"New" Social Movements: Alternative Modernities, (Trans)local Nationalisms, and Solidarity Economies

Authors

Mamyrah Prosper, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

Global and Sociocultural Studies

First Advisor's Name

Vrushali Patil

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Jean Muteba Rahier

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Third Advisor's Name

Caroline Faria

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Alexandra Cornelius

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

Social Movements, Postcolonial Nation-State, Haiti, Nationalism, Solidarity Economy, Globalization, Mondernity

Date of Defense

3-20-2015

Abstract

My dissertation is the first project on the Haitian Platform for Advocacy for an Alternative Development- PAPDA, a nation-building coalition founded by activists from varying sectors to coordinate one comprehensive nationalist movement against what they are calling an Occupation. My work not only provides information on this under-theorized popular movement but also situates it within the broader literature on the postcolonial nation-state as well as Latin American and Caribbean social movements. The dissertation analyzes the contentious relationship between local and global discourses and practices of citizenship. Furthermore, the research draws on transnational feminist theory to underline the scattered hegemonies that intersect to produce varied spaces and practices of sovereignty within the Haitian postcolonial nation-state. The dissertation highlights how race and class, gender and sexuality, education and language, and religion have been imagined and co-constituted by Haitian social movements in constructing ‘new’ collective identities that collapse the private and the public, the rural and the urban, the traditional and the modern. My project complements the scholarship on social movements and the postcolonial nation-state and pushes it forward by emphasizing its spatial dimensions. Moreover, the dissertation de-centers the state to underline the movement of capital, goods, resources, and populations that shape the postcolonial experience. I re-define the postcolonial nation-state as a network of local, regional, international, and transnational arrangements between different political agents, including social movement actors. To conduct this interdisciplinary research project, I employed ethnographic methods, discourse and textual analysis, as well as basic mapping and statistical descriptions in order to present a historically-rooted interpretation of individual and organizational negotiations for community-based autonomy and regional development.

Identifier

FI15032153

Recommended Citation

Prosper, Mamyrah, ""New" Social Movements: Alternative Modernities, (Trans)local Nationalisms, and Solidarity Economies" (2015). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1849.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1849