When disaster strikes, the humanitarian operation tends to eclipse what survivors themselves do and want, particularly where the national state and international agencies are seen as carrying colonial power structures forward.

Melis and Jean spent four months in Haiti, interviewing people affected by Hurricane Matthew alongside state officials and humanitarian actors and running focus group discussions in Port-au-Prince, Jeremie, Les Cayes, and Dame Marie. Their question was what societal actors can actually do where state and society are sharply disconnected.

The response, they find, made existing tensions worse: aid became politicized and affected communities were largely shut out of decisions about it. Society-based actors negotiated the terms of assistance anyway, through public protest and quieter everyday resistance, and through social networks and aid structures of their own. A more locally led response, the article argues, requires closing the gap between society and state.