Haiti's Post‐Earthquake Transformation: What of Agriculture and Rural Development?

This article examines post‐earthquake aid to agriculture and food security in Haiti. It argues that the much‐heralded increase in assistance to rural development is likely to fall short of expectations because it comes with a superficial rebranding of a not very useful approach. Macroeconomic policy content remains largely nonnegotiable, full trade liberalization is still favored, and a reliance on free market forces that tend to favor relatively well off, export‐oriented farmers still lingers. Furthermore, conflicting approaches to addressing food insecurity highlight an already severe democratic deficit. It appears that the contours of agricultural and food security policy, and hence the destinies of rural Haitians, stand to be shaped from the outside yet again. While new aid resources may offer some modest relief, they hold out only limited opportunities for addressing the profound deprivations and disparities that afflict the rural hinterland.     

Building ‘low‐intensity’ democracy in Haiti: the oas contribution

This article explores the phenomenon of democracy assistance by examining Organization of American States (oas) efforts to restore and promote democracy in Haiti between 1990 and 2000. The case study reveals that marked contradictions emerged as the organisation tried to promote a democratic outcome while both supporting and facilitating the workings of a profoundly undemocratic economic and trading system. Because the oas has proclaimed its commitment to advancing democracy as well as its support for economic and trade liberalisation, privatisation of national industries, and a deeper insertion of the region's economies into global markets, it provides an excellent vantage point from which to explore this form of political intervention. The article concludes by reflecting on the recent fall of the country's ill‐fated president, Jean‐Bertrand Aristide and, in keeping with the theme of this piece, it examines the role of the oas and other international actors in shaping events leading up to the collapse of his government.     

Picture perfect: nostalgic femininity and temporal disruptions in the Aqualillies’ water ballets

This article examines nostalgic femininity in the aquatic performances of present-day synchronized swimming performance troupe, the Aqualillies. In spite of their fervent emulation of the iconic images of Golden Age Hollywood's splashiest star, Esther Williams, the Aqualillies’ performances refuse to be only a kitschy nod to the past through the addition of marketable symbols of modern femininity, such as the bikini, to their otherwise nostalgic representation. Through a concurrent multiplicity of temporally diverse femininities, they challenge the neoliberal rhetoric of choice that can arise in reperformance. This article invokes Svetlana Boym's theory of reflective nostalgia ­– an emotional connection to the past that does not foreclose critical reflection – to argue that the Aqualillies’ water ballets use performative temporal vacillation to expose the physical and psychical labor in the picture-perfect images of femininity in order to subvert the image's dominance and to defy capital's linear organization of time.