https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/44404 Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:48:08 GMT 2026-04-21T00:48:08Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/145749 Title: Book review : Routledge handbook of Caribbean studies Authors: Gray, Obika B. Abstract: Specialists on the Caribbean increasingly define the archipelago as a palimpsest. Contributors to the Handbook share this conceptualization, allowing them to bring their diverse perspectives to issues ranging from class, gender and ethnic relations, to politics, literature, culture and the environment. Consistent with this approach, several of the contributors to this volume portray the region as possessing a complex, layered history containing traces of a past of “live inheritances” powerfully shaping the newly present; and not as one of lost traditions. In large part, the Handbook continues the innovative reframing of the region’s identity as discontinuous, multi-layered, polychromatic and even fractal. An intellectual upshot of this perspective is the original insight and recognition that the Caribbean is not where cultural contradictions wrought by history are present; but, rather, a distinctively liminal arena marked by “plurality” and the indeterminacy of being “betwixt and between” as its core identity. This existential vagueness is evident across all dimensions of Caribbean life, as several contributors in the Handbook make clear. In Caribbean politics, for instance, it is arguable that many anti-colonial rebellions result in ambiguous outcomes, with no clear winner or loser. The Handbook recognizes such a political duality in post-revolt Caribbean aftermaths in which – barring the notable exceptions of the Haitian and Cuban revolutions – there is neither transformational change nor undisputed political victory by one side or the other. Such is testimony to Caribbean studies’ alertness to the phenomenon of the “changing same” and to the glacial character of change in the region. The Caribbean as icon of existential indeterminacy appears to be the shared analytical assumption of several contributors. In looking at the region’s quest for transformative political change, clean breaks with the past remain elusive. Hence, no matter the onset of disruptive revolts and even of social revolutions against empire, the multidimensional coloniality of European power hovers, ghostlike, over the colonized peoples’ newly won reconfiguration of the balance of power in the region. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/145749 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/145748 Title: Book review : Resistance, refuge, revival : the indigenous Kalinagos of Dominica Authors: Gomes, Shelene Abstract: Over the 200 pages of Resistance, refuge, revival, Lennox Honychurch details the ethnohistory of the Indigenous Kalinagos on the small island of Dominica/ Wai’tukubuli. Out of Dominica’s current population of just over 65,000, 3,500 identify as Kalinago. Dominica may be small; yet, it has the largest number of people who speak the Kalinago/Carib language in everyday use (not merely for ceremonial purposes) in the Caribbean. The Dominican state has integrated Kalinago political representation into legislation through various changes to the Kalinago Chiefdom; and the Kalinago presence in contemporary Dominica is evident in culture, economy, and nation-building. Writing against Kalinago/Carib exceptionalism, however, Honychurch meticulously details how the history of Kalinago integration and incorporation neither adheres to colonial European paternalistic ideals of an isolated Indigenous people nor of contemporary, postcolonial framings of Kalinagos as authentic symbols of an idyllic pre-European era. Instead, Honychurch draws on various sources to present a more nuanced picture of the Indigenous Kalinagos of Dominica. Divided into the sections of Resistance, Refuge, and Revival, this book draws on archaeological sources of material culture, archival documents, missionary and traveller accounts, as well as oral histories to provide a breadth of evidence for this discussion. Centring around the dialectics of change and continuity, resistance and revival, refuge and accommodation, Honychurch details the cultural, socio-historical, and political life of the Kalinago population in Dominica, especially since the 16th century. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/145748 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/145747 Title: Book review : Overseas territories in world affairs : linking up subnational, national and international politics Authors: Baldacchino, Godfrey Abstract: I have a lot of sympathy for Dr Fred Constant; in a way – and I hope he does not mind me saying so – he could be my French double. He is five weeks younger than me. He is a career academic and political scientist who also served for a while in the diplomatic corps of his country. He is adamant on bridging the (still troubling) linguistic divide between French and English language scholarship, particularly on small states and territories. And he adopts a global, rather than a narrowly regional or national, focus. True to form, his 2024 book is a translation of an earlier, French language monograph on the contribution of subnational, mainly small, island jurisdictions to the understanding of contemporary politics and international relations. Now, this may sound like an oxymoron: how much could small, sometimes very small, non-sovereign island units impact on world affairs? The answer is: a lot, actually: a growing paradiplomatic clout places them amid regional tensions and great power competition, where they must permanently stave off being used as stooges and fronts for other powers, be these metropolitan patron states or ‘the new kid on the block’ (read: China). The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea has gifted them with immense tracts of ocean and their marine and submarine resources, but they may lack the internal capacity to manage these. Their unique evolutionary paths mean that they can offer spellbinding ecological beauty and natural diversity –the basis of a burgeoning tourism industry – which is concurrently fragile and vulnerable to environmental threats and human-exacerbated invasions, despoliations and extinctions. Their far-flung locations assume the symbolic status of projecting state power – coveted as forward bastions of military might – as well as safe, detached, ‘out of sight’ fragments where certain experiments can unfold, including the testing of nuclear weapons. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/145747 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/145745 Title: Book review : Reframing the buffer state in contemporary international relations : Nepal’s relations with India and China Authors: Zawadzki, Charlie Abstract: Chand urges scholars of international relations (IR) to consider how buffer states exercise agency within ‘buffer systems’: the frameworks in which buffer and buffered states interact. Bringing the buffer-state concept back to the fore is an ambitious endeavour. This is even more so because the study of small states – a category into which Chand places most buffer states – has often been neglected. Using his country of birth, Nepal, as a case study is a welcome contribution, given that state’s atypical geopolitical circumstances. Not only is Nepal landlocked but, along with Bhutan and Mongolia, it is one of only three states in the world to be completely surrounded by two nuclear-armed neighbours. Nepal therefore faces strategic risks and options that differ from those of many small states, which often have maritime access, multiple neighbours, or both. Chand claims that discussions of the buffer-state concept must include “its roots in the field of geopolitics [which developed] in Europe just before World War I” (p. 14); yet, a little later, he describes it as “… an ancient form of state strategy … traced back to the era of the Roman Empire” (p. 16). A reader unfamiliar with this history might find the chronology of this overview confusing; on closer reading, however, these assertions distinguish between concept and practice, rather than being contradictory. Most innovatively, Chand proposes a “new buffer state concept” (p. 22). Its overarching features are, firstly, the recognition that geography remains important in international affairs but has declined in relative importance because of advances in military technology. As a result, rather than simply utilising buffer states as ‘early warning systems’, buffered states increasingly use them as spaces in which to competitively make overtures and assess one another’s capabilities. Secondly, buffer states, having traditionally been viewed as passive objects, should have their limited degree of agency in determining their own course acknowledged in any serious IR studies. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/145745 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z