Haiti Rising Flames From Burning Ashes

Haiti, Rising Flames from Burning Ashes is a brutally honest and precise historical analysis of Haiti and a discussion of how the political system can be reformed to promote democracy, a vibrant economy, and cultural integration. In contrast to traditional theory, Haiti, Rising Flames from Burning Ashes explores the distribution of powers rather than the separation of powers as a solution to Haiti's political and cultural chaos.

In this path-breaking book, Jeb Sprague investigates the dangerous world of right-wing paramilitarism in Haiti and its role in undermining the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people. Sprague focuses on the period beginning in 1990 with the rise of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the right-wing movements that succeeded in driving him from power. Over the ensuing two decades, paramilitary violence was largely directed against the poor and supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas movement, taking the lives of thousands of Haitians. Sprague seeks to understand how this occurred, and traces connections between paramilitaries and their elite financial and political backers, in Haiti but also in the United States and the Dominican Republic. The product of years of original research, this book draws on over fifty interviews—some of which placed the author in severe danger—and more than 11,000 documents secured through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. It makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of Haiti today, and is a vivid reminder of how democratic struggles in poor countries are often met with extreme violence organized at the behest of capital.

A Brookings Institution Press and the National Academy of Public Administration publication Even after years of receiving considerable foreign aid, Haiti remains an impoverished, tremendously fragile state. Over a span of ten years, the United States spent over $4 billion in aid to Haiti, yet the average Haitian still has to survive on one dollar a day. Why has assistance been so ineffectual, and what can we learn from Haiti's plight about foreign aid in general? Haiti in the Balance tackles those questions by analyzing nearly twenty years of Haitian history, politics, and foreign relations. Terry Buss and his colleagues at the National Academy on Public Administration found a general failure to reinforce the capacity of institutions at all levels of Haitian government. Building up that system of institutions appears to be a necessary precursor to a nation using foreign aid in the most effective manner. Such an effort demands improved security, a more professional (and less corrupt) bureaucracy, and eventually decentralization and perhaps even some privatization. Different levels of government must be willing to learn how best to work with one another: according to Buss, "Haitian governments seemed consumed by politics, rather than good governance." People still matter, and so does administration. Until we learn that lesson, even the most generous foreign aid will not fulfill its intent.

Long before a devastating earthquake hit in January 2010, Haiti was one of the most impoverished and oppressed countries in the world. However, in the late 1980s a remarkable popular mobilization known as Lavalas ("the flood") sought to liberate the island from decades of US-backed dictatorial rule. Damming the Flood analyzes how and why the Lavalas governments led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were overthrown, in 1991 and again in 2004, by the enemies of democracy in Haiti and abroad. The elaborate campaign to suppress Lavalas was perhaps the most successful act of imperial sabotage since the end of the Cold War. It has left the people of Haiti at the mercy of some of the most rapacious political and economic forces on the planet. Updated with a substantial new afterword that addresses the international response to the earthquake, Damming the Flood is both an invaluable account of recent Haitian history and an illuminating analysis of twenty-first-century imperialism.

Thinking in Public provides a probing and provocative meditation on the intellectual life and legacy of Jacques Roumain. As a work of intellectual history, the book investigates the intersections of religious ideas, secular humanism, and development within the framework of Roumain's public intellectualism and cultural criticism embodied in his prolific writings. The book provides a reconceptualization of Roumain's intellectual itineraries against the backdrop of two public spheres: a national public sphere (Haiti) and a transnational public sphere (the global world). Second, it remaps and reframes Roumain's intellectual circuits and his critical engagements within a wide range of intellectual traditions, cultural and political movements, and philosophical and religious systems. Third, the book argues that Roumain's perspective on religion, social development, and his critiques of religion in general and of institutionalized Christianity in particular were substantially influenced by a Marxist philosophy of history and secular humanist approach to faith and human progress. Finally, the book advances the idea that Roumain's concept of development is linked to the theories of democratic socialism, relational anthropology, distributive justice, and communitarianism. Ultimately, this work demonstrates that Roumain believed that only through effective human solidarity and collaboration can serious social transformation and real human emancipation take place.

It would come as no surprise that many readers may be shocked and intrigued by the title of our book. Some (especially our medical colleagues) may wonder why it is even worthwhile to raise the issue of killing by doctors. Killing is clearly an- thetical to the Art and Science of Medicine, which is geared toward easing pain and suffering and to saving lives rather than smothering them. Doctors should be a source of comfort rather than a cause for alarm. Nevertheless, although they often don’t want to admit it, doctors are people too. Physicians have the same genetic library of both endearing qualities and character defects as the rest of us but their vocation places them in a position to intimately interject themselves into the lives of other people. In most cases, fortunately, the positive traits are dominant and doctors do more good than harm. While physicists and mathematicians paved the road to the stars and deciphered the mysteries of the atom, they simultaneously unleashed destructive powers that may one day bring about the annihilation of our planet. Concurrently, doctors and allied scientists have delved into the deep secrets of the body and mind, mastering the anatomy and physiology of the human body, even mapping the very molecules that make us who we are. But make no mistake, a person is not simply an elegant b- logical machine to be marveled at then dissected.

The twentieth century was one of the most violent in all of human history, with more than 100 million people killed in acts of war and persecution ranging from the Herero and Namaqua genocide in present-day Namibia during the early 1900s to the ongoing conflict in Darfur. This book explores the root causes of genocide, looking into the underlying psychology of violence and oppression. Genocide does not simply occur at the hands of tyrannical despots, but rather at the hands of ordinary citizens whose unresolved pain and oppression forces them to follow a leader whose demagogy best expresses their own long-developed prejudices and fears. The book explains how birth trauma, childhood trauma, and authoritarian education can be seen as the true causes of genocidal periods in recent history.

A broad examination of the rise of nationalism, populism, xenophobia, and racism throughout the world The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism provides expert insight into the complex, interconnected factors that are influencing patterns of human relations worldwide in a time of rising populist nationalism, intensified racial and religious tensions, and mounting hostilities towards immigrants and minorities. Analyzing the underlying forces which continue to drive global trends, this volume examines contemporary patterns based on the most recent evidence spanning five continents—offering a diversity of interpretations, models and perspectives that address the challenges facing the study of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. The Companion features original contributions by both established experts and emerging scholars that explore an expansive range of theoretical, historical, and empirical case studies. Organized into five sections, the text first discusses growing trends in the United States, the significance of populism in major societies around the globe, and how global changes are influencing regional variations in race, ethnicity, and nationalism. An investigation of global migration patterns is followed by examination of conflict and violence, from urban riots and boundary disputes to warfare and genocide. The final section focuses on the policy debates resulting from changing patterns and their impact on politics, the economy, and society. Timely and highly relevant, this book: Discusses contemporary issues such as the failure of school systems to provide equal opportunities to minorities, the evolution of the School-to-Prison pipeline, and the Black Lives Matter movement Explores shifts in American race relations, the influence of social media and the internet, and the links between increased globalization and contemporary forms of nationalism, racism, and populism Features essays on national and ethnic identity in China, Japan, and South Korea, India, Central Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe Analyzes policies regarding borders, immigration, refugees, and human rights in different countries and regions Offers perspectives on the radicalization of social movements, the creation of ethnic, linguistic and other boundaries between groups, and the models used to understand intractable conflicts in many global settings The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism is an indispensable resource for scholars, researchers, instructors, and students across the social sciences, including sociology, political science, global affairs, economics, comparative race and ethnic relations, international migration, social change, and sociological theory.