M Schuller
Biographic Data
| ID | 39551 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Schuller |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Schuller |
| SIGNATURE | SCHULLER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northern Illinois University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3789-2359 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 173 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Forging New Paths to Solidarity: Organizing in Haiti and Beyond Since the 2018 PetroChallenge
Solidarity involves "showing up," putting one's body on the line. In this afterlife of NGOs, dissent is rooted in what Palestinian activist scholar Rabab Abdulhadi calls "the indivisibility of justice." Since 2021, activists across Haiti and its diasporas, and people in solidarity with Haiti leveraged their differently-situated experiences and critiques of the NGO model to self-consciously create spaces of solidarity action on the ashes of failed…
NGO Afterlives
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) today have an unclear, sometimes ambiguous status. How are we to make sense of all this? As panaceas for a range of problems, in both humanitarian and development fields, the NGO idea died-but it did not do so completely, and neither has it entirely faded away. Ideas and approaches that NGOs once helped to originate live on-such as participation, empowerment, and microcredit-but in new or changed forms. Parado…
"Not "Fitting the Mold: Latina Archaeologists Confront Intersecting Inequalities
In this article, we seek to engage concretely with feminist and antiracist dialogues by exploring experiences of Latina archaeologists living and working in the United States, a group whose contributions, experiences, and challenges in the field have remained undertheorized to date. In this qualitative analysis of nine semi-structured interviews conducted in 2023 with Latina archaeologists, we consider historical structural factors that have supp…
Where They Need Me: Local Clinicians and the Workings of Global Health in Haiti, by Pierre Minn
Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene , by Mimi Sheller
Maintaining hope for a better future: An interview with Dr. Crystal Felima
While anthropologists have played roles speaking out for marginalized groups, formalized to combat Antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia, they have also aided in the marginalization and oppression of communities, justified colonialism, and put the communities they have studied at risk. In recent decades, anthropologists have rethought the way research is conducted, presented, and justified to reduce harm to communities. Despite these shifts, anthr…
Dilemmas of anthropological activism, solidarity, and human rights: Lessons from Haiti
Building on a growing anthropological engagement with and interrogation of the multiple forms and meanings of activism, this article-based on over 20 years of activist engagement and ethnographic interviews spanning 11 years-offers ethnographically grounded understandings of solidarity activism. The rich and at times messy (auto)ethnographic data suggest that contradictions inherent to liberal humanism can increase hierarchies and social distance…
Reproducing the "white public space" in anthropology faculty searches
Beyond poto mitan: Challenging the “Strong Black Woman” archetype and allowing space for tenderness
In this article, we contend that the “strong Black woman” archetype constricts expressions of Black womanhood and girlhood and thus limits individual and collective liberation. We maintain that strength need not preclude tenderness, highlighting two forms: wounded tenderness—a raw and aching feeling pointing to the vulnerability of human beings—and liberated tenderness, a practice of meeting woundedness with embodied awareness and gentleness. We …
Humanity's Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe
Are we as a species headed towards extinction? As our economic system renders our planet increasingly inhospitable to human life, powerful individuals fight over limited resources, and racist reaction to migration strains the social fabric of many countries. How can we retain our humanity in the midst of these life-and-death struggles? Humanity's Last Stand dares to ask these big questions, exploring the interconnections between climate change, g…
End of Empire? A View from Haiti
Haiti’s PétroRéalité: Government corruption tipped popular outrage into the streets in Haiti, but a sordid history of U.S. meddling, rigged elections, and botched disaster recovery also helped pave th…
Its National Palace still in ruins, Haiti marked 10 years on January 12 since the earthquake that devastated the country. The 10-year point followed the 216th anniversary of the Haitian Revolution
Humanitarian aid and local power structures: Lessons from Haiti's 'shadow disaster
