On "looting" in Haiti post-Earthquake

Rebecca Solnit writes, "We live and die by words and ideas, and it matters desperately that we get them right."

This article is a moving, and devastating indictment of the discourse of 'looting' in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti last winter. It connects these issues to questions of what constitutes 'security' and 'relief'. Her piece exposes the myriad ways race, class, and nationality form unexamined assumptions that serve as the foundation for how people are represented, and how we think about and theorize such problems in the first place. This piece is strongly recommended as a follow up to the issues of race and class privilege we've be discussing in class, and a precursor to discussions the contributions of post-colonial theory to IR.