Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery by Jr. Robert Fatton (review)

Abstract

Haiti: Trapped in Outer Periphery. By Robert Fatton Jr. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014. ISBN 9781626370364. 227pp. $55 hardcover.Review by Patrick SylvainThe two aspects of a functioning state in political theory involve, on one hand, institutional exercise of power set in a central political cadre within bureaucratic state; and on other hand, well-defined or demarcated spaces where state utilizes its power on behalf of governed. The utilization or exercise of power on behalf of governed always a challenge for supposed democratic and autonomous state. For social scientists considering case of Haiti, legal or normative functions of state are especially challenging, since it functions within dysfunctional zone that Robert Fatton Jr. identifies as a place of entrapment within extreme margin. He refers to this as the Outer Periphery, and argues that that this where Haiti trapped.Haiti: Trapped in Outer Periphery presents a detailed analysis of country's problems before, during, and after January 12, 2010, earthquake-exposing tragic past, myriad roadblocks to development, its governmental contradictions, corruption, banditry, unproductive civil society, and politics that ravage very existence of responsible citizenship. Fatton's work focuses on catastrophic neoliberal agenda in Haiti and how economic system has contributed to encaging country within a hyper-marginal zone. The outer where Haiti trapped has become a problem-laden region of uttermost failure due largely to Haitian political class's incessant fight for power, and profound negative impact of imperialism in age of globalization, that has exacerbated acute poverty, and grotesque inequalities brought about by neoliberalism, which qualitatively transformed world system whereby itself has fragmented and spawned an outer periphery (25). Additionally, Fatton remarks, Haiti's growing dependence on Dominican Republic has all characteristics of typical economic relationship between peripheral and core countries (69).Fatton's book a must-read, particularly for bleeding-heart liberals who might make matters worse by operating additional nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in country. Staunch conservatives would benefit from a reading of Fatton as well, because of their refusal to accept blame for policies under the pretense of a universal defense of human rights [that] masks realities of core's imperial drive (44). The book's blatant truth and solid analysis disclose battered Haitian sociopolitical landscape that causes state to be dysfunctional and extremely vulnerable to varied interests that arrest autonomous development of state, thus rendering it a virtual trusteeship (14). relation to new imperialistic global sphere of influence, Fatton writes, the center wants benefits of empire without costs (44). However, cost of empire's desire to control without physically occupying still devastating for state that controlled or meddled with by influential, self-centered core. Haiti: Trapped in Outer Periphery bears witness to falseness of nation building. Fatton further argues that it is a mimicry of an imaginary liberal for liberal world, as it really exists, full of contradictions between rhetoric and reality, between egalitarian universalism it preaches and global calamities it unleashes (45).The book is, above all, a quintessential reminder of vulnerability of deprived human beings who inhabit political and economic spaces where social justice absent. The catastrophe of January 12,2010, earthquake became a visually shocking malignancy added to illnesses that had plagued country for centuries. In Haiti, unproductive capitalism has transformed proximity to state power into prime site of acquiring wealth for those not born into elite class, Fatton asserts (5). …