This paper investigates the confluence of humanitarian aid, centralisation, and politics. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010 led to more than USD 16 billion in pledges. By contrast, Hurricane Matthew, which made landfall in Haiti on 4 October 2016, stayed in the shadows, attracting about one per cent of the amount. While the earthquake exhibited one face of centralisation, the Category 4 storm laid bare rural vulnerabilities…
Imagining a More Just World: Interview with Julie Maldonado
It is difficult to canonize anthropology and anthropological concepts, in part because of the creative tensions within the discipline's contradictions: a desire and deep respect for local knowledge with a global, comparative perspective, what might be called the "anthropological imagination." Firmly rooted in-and in defense of-an inclusive vision of humanity, an anthropological imagination inspires "radical empathy." It offers the scaffolding of …
Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs
Winner of the 2015Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology After Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, over half of U.S. households donated to thousands of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in that country. Yet we continue to hear stories of misery from Haiti. Why have NGOs failed at their mission? Set in Haiti during the 2004 coup and aftermath and enhanced by research conducted after the 2…
Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti
The 2010 earthquake in Haiti was one of the deadliest disasters in modern history, sparking an international aid response—with pledges and donations of $16 billion—that was exceedingly generous. But now, five years later, that generous aid has clearly failed. In Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti , anthropologist Mark Schuller captures the voices of those involved in the earthquake aid response, and they paint a sharp, unflattering view of the hum…
Yon Lòt Ayiti Posib”: Glimmers of Another Haiti Following the 2010 Earthquake and 2016 Hurricane Matthew
Research, mainly within sociology, demonstrated that disasters can be stages for extraordinary human growth and solidarity. However, research documenting and specifically theorizing local communities as first responders has had limited impact within official disaster response policy and practice, and it is still relatively uncharted within anthropology. Policymakers and journalists alike tend to dismiss local initiatives. Ethnographic research is…
Aid projects: The effects of commodification and exchange
Entwodiksyon: Rechèch sou teren apre Siklòn Matye
Ayiti se yon peyi ki viv dominasyon etranje depi menm anvan mouvman antiesklavaj la ki te deklanche apre seremoni Bwa Kayiman te reyisi mennen endepandans la. Pou kèk chèchè ayisyen, sistèm òganizasyon non-gouvènmantal (ONG) la reprezante yon nouvo fòm dominasyon sa a. Etap 12 janvye tounen yon nouvo sekous ONG ; Raoul Peck te rele etap sa a « asistans mòtèl », epi kèk lòt aktè nan mouvman sosyal yo te rele l yon « okipasyon imanitè ». Mwen te ge…
Deadly River: Cholera and Cover-Up in Post-Earthquake Haiti, by Ralph R. Frerichs
Haiti's ‘Republic of NGOs’
NGOs and other foreign entities took control of the humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake, creating parallel structures that contributed to the very duplication and state weaknesses that NGOs were supposed to solve
“Being Heard, Not Only Seen”: Intersections of Tea Partyism, Racism, and Classism in a Low-income Housing Struggle in Dekalb, Illinois
Civil Rights struggles are waged locally but are always a part of, and impact, larger contexts. Eight years after the sub-prime mortgage industry's collapse triggered the “Great Recession,” struggles for housing and neighborhood development are complex, diverse, and geographically dispersed. Small cities are increasingly becoming key Civil Rights battlegrounds as the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) implements a “de…
Engagements with a Productively Unstable Category: Anthropologists and Nongovernmental Organizations
The category "NGO" (nongovernmental organization) is notoriously hard to fix. The term NGO-which defines these organizations in terms of what they are not-masks great diversity and assumes an unproblematic boundary. The use of the term persists, in no small part because several different types of actors involved in a range of fields depend on what we call the "productive instability" inherent to the NGO category. As a discipline, given our histor…
Disaster capitalism
The term "disaster capitalism," launched in 2005 by activist journalist Naomi Klein, still has resonance within social movement circles. Yet its proliferation in media and social movements risks a confusion and weakening of the core concept and critiques. As anthropologists who value local communities' understanding of their own social world, how do we confront such a concept? What are our roles, both in clarifying and understanding the concept? …
