issues. In spite of its claims to public accountability and transparency, the EIA works in non-transparent ways to serve the interests of the mining companies and the neo-liberal state.

Popular participation is emphasized as part of the process. Company representatives listen to the people who appear at the meetings. They take notes for hours on end. A critique of such participation is that it is in fact disempowering because it provides the appearance of public approval. As Li notes, contesting the approval of an EIA is difficult, and only one mining project has ever been halted at the EIA stage.

Nonetheless, many people in Cajamarca and elsewhere in Peru are pursuing creative forms of activism including seeking other scientific opinions to produce “counter-information.” The playing field in terms of scientific expertise, however, is extremely uneven. EIAs, including baseline studies and environmental monitoring, “increasingly rely on the language and tools of large-scale, capital-intensive science.” The need for scientific counter-arguments places a heavy financial burden on NGOs and campesino groups.

The EIA documents and so-called “popular participation” transform “participants” into unwitting or unwilling collaborators who had their chance to speak up during the EIA process. The companies are protecting their interests, using legalized, scientific, and performative means. But even such encircling power doesn’t mean there will never be another Bougainville.

Photo, “Yanacocha Gold Mine”, from Flickr, Creative Commons.