Haiti, Catastrophic Society

By Mark Featherstone

I have recently been working on a paper on the French philosopher of speed Paul Virilio and the idea of catastrophe. Virilio’s basic idea is that we should understand the development of society in terms of speed and acceleration and that the modern idea of progress is identical with notions of dynamism and movement. So far so good. We can all identify with Virilio’s thesis. We know that modern technology and specifically modern technology in capitalist society functions on the basis of an ideology of speed where faster is better.

The problem is that for Virilio the speed of technology has started to reach its limit under conditions of globalisation, so for instance communication is now quasi-instantaneous, and the planet has started to shrink to the extent that there now seems to be very little space in the world. In a capitalist world where competition is everything, the collapse of space, or what Virilio calls geocide, has the effect of intensifying the struggle between people and making them more violent towards each other. This is part of Virilio’s idea of catastrophe: social catastrophe.

However, his core theory of catastrophe turns off the idea of technology and the view that when we invent technology we also invent accidents or disasters, so that the invention of the car is the invention of the car crash, the invention of nuclear power is the invention of the nuclear disaster, and so on. All of this is, of course, useful for explaining man-made disasters, but it seems to do little to explain natural catastrophes such as the Asian Tsunami or the Haiti earthquake, which occurred as I was writing about Virilio’s theory.

The earthquake that hit Haiti on 12th January left the capital city, Port-au-Prince, covered in dust. Large sections of the city, particularly the hillside slums areas similar to Brazilian favelas in design, collapsed leaving the population buried under rubble. Current estimates suggest that as many as 200,000 people may have died as a result of the earthquake with more to follow from the 250,000 injured and 1.5 million left homeless and exposed to disease and lack of food and clean water.

At first it appears that none of this can be explained by Virilio theory of catastrophe. The earthquake was a natural disaster and Haiti has been particularly impacted by natural disasters throughout its history. In recent years the country has been hit by hurricanes and floods and has never really been able to manage any of these catastrophes, primarily because of the grinding poverty that has characterised the country since its emergence from colonial rule in 1804 and its more recent turbulent political history.

Herein resides the relevance of Virilio’s theory because it can show how the natural catastrophe of the earthquake has been magnified by the historical tragedy of Haiti, the country which was the first, apart from America, to escape colonial rule, and where the slave population was inspired by the revolutionary ideals of their colonial masters, the French, to try to build a free society. This county, the country of CLR James’ Black Jacobins, which was under the thumb of the tyrannical regimes of Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier and Jean Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier for so long and only made the transition to democracy in 1990 with the regime of the slum priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has been caught in a poverty trap by the global socio-economic system that has exacerbated its catastrophic history and without doubt made the impact of the 12th January earthquake far worse than it would otherwise have been.

This is the thesis of Peter Hallward who has written extensively on Haiti. Hallward suggests that the unimaginable devastation that has turned Port-au-Prince into a tomb was caused by the global economic regime that has trapped Haiti in poverty. According to this view we may not be able to explain natural disasters, such as the Haitian earthquake, using Virilio’s theory, but we can certainly better understand the impact and aftermath of such disasters by studying the social, economic, and political contexts that condition the ways in which they effect particular societies in different ways.

From this perspective it is the social, political, and economic situation of Haiti that has led to its current predicament in the wake of the earthquake. It is this context, which has led Haiti to be called the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, that has exacerbated the devastation caused by the earthquake and brought about a situation where corpses litter the streets and the state is unable to cope with shortages of food, water, and emergency health care to the extent that an estimated 20,000 people are dying each day because of the inability of the international relief effort to manage the aftermath of the disaster. While a richer, more robust, nation may be able to cope better with such events, so for example Japanese cities are built to survive earthquakes comparable to the Haitian one, Haiti has been thrown into what Thomas Hobbes called a state of nature where individual survival is all the matters.

