Fieldwork inside two development organisations in Port-au-Prince supplies the material for this study of how Haitians talk about development, and of what that talk accomplishes. Joersz treats the question named in her title as one people ask constantly among themselves, diagnosing failure, assigning historical blame and imagining what should be done.

Rather than reading development as a dominant ideology imposed from outside, the analysis borrows from linguistic anthropology and treats speech as a form of action. Meetings, arguments and everyday conversation become sites where participants negotiate standing, press claims against one another and address themselves to those holding power. Development supplies both a way of ordering time and a moral demand.

Set against a combative political climate in which rival interpretations of any actor or institution are fought over openly, such talk emerges as a means of forming and reforming political commitments at once personal and national.