Read more about the article Voodoo in Haiti

Voodoo in Haiti

As an anthropologist, I became interested in learning about life in Haitian villages. Despite a tightly controlled government ("Baby Doc" had succeeded his father "Papa Doc"), I was able to secure permission to settle into a small village with my wife to carry out two years of research. I was warned to stay away from Voodoo. Too many foreigners had spent too much time indulging their curiosity about this exotic cult I was told. I agreed. I preferred to learn about "the real Haiti" the economic and domestic organisation of village life.

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Read more about the article The Groupman of Gros Morne: A Small Group Approach to Rural Development among Haitian Peasants

The Groupman of Gros Morne: A Small Group Approach to Rural Development among Haitian Peasants

This report presents certain preliminary observations on the functioning of the Gros Morne Project. It is based on information during a brief field visit made during December of 1982. Both authors, at different times, had been approached by Project Staff with a view to possibly carrying out a formal evaluation of the project. This visit, however, was made as a preliminary contact, not as part of the formal evaluation. Because of the brevity of the visit, the information presented in these pages should be construed not as definitive findings, but as "carefully analyzed impressions."

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Read more about the article Socialization for Scarcity: Child Feeding Beliefs and Practices in a Haitian Village

Socialization for Scarcity: Child Feeding Beliefs and Practices in a Haitian Village

In this report, we will present a somewhat detailed description and analysis of the food-related beliefs and behaviours of a community of Haitian peasant cultivators located in the Cul-de-Sac Plain. Our intention is to synthesize for readers interested in Haitian peasant life a complex body of information which we gathered on matters specifically related to food. This entails descriptions not only of community nutrition beliefs and ideals but also of actual community behaviour with respect to the preparation and distribution of food.

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Read more about the article Population Pressure, Land Tenure, and Voodoo: The Economics of Haitian Peasant Ritual

Population Pressure, Land Tenure, and Voodoo: The Economics of Haitian Peasant Ritual

In the following pages, I will present both descriptive and quantitative information, gathered in a Haitian village during 21 months of fieldwork. information reveals the somewhat unexpected but empirically convincing and critical role which Haitian-peasant Voodoo plays in the contemporary land tenure system; specifically, this cult was found to function as a partially camouflaged resource-circulating mechanism, a role that seems to have arisen in the context of recent population growth.

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Read more about the article Haitian Peasant Contour Ridges: The Evolution of Indigenous Erosion

Haitian Peasant Contour Ridges: The Evolution of Indigenous Erosion

In these pages I will describe and analyse the recent emergence, in a mountainous region of rural Haiti, of a locally unique but technically effective erosion control strategy which, though unknown some two decades ago, had by the late 1970's become an essential, universally adopted element in the agrarian repertoire of peasant cultivators in the research community.

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Read more about the article Terraces, Trees, and The Haitian Peasant: An Assessment of Twenty-Five Years of Erosion Control in Rural Haiti

Terraces, Trees, and The Haitian Peasant: An Assessment of Twenty-Five Years of Erosion Control in Rural Haiti

The present report has been commissioned by USAID in Haiti as an attempt to provide a conceptual overview of the soil conservation projects that have been operating in Haiti during the past two and a half decades. Recent studies commissioned by USAID have referred in a convincing but general way to the central role which deforestation and soil erosion play in the contemporary impoverishment of the rural economy, and few persons would dispute the contention that reforestation and general soil conservation constitute a sine qua non for any serious rural development in a country which has nearly 80% of its surface in the form of slopes.

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Read more about the article Hillside Units, Wage Labor, And Rural Haitian Land Tenure

Hillside Units, Wage Labor, And Rural Haitian Land Tenure

This report is a companion report, highly applied in nature, to another report which the author has prepared discussing several general issues and ambiguities which have arisen concerning the dynamics of rural Haitian land tenure. In June of 1978, I had prepared a preliminary report on land tenure for USAID/Haiti. The materials for the present report were gathered during a visit to Aux Cayes, made with the intention of getting impressions on the land tenure situation in the region of PDAI activities, in particular, the Acul River watershed. Edit with Elementor | Save draft Preview Publish Add title Hillside Units, Wage Labor, And Rural Haitian Land Tenure This report is a companion report, highly applied in nature, to another report which the author has prepared discussing several general issues and ambiguities which have arisen concerning the dynamics of rural Haitian land tenure. In June of 1978, I had prepared a preliminary report on land tenure for USAID/Haiti. The materials for the present report were gathered during a visit to Aux Cayes, made with the intention of getting. impressions on the land tenure situation in the region of PDAI activities, in particular the Acul River watershed.

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Read more about the article The Evolution of Haitian Peasant Land Tenure: A Case Study in Agrarian Adaptation

The Evolution of Haitian Peasant Land Tenure: A Case Study in Agrarian Adaptation

This study, based on twenty-one months of fieldwork, documents the occurrence of "cultural evolution" in the form of a series of adaptive land-sharing strategies that have emerged in a Haitian peasant community, serving as a partial buffer against the deleterious impact of internal population growth. The recent anthropological literature on agricultural intensification emphasizes adaptive changes in technology as an agrarian response to population growth.

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Read more about the article Women in Perdition: Ritual Fertility Control in Haiti

Women in Perdition: Ritual Fertility Control in Haiti

In the context of almost total national isolation after 1804, the Haitian peasantry has had to call on its own resources for the development of folk institutions and theories to handle the gamut of problems that confront all human societies.' The economic and social isolation which has characterized, and to a degree still characterizes, Haiti as a national unit has meant, among other things, that the rural populace has remained outside of the currents of modern medicine.

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Read more about the article Truths and Untruths in Village Haiti: An Experiment In Third World Survey Research

Truths and Untruths in Village Haiti: An Experiment In Third World Survey Research

We have devised the following descriptive definition: a rural Third World survey is the careful collection, tabulation, and analysis of wild guesses, half-truths, and outright lies meticulously recorded by gullible outsiders during interviews with suspicious, intimidated, but outwardly compliant villagers. The definition is meant to be a caricature not of the villager, but of the researcher; not of all village surveys, but certainly of many.

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Read more about the article Haitian Bean Circuits: Cropping and Trading Maneuvers among a Cash-Oriented Peasantry

Haitian Bean Circuits: Cropping and Trading Maneuvers among a Cash-Oriented Peasantry

For several decades anthropologists working in the Caribbean have been explicitly aware of the need to look beyond the confines of the communities which they study, to take into consideration major national and supranational forces which have shaped and influenced local life (e.g. Smith 1956: chap. 8; Steward 1956:6-7; Padilla 1960:22; Manners 1960:80-82). But at first glance, the situation of the people of rural Haiti appears to be somewhat exceptional in this regard.

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Read more about the article The Economic Context of Fertility Patterns in a Rural Haitian Community

The Economic Context of Fertility Patterns in a Rural Haitian Community

The following pages will briefly sum up and analyze the information relevant to family planning gleaned in several months of fieldwork in a Haitian hamlet. This period of exploratory research has been a useful preliminary not only for settling in learning the language and becoming acquainted with and acceptable to the members of the research community but also for isolating and clarifying the genuine issues around which the success of a program of voluntary fertility control will ultimately hinge. These issues, which should be the object of more exact study, are by no means self-evident.

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