Pa Manyen Fanm Nan Konsa: Intersectionality, Structural Violence, and Vulnerability Before and After Haiti's Earthquake
On January 12, 2010, an earthquake in Haiti sent shockwaves across the world, triggering an unprecedented international response. In the months that followed, international news, legal, development, human rights, and solidarity agencies highlighted the issue of gender-based violence, which has by all accounts increased since the earthquake. Despite activists' nuanced understanding and efforts, official responses have been inadequate while reprodu…
Gluing Globalization: NGOs as Intermediaries in Haiti
Drawing from two ethnographic case studies, both from Haiti, this article argues that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), as intermediaries, "glue" globalization in four ways. First, in their "gap filler" roles NGOs provide legitimacy to globalization, representing alternatives to states fragmented by neoliberalism. Second, NGOs, in the contemporary neoliberal aid regime, can undermine the governance capacity of states in the Global South, erod…
Disaster capitalism
The term "disaster capitalism," launched in 2005 by activist journalist Naomi Klein, still has resonance within social movement circles. Yet its proliferation in media and social movements risks a confusion and weakening of the core concept and critiques. As anthropologists who value local communities' understanding of their own social world, how do we confront such a concept? What are our roles, both in clarifying and understanding the concept? …
Seeing Like a "Failed" NGO: Globalization-s Impacts on State and Civil Society in Haiti
Engagements with a Productively Unstable Category: Anthropologists and Nongovernmental Organizations
The category "NGO" (nongovernmental organization) is notoriously hard to fix. The term NGO-which defines these organizations in terms of what they are not-masks great diversity and assumes an unproblematic boundary. The use of the term persists, in no small part because several different types of actors involved in a range of fields depend on what we call the "productive instability" inherent to the NGO category. As a discipline, given our histor…
The Conflicts of Crisis: Critical Reflections on Feminist Ethnography and Anthropological Activism
Aid projects: The effects of commodification and exchange
Humanitarian aid and local power structures: Lessons from Haiti's 'shadow disaster
This paper investigates the confluence of humanitarian aid, centralisation, and politics. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010 led to more than USD 16 billion in pledges. By contrast, Hurricane Matthew, which made landfall in Haiti on 4 October 2016, stayed in the shadows, attracting about one per cent of the amount. While the earthquake exhibited one face of centralisation, the Category 4 storm laid bare rural vulnerabilities…
Dilemmas of anthropological activism, solidarity, and human rights: Lessons from Haiti
Building on a growing anthropological engagement with and interrogation of the multiple forms and meanings of activism, this article-based on over 20 years of activist engagement and ethnographic interviews spanning 11 years-offers ethnographically grounded understandings of solidarity activism. The rich and at times messy (auto)ethnographic data suggest that contradictions inherent to liberal humanism can increase hierarchies and social distance…
Being an Insider Without: Activist Anthropological Engagement in Haiti after the Earthquake
Reproducing the "white public space" in anthropology faculty searches
Kabrit ki gen twòp mèt: Understanding gaps in Wash services in Haiti's IDP camps
Despite the enormous infusion of post-quake aid to Haiti, cholera had killed more than 8,000 people by January 2013. Based on two mixed-method studies of a random sample of 108 internally displaced person (IDP) camps and 168 interviews with agency representatives and recipients, this article examines the prevalence of factors that have proven most relevant to the rapid spread of cholera, particularly the provision of water and sanitation services…
From Activist to Applied Anthropologist to Anthropologist? On the Politics of Collaboration
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mark Schuller; From Activist to Applied Anthropologist to Anthropologist? On the Politics of Collaboration. Practicing Anthropology 1 January 2010; 32 (1): 43–47. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/praa.32.1.b435021625351374 Download citation file: Ris (Zote…
Pa Manyen Fanm Nan Konsa: Intersectionality, Structural Violence, and Vulnerability Before and After Haiti's Earthquake
