Anfans Difisil: A Study of Imperiled Childhoods in Haiti
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2022
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2022
Pages: 156
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Haiti is the poorest and most volatile country in the Western Hemisphere and has the highest under-five mortality rate in the Americas, making it one of the most inhospitable places for a child to live. In fact, if there is any place in the world where children have no business growing up, it is in the Republic of Haiti. But grow up – and thrive, live and survive – they do. Half of the Haitian population is under the age of eighteen, many of them living and working under incredibly difficult circumstances marked by profound poverty and stark violence.
Anfans Difisil foregrounds childhood as a crucial site of cultural, civil, and political relations, highlighting the many challenges that Haitian children face as they ply a living for themselves as street kids, child servants, gang soldiers, and prostitutes. Based on thirty years of fieldwork in Haiti, Kovats-Bernat constructs a vivid and revealing world of childhood lived under incredibly difficult circumstances. The book also provides an afterword detailing strategies for the conduct of ethnographic research in dangerous field environments like Haiti.
1. Introduction: Doing Anthropology with Children in Haiti
Bèl Marie
Whither the Child?
Difficult Childhoods in Haiti
A Different Kind of Fieldwork
The Organization of the Book
Some Notes to the Reader
2. The Crisis of Childhood in Haiti
“The Destiny of the Haitian People”
A History of Rural Decline
A City of Mayhem
“The Sugar in My Coffee”: The Centrality of Childhood w Children Out of Place
3. Timoun Lari: Sleeping Rough in Port‑au‑Prince
Salon Pèp: The People’s Living Room
The Stigma of the Street
Making a Living
Stealing, Dealing, and Selling Sex for Survival
Reciprocity and Redistribution
Fists, Knives, Rocks, and Razors
Avoidance and the Safety of Numbers
Lagè Dòmi: The Sleeping Wars
Strategies of Defense
4. ‘Girl’s Work’ and the Problem of Restavèk
Mother’s Milk
Given Away: What is a Restavèk?
Food They Can’t Eat, Clothes They Can’t Wear: Life as a Child Servant
Restavèk and the Law
5. Little Soldiers: Armed Children and the Gangs of Port‑au‑Prince
The Rise of the Garrison Ghetto and the Ascendance of the Gangs of Cité Soleil
Blok 19 and the “Army of the Motherless”
Hitting Back: Blok 19’s Tactics of Survival and Vengeance
6. Afterword: Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork amid Gunplay, Catastrophe, and Mayhem
Ethnography in the First Person:
A Reflexive Approach to Crisis in the Field
Fateful Decisions