Description
Guyana, a former British colony, obtained independence in 1966, following the collapse of a multi-racial nationalist movement and instability fomented by the US and UK governments. Standard political economy and historical analyses of post-independence Guyana tend to focus on the period of authoritarian rule under the People’s National Congress party, and the introduction of an IMF-supervised economic recovery programme. The analyses rarely go beyond the return to formal electoral democracy in 1992. Unmasking the State fills a critical gap in our understanding of the last three decades of Guyanese political, economic, social and cultural life under the People’s Progressive Party in the context of evolving regional and global geopolitical realities. It offers a detailed and nuanced examination of the post-1992 period, within a larger context where historical divisions, persistent attempts to tinker with and reinterpret the defective 1980 constitution, and systemic and institutional failures have produced waves of authoritarianism and corruption. It includes a stimulating range and diversity of perspectives from academics and activists, multidisciplinary in their engagement of history, politics, anthropology, economics, feminist, queer, Indigenous and environmental studies.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction – Arif Bulkan and D. Alissa Trotz
Acronyms and Abbreviations
- Constitutionalism, Democracy & Governance
- Constitutional Architecture and the Production of Authoritarianism – Arif Bulkan
- Guyana’s Public Financial Management Systems in the Post-Independence Period – Anand Goolsarran
- Uncontested Democratic Spaces: The Politics and Practice of Local Government in Post-Independence Guyana: 1992–2015 – Esther M. McIntosh
- Legacies of Racial Dysfunction
- Politics and Underdevelopment: The Case of Guyana – Tarron Khemraj
- Crime, Ethnicity and the Political Impasse in Guyana – Rishee S. Thakur
- Between Despair and Hope: Towards an Analysis of Women and Violence in Contemporary Guyana – Alissa Trotz
- Race, Ideology, and International Relations: Sovereignty and the Disciplining of Guyana’s
Working Class – Percy C. Hintzen
- Insecurities of Neoliberalism
- Local Impact of Global Change: Rice and Sugar in the History and Memory of Africans and East Indians in Guyana – Wazir Mohamed
- Poverty and Human Security in Guyana – Clement Henry
- The Myth of Free Education – Diana Abraham
- Growing Downhill? Contestations of Sovereignty and the Creation of Itinerant Workers in Guyanese Call Centres – Alissa Trotz, Kiran Mirchandani, and Iman Khan
- Consolidation and Implications of Discretionary Rule over Guyana’s Public Forests, 1992–2015 Janette Bulkan
- The Politics of Gender and Sexuality
- Madness, Myth, and Masquerade: Cultural Patrimony and Violence Against Disabled Women in Guyana – Savitri Persaud
- Gender, Inclusionary Politics and the Electoral Quota in Guyana: Politics as Usual? – Natalie Persadie
- ‘Push Ya’ Body’: Imaginaries of the ‘Bush’ and the Amerindian Body in the Guyanese State – Shanya Cordis
- Lenses of Hope: Alternative Engagements with the State
- Lenses of Hope: Investigating the Social Economy as a Paradigmatic Shift Through the
Wowetta Women’s Agro-Processing Cassava Enterprise – Hollis France
- Inundated with Facts: Flooding and the Knowledge Economies of Climate Adaptation in Guyana – Sarah E. Vaughn
- Journeying Towards LGBTIQ+ Equality in Guyana – Vidyaratha Kissoon
Contributors
Index
About the Author
Arif BULKAN (PhD Osgoode) is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus, where he lectures Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, and Caribbean and International Human Rights Law.
Alissa TROTZ is associate professor of Women and Gender Studies, and Caribbean Studies, at New College, University of Toronto. She is also associate faculty at the Dame Nita Barrow Institute of Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies (Barbados).
