Development, megaprojects and accumulation through dispossession in Haiti: towards a decolonial sociological critique

Abstract (English)

In the post-earthquake context of 2010 in Haiti, the document Plan stratégique de développement d'Haïti (PSDH) was produced as a guideline for “development”. It envisages the country becoming an “emerging country” by 2030. The development model advocated is based on four key areas: economic restructuring, territorial restructuring, social restructuring and institutional restructuring. And to achieve this “development”, industrial, mining, agricultural and tourism megaprojects have been launched, such as the Caracol industrial park, the Agritrans agricultural free zone in Trou du Nord, the Destination Île à Vache tourism project... Using the conceptual framework of megaprojects and accumulation through dispossession, I intend to take a sociological and critical look at this model of development instituted in rural Haiti, framed by a decolonial epistemological and theoretical posture. Indeed, this paper is based on three qualitative empirical surveys, one on the Destination Ile à Vache tourism project (December 2019-January 2020) in the South, another survey on megaprojects in northern Haiti (April-May 2022) and the last one constitutes an ethnography of the dispossession of the peasantry, impacting food sovereignty, induced by megaprojects in the northern region (May-August 2024). Based on a decolonial approach to the data produced and secondary sources, I argue that this development model is part of a logic of accumulation through dispossession and the historical continuity of colonial power relations. Furthermore, this model of extroverted development contributes to the impoverishment of the Haitian rural world, particularly the peasantry, and consequently to the erosion of the country's food sovereignty. Finally, I'd like to point out that the Haitian rural world, and particularly the peasantry, has for centuries produced a way of life and of living together, knowledge and know-how - in other words, a global policy of living together - that has been ignored, invalidated and not valorized by the actors and epistemic logics of development. And what I call this global politics of living together carries within it the seeds of alternative and decolonial constructions that need to be revisited, deepened and systematized to rethink Haiti.