Research Institute of Latin American Studies (RILAS)
Research Seminar Programme Semester 2, 2008-2009
 
Thursday 5th March 2009, 4.00 p.m.
Lecture Room 3, Latin American Studies (86 Bedford Street South)
 
Dr David Howard
(Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh)
 
‘The Hidden ‘Race’ of Development: Policing and Immigration Policies in the Dominican Republic’
 
All Welcome
 
Abstract
The UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism in 2001 brought race explicitly into the spotlight of development discourse, but as White (2002: 407) has noted, ‘Talking about racism in development [remains] like breaking a taboo’. The relative failure of this international meeting is consistent with an ongoing marginalisation of racism in development policy and practice. This paper advances an incipient agenda which has begun to address the occlusion of race and the lack of anti-racism or multicultural policy proposals in the broad area of development. In expanding the geography of race, the theoretical and material outcomes of its neglect in neoliberal development policy is explored in the Dominican Republic.
A steady rise in reported racist and violent attacks against people presumed to be of Haitian origin over the last five years, allied with popular and government claims that Haitian immigration is detrimental to the economy, thus provide the immediate context for the paper. The rhetorical and practical ‘development spaces’ of Dominican society are acutely racialized. Such tension is repeated in both government and development agency action: a two-day workshop hosted by an international development agency in Santo Domingo, in February 2006, became a highly publicised forum for anti-immigration and nationalist discourse and a rejection of Haitian presence in the country. Thus, the silent discourse of racism hidden in the policy issues became fully verbalised and broadcast under the auspices of an ‘economic development’ agenda. The paper does not argue that racism is implicit in development practice, but that the continued failure by all actors to
 confront racialized discourse or to recognise malignant ‘discursive repertoires’ of race (Frankenburg 1993) maintain, and at times strengthen, its presence.
 
Bio
Based in the Institute of Geography at the University of Edinburgh, David Howard has research interests in contemporary social and urban geographies of the Caribbean and Latin America. His specific interests focus on the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, and on the theoretical links between urban policing, territory, violence and racial discrimination. In the Scottish context, he has two subsidiary research interests: firstly, the impact of current anti-racism and multicultural policies; and secondly, Scottish transatlantic connections with Jamaica and the historical role of the port of Leith as a point of passage. He is currently a CNRS Associate at the Centre d’Étude d’Afrique Noire, Université de Bordeaux IV; co-ordinating editor for the Bulletin of Latin American Research, and Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies.