Open AccessMULTISCALE HOME: Shifting Landscapes and Living‐in‐Movement in Haiti
Author(s) -
NEIBURG FEDERICO
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
cultural anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.669
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1548-1360
pISSN - 0886-7356
DOI - 10.14506/ca36.4.02
Subject(s) - townsend , craft , humanities , sociology , tragedy (event) , wright , history , art history , art , archaeology , social science , physics , quantum mechanics
In January 2010, a catastrophic earthquake ravaged Haiti. In areas such as Port‐au‐Prince, the tragedy was compounded by an ensuing cholera outbreak. Here, conditions of prolonged crisis illuminate people's resilient house‐ing responses at the intersection of two dynamics: the vital relational character of Haitian houses and the necessity of mobility for producing new life. Rooted in the Haitian post‐plantation world, the house ( kay ) does not constitute a bounded space but is rather realized conceptually and materially at diverse scales: people belong to many interdependent houses and houses belong to many interrelated people, sutured across space and time and between the living and the dead. In the wake of the 2010 disaster, and now amid the COVID‐19 pandemic, new challenges and opportunities have arisen for diasporic families as they craft ways to enact and secure multiscale forms of livelihood.