Under these conditions, two particular stories leapt out from the mass of media coverage of the aftermath of the disaster, and seemed to say a lot about the ways in which such catastrophes can impact upon societies and how societies can resist the chaos of the state of nature and even under the worst circumstances, such as those which has befallen Haiti, maintain some level of civility.

The first story, which focused on the orphans of Haiti, related details of the children of the disaster and explained that the terrible situation of these children has been magnified and made intolerable by the earthquake. They now face an uncertain future and even if they survive the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe their lives are likely to be characterised by severe psychological problems and mental trauma.

The second story, which explains how the residents of Port-au-Prince’s most notorious slum, Cite Soleil, chased escaped gang members from their streets in order to prevent the descent of their neighbourhood back into the kind of violence and disorder that made it infamous, provides a glimmer of hope that illustrates how even under the worst conditions human society can survive.

Perhaps we must hang onto this social utopianism in the face of such catastrophic conditions and affirm the ability of humans to survive in even the most disastrous situations because this spirit is, after all, written into the history of Haiti, the home of the Black Jacobins. Finally, and in affirming this spirit through recognition of our common humanity and gestures of charity that counter the hegemonic savagery of global capitalism, we must certainly reject the cruel sentiments of figures such as Pat Robertson, the American Christian fundamentalist, who claimed that Haiti brought the earthquake on itself by signing a pact with the Devil in order to escape from colonial rule.

Despite what Robertson believes, Christianity is a religion of empathy, sympathy, charity, and humanity and these sentiments are the ones which we should apply in our response to the catastrophe in Haiti. For Virilio, this is exactly what we can learn from thinking about both natural and unnatural catastrophes. In his view thinking about catastrophes can teach us that despite our enormous technological feats, human society is a fragile thing that we must defend together. This is why despite the natural origins of the Haiti earthquake, it still requires us to think sociologically, because sociological thought is essential for allowing us to think about how we respond to it, the ways it has been exacerbated by human social, political, and economic formations, and how we should reform those formations in order to prevent such devastation in the future.

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Sex trafficking: facts and fictions

By Kelly Prince, PhD candidate in Criminology, Research Institute for Law, Politics & Justice, Keele University

On 20th October, Nick Davies wrote an article for The Guardian which compared sex trafficking with the reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. An issue which is slowly developing a high profile in the UK, sex trafficking is just one form of human trafficking, a transnational crime which has attracted increased international attention in the last ten years. So, what can we learn from Davies’ article and the subsequent debate?

Human trafficking is defined by the United Nations Palermo Protocol, article 3 as the:

exploitation of human beings – be it for sexual exploitation, other forms of forced labour, slavery, servitude, or for the removal of human organs. Trafficking takes place by criminal means through the threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of positions of power or abuse of positions of vulnerability. It relates to all stages of the trafficking process: recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons. Trafficking is not just a transnational crime across international borders - the definition applies to internal domestic trafficking of human beings. Department of Peacekeeping Operations, 2004.

Davies refers only to sex trafficking and restricts his definition to ‘force, fraud or deception’, a considerable narrowing of the true definition. Furthermore, he uses the word ‘trafficking’ interchangeably with ‘sex trafficking’ without giving due recognition of the fact that there are many forms of trafficking, sexual exploitation being only one.

The article also mentions a Home Office research paper by Kelly and Regan called Stopping Traffic (2000), stating that the authors themselves admit that various conclusions drawn in the study, particularly data on numbers, are “speculative”. However, a thorough reading of the paper clearly illuminates the fact that, following their extensive research, the authors strongly believe that “[T]rafficking in women is clearly an issue in the UK”. An important fact in terms of numbers, highlighted by Kelly and Regan and omitted by Davies, is that people trafficking is extremely difficult to measure. The International Organisation of Migration was given substantial funding by the EU to do just that; they concluded that it isn’t currently possible with any degree of accuracy.