On January 12, 2010, an earthquake in Haiti sent shockwaves across the world, triggering an unprecedented international response. In the months that followed, international news, legal, development, human rights, and solidarity agencies highlighted the issue of gender-based violence, which has by all accounts increased since the earthquake. Despite activists' nuanced understanding and efforts, official responses have been inadequate while reprodu…
Challenges to Solidarity across Multiple Borders: Haiti's Free Trade Zone
Introductioncreated in 2003 with a US$23 million World Bank loan to a private Dominican company, Haiti's Free Trade Zone (FTZ) promised an economically depressed region thousands of well-paying jobs and 'development' to the poor border town of Ouanaminthe. However, the realities were more complex; many peasants lost their land, and factory owners and unions had a long struggle. Haitian workers were ultimately granted rights to unionise, and won a…
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology
Sex, Lies and International Aid: A Tale of Two Scandals
Seeing Like a "Failed" NGO: Globalization-s Impacts on State and Civil Society in Haiti
Capitalizing on catastrophe: Neoliberal strategies in disaster reconstruction
Part 1 Part I. Framing the Capitalization of Catastrophes Chapter 2 Chapter 1. Human Security versus Neoliberal Approaches to Disaster Recovery Chapter 3 Chapter 2. Deconstructing the Disaster after the Disaster: Conceptualizing Disaster Capitalism Chapter 4 Chapter 3. Through a Glass, Darkly: Humanitarianism and Empire Part 5 Part II. Tourism as Reconstruction Chapter 6 Chapter 4. International Tourism and Disaster Capitalism: The Case of Hurric…
Twinning Faith and Development: Catholic Parish Partnering in the US and Haiti by Tara Hefferan
From Activist to Applied Anthropologist to Anthropologist? On the Politics of Collaboration
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mark Schuller; From Activist to Applied Anthropologist to Anthropologist? On the Politics of Collaboration. Practicing Anthropology 1 January 2010; 32 (1): 43–47. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/praa.32.1.b435021625351374 Download citation file: Ris (Zote…
Gluing Globalization: NGOs as Intermediaries in Haiti
Drawing from two ethnographic case studies, both from Haiti, this article argues that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), as intermediaries, "glue" globalization in four ways. First, in their "gap filler" roles NGOs provide legitimacy to globalization, representing alternatives to states fragmented by neoliberalism. Second, NGOs, in the contemporary neoliberal aid regime, can undermine the governance capacity of states in the Global South, erod…
Playing Politics With Aid
Trauma and Solidarity in the New Haiti
"Trauma and Solidarity in the New Haiti." NACLA Report on the Americas, 43(2), p. 4 Additional informationNotes on contributorsMark SchullerMark Schuller teaches African American studies and anthropology at York College, the City University of New York. He edited, with Nandini Gunewardena, Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction (Alta Mira Press, 2008) and codirected, with Renée Bergan, the documentary film P…
They Treat Us Like Animals’
Shattered and Scattered: Haiti’s Quake Through the Lens of Human Rights
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMark SchullerMark Schuller is Assistant Professor of African American studies and anthropology at York College, CUNY. He is the co-editor of Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction (Alta Mira, 2008) and co-director/co-producer of Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy (Documentary Educational Resources, 2009)
"They Forgot about Us!" Gender and Haiti's IDP Camps
Research Article| September 01 2011 “They Forgot about Us!” Gender and Haiti's IDP Camps Mark Schuller Mark Schuller Mark Schuller is an assistant professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at York College (CUNY). He is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on globalization, NGOs, civil society, and development in Haiti. His insights have been published in public media, including Huffington Post, Counterpunch…
Challenges to Solidarity across Multiple Borders: Haiti's Free Trade Zone
Introductioncreated in 2003 with a US$23 million World Bank loan to a private Dominican company, Haiti's Free Trade Zone (FTZ) promised an economically depressed region thousands of well-paying jobs and 'development' to the poor border town of Ouanaminthe. However, the realities were more complex; many peasants lost their land, and factory owners and unions had a long struggle. Haitian workers were ultimately granted rights to unionise, and won a…
Working with Students on a Mixed-Methods, Social Justice Approach to Understanding Haiti's Internally Displaced Persons Camps
