Factional Terror, Paramilitarism and Civil War in Haiti Essay -- Haiti

Factional Terror, Paramilitarism and Civil War in Haiti The View from Port-au-Prince, 1994-2004 is a scholarly article discussing the observations made by J. Christopher Kovats-Bernat in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, during the countrys heavily violent civil war. The article goes into great detail in order to discuss the events leading up to the civil unrest, taking into consideration more of the political, economic, and cultural influences that prompted the 1994 coup-dtat and the resulting ten years of extreme violence. The condition, though, attempts to investigate the countrys bloodshed using the methodology developed by anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom, who believed that war is not a static event but instead one that shapes and is shaped by historical, social, and cultural contexts. Therefore, Kovats-Bernat attempts to investigate the countrys current bloodshed by taking three separate questions into consideration what political advances led up to the war, what social aspects characterises the wars violence, and how has the war affected the day-to-day-lives and cultural identities of Haitians? Kovats-Bernat describes the three describe concepts that he wishes to utilize in order to make such an investigation into the life of Haitians during the civil war political history, social analysis of material conditions, and cultural context. However, he does not seem to aptly follow all definitions that he provides for each of these concepts all throughout his paper, at least not in a concise manner that is easily understood by the reader. Take cultural context, for example. Kovats-Bernat clearly states that by cultural context he means individual(a) and community narratives of violence... within a larger symbolic world... ...ulk of this academic journal discusses primarily the political developments that led to the war (p.123), and therefore Kovats-Bernat has been successful in considering at least one of the three aspects that he had hoped to discu ss. However, he does seem to be lacking when it comes to discussing his other two clearly define key concepts exactly what the author originally claimed would result in ambiguous, subjective, and inaccurate observations. The author has not successfully been able to put an individual or community face to the issue, and seems to focus more so on history rather than ethnography. Had he instead been successful in presenting Haitis political history as well as a more in-depth social analysis of material conditions and discussion of cultural context, there would be a much greater basis upon which I could express my self-assertion in the evidence.