17 Oct recapitulation

So, after a Thursday morning meeting with the chairs, the original proposal has been scrapped for a brand new one. I do not kid.

My last one was too big, anyway. *sigh*

So here is where we’re going with the new one:

There’s this guy, Jean William Pape, who is building a Model City (i studied the 1960’s Model Cities!!!) just at the fringe of Port-au-Prince. It’s cool. Health, education, health, housing, etc. I’m going to go watch.

Re-write:

This is an interesting moment in Haiti’s development as the country stands at the threshold of the possibility of a post-Washington Consensus effort (the debt forgiveness marking the first step in that direction). But will this transition unfold democratically, or will this be, simply, another historical point of shock doctrine opportunism? Explicit to this study will be the examination of the construction of variable health citizenship, one that is not tied to the geographic scale of the nation state, or even the city, rather, one that is tied to an individual’s (or family’s) ability to find and engage with micro-scale enclaves of health service delivery. Explicitly, what are the spatial dynamics of the construction of health citizenship, or biocitizenship? By foregrounding the praxis of health citizenship, this project proposes to move between multiple spatial scales from the inscription of the crisis on individuals’ bodies, to the scale of IDP camps, and of the supranational coordinating bodies working within the nation. How is it that Haitian’s are navigating between the multiple organizational levels of health system access to manage their own needs?

That’s academic speak for: i want to go ask questions of people – why here? why now? what do you get? what’s different? how do you feel? why foreground health? why this health enclave? etc, etc, etc…

Now for a literature review…oh dear lord: Nikolas Rose, Bruce Braun, Nguen, Peschard, etc. etc., etc…all the usual suspects. No, i do not think of biocitizenship or health citizenship as a privilege – i think of it as a form of agency. How can we complicate and nuane the current uses of the terms??? How can we point to the sophistication of those enacting it? What is their driving motivation? Where does that form of motivation come from?

Of course, i’m also interested in other questions.

Jason still doesn’t understand what i do. It’s been a good day for laughing. But the panic is about to sink in. This is due by 5 pm tomorrow!!!

Oh dear lord.