Beckett, Greg. There is No More Haiti: Between Life and Death in Port-au-Prince. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019, 295 pages

Greg Beckett makes his anthropological intentions very clear in the opening pages of There is No More Haiti: it is to tell “a human story, a story about how crisis feels to those who live with it every day” (5), by sharing stories carefully collected and curated over a decade of fieldwork and research, mostly in Haiti at the turn of the twenty-first century. Beckett explores in detail what was meant by one of the interlocutors who brazenly stated there is no more of Haiti, through the eyes and experiences of male interlocutors of varying ages, economic strata, and political acumen. The state of the country and its population’s future is described through a “Haitian account of crisis” (12) and its everyday nature in contemporary life. The book is a meta-narrative: it lunges from crisis to crisis to give readers the discomfort that comes from the ubiquity of crises and explains how one can become naturalized to the existence of ongoing crisis and allow it to become a routine and normative element of one’s life. This passionate, compelling read is faithful to its book jacket: it is a different way of looking at Haiti by accepting how ordinary and insidious the never-ending crisis has become to Haitians, and how economic, environmental, and political instability is persistently being socially reproduced. In the first chapter, Beckett introduces the reader to an urban forest in the heart of Port-au-Prince, and the accompanying political dynamics in its preservation as a botanical garden, refuge, and food supply for city-dwellers; these lush descriptions of the forest are almost jarring juxtapositions to the usual narratives of the city’s chaotic and dirty neighbourhoods. Beckett describes the many political tensions amongst factions present around and in the forest space; in turn, the multiple conflicts provide an inkling to living with slow-onset and burgeoning crisis. The chapter provides thorough descriptions of the obstacles faced by rural dwellers migrating to the city seeking better life and opportunities, while facing ongoing racism and rejections in marginalized spaces such as the urban forest. The brewing conflict between those wishing to preserve the forest, migrant squatters and armed gangs securing criminal territory become recurring flashpoints and fights over issues of inclusion versus exclusion. Beckett continues the foray into what he refers to as “slow crisis” by following a group of urban men taking up space in the informal economy as art dealers, chauffeurs, and tourist guides, “looking for life” (76) known in Creole as chache lavi. As migrants from Haiti’s rural areas who thrived during Jean-Claude Duvalier’s administration and Haiti’s tourism heyday from the early 1970s; the same men have been trying to make ends meet since the mid-80s after Haiti’s tourism industry collapse from Western powers’ attestations of links between Haiti and the AIDS epidemic. The author relates stories of these participants in the resulting informal economy, their interdependencies and solidarity among Haitians, the tenuousness of continually combining social relationships with means of survival. Economic crises from currency devaluations and imposed structural changes demanded by foreign investors, along with instability from subsequent coups and changes in provisional governments compound the effects on Haitians. This is where the ordinariness of crisis in Haiti becomes evident, with the acceptance of fate and cynicism of the future. The search for meaningfulness and value relies on the social reproduction of relations “necessary for daily survival (…) Having good relations with others and having a large network of people is a central part of looking for life in the city” (84). This reinforces the continuous lifecycle of obligations and fulfillment within a formal economy while the …