We know the field better: Peasant associations, NGOs, and agronomists in rural Haitian development

Recent studies on intellectuals affiliated with peasant social movements demonstrate that intellectuals act as intermediaries between the subordinated group and national society and frame the discourse of the social movement for local, national, and international audiences. However often the organic ties between locally based intellectuals and the peasant organizations are severed and result in a change in representative discourse from one of representation to one of paternalism. The effect is a new class dynamic between the peasantry and the urban professional class from which these intellectuals are drawn. In order to comprehend the change in class ties and between intellectuals and peasant organizations it is necessary to understand the influence exerted by international non governmental organizations (NGOs) on local governments and social movements and how peasant organizations serve to justify the NGOs mission statement and financial support. To achieve this we must pay close attention to the system by which international aid organizations communicate and work with local level peasant associations through the mediation of local level intellectuals and professional supporters.;This research, adopting a Gramscian theoretical approach, provides an ethnographic analysis of peasant associations in rural Haiti and their collaborative and conflicting relationships with agronomist-intellectuals and the NGOs for whom these intellectuals work. Based on nine months intensive ethnographic study in rural southwest Haiti, this research concludes that localized intellectuals, as intermediaries between northern development organizations and southern grassroots associations, act as carriers of a northern hegemonic development discourse that seeks to position these associations as organizations of civil society that support free market principles and mechanisms. As peasant associations adopt this discourse through participation in the benefits of economic development practice, there develops contradictions in the political self-consciousness of these associations. Though this contradictory consciousness allows the peasantry to organize for the betterment of their communities, it prevents the development of a political consciousness by preventing these associations from involvement in political processes or political action. The broader implication of these conclusions is a reconsideration of the perceived relationship between civil society and political society by development agencies as they work among southern populations around the world.