Commodifying the Countermovement: How Foreign Funding Turns Haitian Social Movements into Commodities

Abstract

Polanyi (2001) and Wolf (1997; 1999) argue that social contestation is a reaction to capitalism’s drive to dis-embed land, labour, and wealth from existing social relations and turn them into commodities for sale on the market. Contemporary theorists see the rise of ‘new social movements’ as a Polanyian ‘countermovements’ against neoliberalism. But what happens if we extend neoliberalism’s commodifying tendencies to the countermovement itself? We use our experiences in Haiti to argue that the countermovement itself can take on characteristics of a commodity being bought and sold in a market of relief and development projects. In a Wolfean perspective, the chapter argues that broader forces and elements of commodification – particularly abstraction, privatisation, valuation, and alienation – begin to (re)constitute social movements at the grassroots level. We highlight the importance of recognising how and when commodifying forces actually begin to constitute a social movement itself.