The instance of rice aid in Haiti definitively demands a reevaluation of humanitarian aid in today's world. In this thesis, I will outline the effects of rice aid on Haitian society and theoretically analyze humanitarian aid’s presence in “developing” countries. In addition to ruining many Haitian farmers' livelihoods, rice imports have aggravated Haiti's economic situation and national stability, the consequences of which have fallen primarily on the poor woman. I focus on the effects on the peasant woman in this thesis. Food insecurity remains a crisis. Throughout my thesis, I draw from the texts of scholars Slavoj Zizek, Jacques Rancière, and Noam Chomsky, in order to attempt at understanding what is really going on here. Such theorists illuminate the historical and theoretical analysis of humanitarian aid and the concept of human rights that said-aid seeks to protect. The purpose of my thesis is to shed new light on the business of humanitarian aid, using rice in Haiti as a case study of sorts. I seek to uncover the role international donor institutions have played in reinforcing the fragile state in Haiti as a result of rice aid, arguing that humanitarian aid has done more to prevent than to inspire sustainable progress in Haiti especially in rural Haiti that continually gets hit the hardest during economic crises such as the one brought on by humanitarian aid in the form of rice.

In this thesis, I seek to understand the historical process by which Haiti has become a site of economic exploitation and labor coercion. I identify a remarkable continuity in the justification of economic oppression at three historical junctures: the reestablishment of plantation production under Toussaint Louverture in 1800, the agrarian development projects implemented by the American occupation 1918 and 1929, and the IMF agricultural liberalization measures implemented in between 1986/87 and 1993/94. I argue that a violent and chronically unstable juxtaposition between “civilized” elites and “uncivilized” masses creates and sustains a political system of brutal exploitation. A racialized logic lies at the heart of the civilization fantasy and maintains the economic, political and cultural configurations of peasant and proletariat oppression in Haiti.

Enlightenment philosophers had long feared the effects of crisscrossing boundaries, both real and imagined. Such fears were based on what they considered a brutal ocean space frequented by protean shape-shifters with a dogma of ruthless exploitation and profit. This intellectual study outlines the formation and fragmentation of a fluctuating worldview as experienced through the circum-Atlantic life and travels of merchant, slaveowner, and slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley during the Era of Revolution. It argues that the process began from experiencing the costs of loyalty to the idea of the British Crown and was tempered by the pervasiveness of violence, mobility, anxiety, and adaptation found in the booming Atlantic markets of the Caribbean during the Haitian Revolution. Tracing Kingsley’s manipulations of identity and race through his peripatetic journey serves to go beyond the infinite masks of his self-invention and exposes the deeply imbedded transatlantic dimensions of power.

Univ., Diss.--Louvain-la-Neuve, 2007.

Thesis (Ph.D. in Nursing) -- University of Colorado Denver, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-183). Free to UCD affiliates. Online version available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations;

Thesis (D. Min.)--Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Lombard, Ill., 1999. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 158-161).

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2003. / Abstract. Includes Survey questionnaire and responses in French. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 285-293).

Thesis (M.M.A.S)--School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1995. / Subject: Conflict termination during MOOTW. Cover page date: June 1995. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2003. / Abstract. Includes Survey questionnaire and responses in French. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 285-293).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Lombard, Ill., 1999. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 158-161).