Juliana Svistova is an Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, USA. Loretta Pyles is a Professor, School of Social Welfare, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY), USA.
''Production of Disaster and Recovery in Post-Earthquake Haiti is a must-read for anyone involved in disaster interventions, whether teaching or in practice. The concept of the disaster industrial complex (DIC) provides a strong theoretical steer from which to analyse the deepened post-disaster marginalisation of local Haitians, their exclusion from much decision-making, and the failure of humanitarian aid to meet their needs as they defined them. The authors give a good account of the strengths of Haitians if they were not subjected to neo-colonial forms of benevolence, and provide guidelines to help practitioners empower local victim-survivors in forging their own destiny post-disasters. - Lena Dominelli, Professor, School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University, UK Svistova and Pyles offer a nuanced, well-documented account of what they call the disaster industrial complex and how foreign institutions - public and private, for-profit and nonprofit, aid and media - colluded to rob Haitian people from agency to respond to the 2010 earthquake. Taking an interdisciplinary frame they offer practical, yet radical, suggestions for a people's response. - Mark Schuller, Associate Professor of Anthropology and NGO Leadership and Development, Northern Illinois University, USA Production of Disaster and Recovery in Post-Earthquake Haiti provides an ambitious critical analysis of the disaster industrial complex and the dynamics of disaster framing and reconstruction in post-earthquake Haiti. Examining the work that disaster discourses perform on and through humanitarian institutions, response and reconstruction, and the lives and communities of the most vulnerable, Svistova and Pyles demonstrate not only that there's no such thing as a natural disaster, but that resilience and recovery require collective action and democratic participation from the local scale upward. - Jamey Essex, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Windsor, UK This is an important book. There is a great need to confront the entrenched relationships that confound the best intentions of disaster response and reconstruction. Svistova and Pyles' work is grounded in the experiences of Haiti following the 2010 earthquake but has world-wide implications for those seeking to develop a praxis for people-centred recovery. This will inspire scholars and practitioners alike. - Mark Pelling, Professor, Department of Geography, King's College London, UK