By: HaitiAnalysis

New York City- From June 6 to June 8, 2008, the Global Studies Association (GSA) of North America held its annual conference at Pace University in New York City. In attendance were over a hundred academics focused on issues surrounding globalization and the nation-state.

The well-known globalization theorists, Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, and Immanuel Wallerstein of Yale University, provided keynote talks on the first day of the conference.

On the second day, in one conference panel, University of California Santa Barbara alum Mark Schuller and Renée Bergan showcased clips of their new film ‘Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy’. With beautiful footage and numerous interviews the film delved into the socio-economic roots and economic hardships of Haitian women.

On Sunday, the third day of the conference, Schuller gave a talk delving into his dissertation research, describing a ‘disaster capitalism’ that has swept into Haiti and other countries following natural disasters and political upheaval. He observed that following the 2004 ouster of Haiti’s elected constitutional authorities an unelected interim regime worked with international donors to put in place a program of privatization and heightened neo-liberalism, erasing gains made over the prior decade. He described this as part of the disaster capitalism as discussed by the author Naomi Klein.

The post-coup privatization and forced budget adjustments, as Schuller described, meant the laying off of thousands of workers. While this is a global trend, he noted that there is growing resistance using the example of the trade unionists of the Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH) who are organizing against privatization.

During panels with Bill Fletcher Jr., former TransAfrica President and chief executive officer, CUNY Professor William Tabb, and John Hopkins University Professor Giovanni Arrighi, Haiti was further discussed following questions by members of the audience. One question revolved around the role of elite civil society, foreign states and supranational institutions in Haiti: can a transnational political consensus between the actions of these elite civil society and state institutions be seen?

University of California Santa Barbara Professor William I. Robinson spoke on Saturday in which he provided critique of the commonly used state-centric analysis of political economy, most associated with the British academic David Harvey. He described how a transnational capitalist class has an overarching joint interest in the maintenance and expansion of global capitalism. He observed that there are clear political parallels to top down economic globalization.

---