Urban growth in Haiti has taken the form of what Beckett calls slumification, and it has produced a pervasive sense of crisis. The article sets out the history of that urban crisis and works through instances of slum-making to show how the shape of the city has been produced by a dialectic between the state and statelessness.

Port-au-Prince is where that dialectic plays out. Residents feel they ought to fall within the state's reach and at the same time feel shut out. The capital holds political and administrative power, yet it is routinely described as ungoverned terrain, a visible sign that the state is missing.

Beckett argues the reverse. The capital's troubles arise not because governance is missing but because of the particular way it is done, which he names the art of not governing.