Following a Guardian investigation, Davies suggests that the police operation Pentameter 2, was anything but the success claimed by the police and Home Office alike. He cites as evidence that, of the 406 arrests made, 106 were released without charge, 47 were released after being cautioned for minor offences, 73 charged with immigration offences, 76 convicted of ‘non-trafficking offences’ involving drugs or the ‘driving or management of a brothel’. Ninety-six were arrested for ‘trafficking’, of whom 67 were charged. Twenty-two were finally prosecuted and 15 convicted.

At first glance, the figures look damning. However, it is well known that from the point of arrest, there are several points at which a case may ‘drop out’ of the criminal justice system and not always because the individual is innocent. The collection of sufficient evidence to get a case safely past these ‘drop out’ stages is not easy in relation to every day crimes such as burglary and theft, but when the crime is human trafficking of any kind, it becomes extremely difficult. Witnesses are invariably victims with all the associated complex trauma and mistrust of authority. A growing body of evidence from organisations such as the UN and the IOM suggest that trafficking is not only international but organised, in the same way arms and drugs trafficking is, and with the same structures in place which are designed to facilitate evasion. With criminal activity so enveloped in secrecy, it is perhaps more understandable that only 15 cases carried enough evidence to reach court and convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt.

This ‘drop out’ or attrition, is not uncommon. Take for example, the crime of rape. According to the British Crime Survey 2004, there is an annual incidence rate of 47,000 adult (over 16 years old), female victims. Only 15% of these report the attack to the police. 80% of those do not proceed beyond the police stage, with a further 6% being discontinued by the CPS and only 14% proceeding to trial. Only 1 in 8 reported rapes result in a conviction (Home Office Report 293 – A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases, 2005). I am confident that Nick Davies wouldn’t dream of suggesting that these sorry statistics indicate that the nature and rate of rape has been exaggerated.

Davies goes on to suggest that various evangelical and feminist organisations have hijacked the issue of sex trafficking to further their own agendas; the banning of all prostitution. And to some extent, he might be right. However, to say that increased attention given to sex trafficking is a direct result of a puritanical judgement of prostitution and a wish to persecute working women who are willingly trying to earn a crust in the sex industry is a fundamentally flawed and dangerous argument.

It is flawed because, by the very definition of sex trafficking, victims of this abhorrent crime are necessarily exploited and abused. The same cannot be said of prostitution, an occupation which some women enter and work in willingly. It is no surprise then that groups advocating for prostitutes, such as the English Collective of Prostitutes, have become adversaries of the sex trafficking cause. But this is not useful and unnecessary as prostitution and anti-trafficking campaigns are not automatically at odds. Fundamentally, they are both concerned with the protection of vulnerable women.

It is a dangerous argument because one of the most important aspects of the anti-trafficking campaign is the need to make the public more aware of the phenomenon, particularly indications of its presence. Trafficked people have been found in Britain’s hotels, restaurants, take-aways, on farms and beaches, as well as private households and of course some have been found in the sex industry. Those who wish to address the problem of trafficking may come to rely on local people bringing their concerns to the attention of the authorities.

It is fair to say that Davies’ article ignited some attention grabbing debate which can be seen both in the media and on the ‘Comment is Free’ Guardian blog site. Furthermore, he also makes some good points about how data is used and abused by various people pursuant of their own agenda. However, there is some concern that inaccurate, insensitive and sensationalist newspaper articles may serve only to turn the public away from a problem which desperately needs their support.

What is Sociology FOR? Part 2

By Dr Dana Rosenfeld

Despite the muted grumbles of many outside of academia, sociological scholarship is relevant to a range of contemporary issues, is often readable and interesting to those within and without academia, and often has a deep impact upon how we view our own lives and social worlds. Sociologists are also private citizens engaged with social and political issues, and some mesh their academic and their political lives to good effect. A strong example is Alice S. Rossi, whose scholarship and political work deeply shaped the face of gender politics in the USA and beyond, and whose obituary appeared in the New York Times earlier this week.