"Joos' Urban Dwellings, Haitian Citizenships undertakes a monumental task-analyzing the failures of international aid and post-disaster reconstruction through the lens of urban housing. Arguing for embodied forms of dwelling, Joos compellingly argues for Haitian models of urban housing built upon communal living, vernacular architecture, and sustainable habitation. Through his intimate, empathic ethnography, Joos powerfully asserts a 'right to the city' (and the country) through spatial citizenship, a correlate to what Mimi Sheller (Island Futures) defines as mobile justice."
Jana Evans Braziel, author of Riding with Death: Vodou Art and Urban Ecology in the Streets of Port-au-Prince
"Urban Dwellings, Haitian Citizenships is a tour de force, arguing for the importance of place in belonging and citizenship. Exceptionally well-researched, weaving a rich and diverse set of first-hand accounts with scholars from Haiti and elsewhere, Joos brings a critique of foreign disaster capitalism to the highest level, pushing hard against sensationalist narratives."
Mark Schuller, author of Humanity's Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe
New Books Network - New Books in Caribbean Studies
The Society for Cultural Anthropology
"Richly narrated ethnographies accompanied by well-documented urban projects convey Joos' principal argument: that culturally anchored practices related to reciprocal networks, income-generation (ti kome´s), social organization, and vernacular dwelling typologies (structures that withstood the earthquake on most occasions), are socially, economically and ecologically sustainable forms of urbanism that may offer viable alternatives to conventional post-disaster rehabilitation trajectories and internationally sponsored urban planning that turn a blind eye to 'what already is.'"
ERLACS
"Richly narrated ethnographies accompanied by well-documented urban projects convey Joos' principal argument: that culturally anchored practices related to reciprocal networks, income-generation (ti kome?s), social organization, and vernacular dwelling typologies (structures that withstood the earthquake on most occasions), are socially, economically and ecologically sustainable forms of urbanism that may offer viable alternatives to conventional post-disaster rehabilitation trajectories and internationally sponsored urban planning that turn a blind eye to 'what already is.'"
ERLACS
