Description
influenced by global capital and external forces, the small developing countries of the Caribbean share historical legacies of foreign domination and transplanted institutions. In Contradictory Existence, the relationship between capitalism, manifested in the contemporary dispensation as neoliberalism, and democracy is explored and the authors demonstrate how history, culture, geopolitics and the demands of international capital influence the tension between development and democracy. Cutting across the fields of sociology, anthropology, politics and international relations, the contributors to this volume challenge some of the assumptions of how democracy works in the context of capitalist development practised by most Caribbean countries since the 1990s; and how race, gender and class influence the exercise of democracy. At a more fundamental level, Contradictory Existence questions whether neoliberalism is the model best suited for the postcolonial nation building enterprise only 50 years young.
About the Authors
Dave Ramsaran is Professor of Sociology at Susquehanna University whose work focuses on race, class, gender and neoliberalism in the Caribbean and the US. He has published widely in several scholarly journals and is the co-author of Hip Hop and Inequality: Searching for the Real Slim Shady (2009).
Contents
Introduction – Neoliberalism and Democracy in the Caribbean – Dave Ramsaran
- How Distorted Democracy Conditions Distorted Development: The English-Speaking Caribbean – Anton Allahar
- Democracy without Social Content and Capital Accumulation versus Development: Barbados in Crisis – Hilbourne A. Watson
- Property, Democracy and the Space of the Political in the Caribbean – Linden Lewis
- What Development Feels Like: Politics, Prophecy and the International Peacemakers in Jamaica – Deborah A. Thomas
- Challenging Development From Below: Protest and Democracy in Trinidad and Tobago – Dave Ramsaran
- Democracy without Voice: An Examination of Land Sales and Development in The Bahamas – Ian Bethell Bennett
- When New Forms of Development Come from Traditional Knowledge: Guadeloupe Facing Capitalism and Globalization – Pr. Stephanie Mulot
Contributors
Index
