Thinking and making urban knowledge in a dependent country (Haiti) in the age of neoliberalism. Complex challenges and issues!

Description

Surprising as it may seem in a country where the urban question should occupy pride of place, the subject is of little interest to twentieth-century Haitian researchers. However, the spotlight on the capital, at the heart of the country's development, especially since the disaster of January 12, 2010, has led to a shift in scale and perspective.  Geographers, like sociologists and historians, are showing their sensitivity to a type of production that takes the city of Port-au-Prince as its object. From this perspective, numerous initiatives are being taken to understand the city. Training and research programs in urban studies are certainly necessary, but seem to suffer from a profound influence from the outside.
Our presentation aims to show that the knowledge that is being produced and disseminated is quite simply suggested knowledge, and to underline the difficulty of building a powerful urban knowledge in a context of subordination.

Guest Speaker

Georges Eddy Lucien is a professor at the Université d'État d'Haïti and the Université Quisqueya. He holds a Habilitation à Diriger de la Recherche in Geography from the University of Paris8 and also completed a thesis in Urban History at the University of Toulouse, Le Mirail, and a post-doctorate in Urban Studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal. He is currently director of the Laboratoire dynamique des mondes américains (LADMA, École normale supérieure de Port-au-Prince), director of the Masters in Geography at the École Normale Supérieure/Paris, and co-director of the History Department (ISERSS/Université d'État d'Haïti).