632 | Social Service Review

poor families, with important geographic implications for the communities

in which they live and work.
Daniel P. Gitterman
University of North Carolina

Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs. Mark Schuller.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012. Pp. 256. $72.00 ðclothÞ;
$26.95 ðpaperÞ.

This ethnographic and sociopolitical study, set in Haiti during the 2004
coup and its aftermath and extending until just beyond the 2010 cata-
strophic earthquake, is crafted by a professor of African American Studies
and Anthropology at York College of City University of New York. Mark
Schuller has an impressive ability to carry the reader from the micro-
individual level of two devoted Haitian activists of separate nongovern-
mental organizations ðNGOsÞ to the national historical, political, social,
economic, and cultural environment of Haitians collectively, and ultimately
to the international and global macro realm, at which level he describes
and critiques the forces and organizations operating in Haiti. The pro-
gression of his analysis is largely chronological, interspersed with first-
person accounts, and he carefully elucidates Haiti’s modern political his-
tory. The bulk of Schuller’s work was conducted before the 2010 Haiti
quake, though the disaster is discussed briefly in the introduction, the con-
clusion, and in a few parts of interior chapters. The study makes obvious
why post-quake NGO aid has been so difficult to do both in the context of
Haiti today and given the current environment of international humani-
tarian assistance.
The book is a running and comprehensive comparative examination of
two Haitian NGOs, each manifesting different organizational structures
and styles, each dependent on different types of donors, and each with
different methods and tactics in providing humanitarian aid to the Hai-
tian people. Both NGOs administer and distribute development aid. How-
ever, the author demonstrates that the success, failure, or mixed results
achieved by each NGO at various times is influenced in large part ðbut
not exclusivelyÞ by the behavior, motives, and patience of outside donors:
some of them individual governments, some collective multinational gov-

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 Book Reviews | 633

ernmental entities ðsometimes banksÞ, some semiprivate corporate or foun-

dational charities powerful enough to work alone or through government
foreign assistance agencies, and others purely private ðcorporations and
contractorsÞ or nonprofit ðaltruistic organizations, many of them serving
various religious causes and denominationsÞ. Sove Lavi and Fanm Tet An-
sanm are the two Haitian NGOs at the heart of the study. The former is
very much top-down, bureaucratically centralized, and highly dependent on
USAID funding, which comes intermittently, in wildly vacillating amounts,
and with reporting conditions reflecting the social values and proclivities
of various presidential administrations over time. Sove Lavi, as Schuller re-
veals, has difficulties securing local buy-in because it is not grassroots in
its methods, though the organization does make meaningful contributions
to the people of Haiti in some of its programs and activities. Schuller dis-
closes that the organization was founded as a “utility of the Haitian gov-
ernment” ð114Þ. In contrast, Fanm Tet Ansanm, largely funded through an
arm of the European Union, has more freedom to act and more patience
in striving for long-term results. It is a long-operating NGO with roots in
the labor movement that relies heavily on local collaboration in what it
undertakes. Schuller gives both NGOs equal coverage but praises Fanm Tet
Ansanm more than Sove Lavi for achieving somewhat better outcomes.
Neither Haitian NGO is well resourced nor is either smooth running.
Because Schuller, unlike many scholars studying specific developing
nations, has actually lived in his target nation for many months to years
as he conducted his field research, he is able to supplement his research
with rich description. He has made successive visits to Haiti over the past
10 years and is fluent in Kreyol and French, thus providing him entrée
with the Haitians he meets, interviews, and observes. The study delivers
engaging personal accounts of two women, both Haitian NGO activists:
Marie-Ange of Sove Lavi’s Community Action Councils and Giselle of Fanm
Tet Ansanm. At the time she was interviewed, Marie-Ange was a divorced
single mother in her mid-50s, who dedicated her life to service. Giselle was
a former factory worker and mother of several children. Struggling to pay
for her education, she eventually served in a network of public health vol-
unteers, AIDS peer educators, and in neighborhood associations. Each
gave Schuller an extraordinary vantage point from which to investigate
and observe. The struggles, heroic efforts, and experiences of Marie-Ange
and Giselle, as well as others interviewed, carry the study forward as an

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634 | Social Service Review

ethnography and as a social service policy analysis informed by grassroots

activism.
Schuller himself claims that people observing Haiti from the outside
tend to categorize it as a basket case when it comes to economic and po-
litical advancement. Many of these people would like to know how and if
they could offer meaningful and efficacious humanitarian aid to the peo-
ple of this seriously disadvantaged nation. Schuller’s book parachutes its
readers into Haiti and guides them through the full context of Haiti’s pre-
dicament. He does not hold Haiti and its government blameless, but he
does maintain that many of Haiti’s problems have been at first a function
of early eighteenth- and nineteenth-century economic imperialism, later US
Monroe Doctrine and cold war exploitation and manipulation, and more
recently the result of neoliberalism and “democratic ðand trickle downÞ
imperialism” ð21–22Þ. Schuller defines neoliberalism as Reaganomics or of
late “Tea Party” politics, both of which assume government is “big bureau-
cracy” with excesses that tend to make it corrupt and ineffective ð8Þ. Amer-
ican neoliberalism advocates cut foreign aid with pressures on poor nations,
such as Haiti, to reduce import tariffs, which Schuller says are in place to
protect their few indigenous agricultural and industrial activities. He claims
that most humanitarian organizations outside of government had escaped
this criticism until the earthquake of 2010.
As a researcher of disaster management ðsee Richard Sylves, Disaster
Policy and Politics ½Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2008Þ, I was disappointed
that so little of the work directly addressed the Haiti earthquake of 2010,
recovery from this event, and how the full realm of humanitarian assis-
tance in Haiti may have changed, or been unchanged, by the disaster. My
criticism may be tempered because Schuller and Pablo Morales published
an edited work entitled Tectonic Shifts: Haiti since the Earthquake ðSter-
ling, VA: Stylus, 2012Þ, which does examine the disaster and ensuing relief
assistance, much of it by NGOs.
The title Killing with Kindness implies that the disjointedness of hu-
manitarian aid, along with the differences between donors and recipients
in values, economic class, cultures, language, and religions, and the awk-
wardness and insensitivity in aid distribution methods undermine the al-
truistic efforts of aid providers. This cumulative failure has deadly con-
sequences for some of the many hundreds of thousands of Haitians who
barely survive from one day to the next. Schuller paints a sad picture of
Haiti’s government corruption and incompetence. He shows how Haiti’s

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 Book Reviews | 635

government is regularly undermined by outside NGOs and conditions

of foreign government humanitarian aid whenever it attempts reforms.
Many of these visiting NGO organizations, though well meaning, become
intrusive bodies that create geographic spheres of jurisdiction indepen-
dent of, and unhelpful to, the Haiti national government and its people
generally. Schuller ends his study by offering his prescriptive policy so-
lutions, and students of humanitarian assistance are guaranteed an eye-
opening experience. His analysis painstakingly demonstrates the condi-
tions and challenges facing the two Haitian NGOs, and he chronicles how
humanitarian aid succeeds or fails in Haiti. Schuller’s message is not one
of fatalism or resignation but rather a spirited call for do-gooders to take
on their work with a sophisticated appreciation of the social, political,
economic, cultural, and historical environment in which NGO humani-
tarian assistance and development aid is rendered.
Richard Sylves
George Washington University

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