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mark Schuller; Working with Students on a Mixed-Methods, Social Justice Approach to Understanding Haiti's Internally Displaced Persons Camps. Practicing Anthropology 1 July 2013; 35 (3): 3–7. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/praa.35.3.c8nq412h7331mm6n Download citatio…
Fault Lines: Views across Haiti’s Divide by Beverly Bell (review)
Reviewed by: Fault Lines: Views across Haiti’s Divide by Beverly Bell Mark Schuller Fault Lines: Views across Haiti’s Divide. By Beverly Bell, with foreword by Edwidge Danticat. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8014-7769-0. 256pp. $18.95 paperback. Haiti’s 2010 earthquake has inspired at least two dozen books in English so far. Charles Forsdick has published an excellent review of this now crowded field.1 Four years after th…
Kabrit ki gen twòp mèt: Understanding gaps in Wash services in Haiti's IDP camps
Despite the enormous infusion of post-quake aid to Haiti, cholera had killed more than 8,000 people by January 2013. Based on two mixed-method studies of a random sample of 108 internally displaced person (IDP) camps and 168 interviews with agency representatives and recipients, this article examines the prevalence of factors that have proven most relevant to the rapid spread of cholera, particularly the provision of water and sanitation services…
Being an Insider Without: Activist Anthropological Engagement in Haiti after the Earthquake
The Conflicts of Crisis: Critical Reflections on Feminist Ethnography and Anthropological Activism
Pa Manyen Fanm Nan Konsa: Intersectionality, Structural Violence, and Vulnerability Before and After Haiti's Earthquake
On January 12, 2010, an earthquake in Haiti sent shockwaves across the world, triggering an unprecedented international response. In the months that followed, international news, legal, development, human rights, and solidarity agencies highlighted the issue of gender-based violence, which has by all accounts increased since the earthquake. Despite activists' nuanced understanding and efforts, official responses have been inadequate while reprodu…
Introduction to Special Issue: Seeing Obama's Election through the Black Americas: Ethnographic Perspectives as a Mirror
Based on fieldwork in Argentina, Ecuador, Jamaica, and Martinique during the 2008 campaign and the 2009 inauguration, extended to the 2012 election cycle, these articles build on anthropological scholarship on Diaspora. Local communities’ responses to the election and inauguration provide a look “behind the mirror” (Gregory 2007). Specifically, building on insights from Kamari Maxine Clarke (2010), this transnational connection imagined and calle…
Disaster capitalism
The term "disaster capitalism," launched in 2005 by activist journalist Naomi Klein, still has resonance within social movement circles. Yet its proliferation in media and social movements risks a confusion and weakening of the core concept and critiques. As anthropologists who value local communities' understanding of their own social world, how do we confront such a concept? What are our roles, both in clarifying and understanding the concept? …
Haiti's ‘Republic of NGOs’
NGOs and other foreign entities took control of the humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake, creating parallel structures that contributed to the very duplication and state weaknesses that NGOs were supposed to solve
“Being Heard, Not Only Seen”: Intersections of Tea Partyism, Racism, and Classism in a Low-income Housing Struggle in Dekalb, Illinois
Civil Rights struggles are waged locally but are always a part of, and impact, larger contexts. Eight years after the sub-prime mortgage industry's collapse triggered the “Great Recession,” struggles for housing and neighborhood development are complex, diverse, and geographically dispersed. Small cities are increasingly becoming key Civil Rights battlegrounds as the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) implements a “de…
Engagements with a Productively Unstable Category: Anthropologists and Nongovernmental Organizations
The category "NGO" (nongovernmental organization) is notoriously hard to fix. The term NGO-which defines these organizations in terms of what they are not-masks great diversity and assumes an unproblematic boundary. The use of the term persists, in no small part because several different types of actors involved in a range of fields depend on what we call the "productive instability" inherent to the NGO category. As a discipline, given our histor…
Deadly River: Cholera and Cover-Up in Post-Earthquake Haiti, by Ralph R. Frerichs
Political science (28 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Anthropology (10 works) · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture (9 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (9 works) · History (9 works) · Economics (7 works)