Beyond the question being deliberated in Africa concerning the existence of local ‘institutional and intellectual traditions’ of ethnology (of the social and cultural anthropological order) (Copans, 2007), the challenge to be dealt with today in Haiti consists especially in reviving a relatively ‘old’ national tradition, which dates back to the nineteenth century, before the establishment of the Institut d'ethnologie de Port-au-Prince in the 1940s, and which did not survive the most sombre moments of the Duvalier dictatorship (particularly the 1960s) and its fall in 1986. In fact, after years of lethargic existence, it is only in the past two years that the discipline of ethnology and its institutional framework, the Faculty of Ethnology, are undergoing a sort of resurgence. Certain circumstances, such as the integration of young teachers who are well connected to international research networks and the hosting of well-respected foreign researchers, have contributed to the rapid renewal of the discipline and will undoubtedly lead to a certain, if not vigorous, revitalization of the Haitian ethnological tradition.

That said, the current resurgence of scholarship around ethnological practice in Haiti will only sustain itself if we understand its complex history. And so, in this essay, I propose a historical contextualization of the practice of ethnology in Haiti. If a guiding thematic of this volume is to consider how one's own scholarship is linked to the evolution of one's discipline, then my own professional journey – from philosophy to ethnology, as related to the social movements in Haiti since 1986 – is illustrative not only of the evolution of the discipline, but also of the why and how of the very recent resurgence of ethnographic practice in Haiti.

Let us begin with a coincidence of circumstance, which I argue has shaped the intellectual history of anthropology in Haiti, and made a strong impression on me. The year 1986 saw the publication of Writing Culture, one of the most influential texts in the history of anthropology, a sort of advent announcing a new age, that of critical anthropology, often referred to as postmodern anthropology. The same year was marked by another event, in the full sense of the word ‘event’: I was a witness to the political upheaval of the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship.