Book review : Reordering Caribbean futures in the fires of global change

Abstract

Reordering Caribbean futures in the fires of global change, represents an important moment for the renewal of a certain tradition of Caribbean scholarship, generated from within the region, and aimed at understanding the current historical trajectory of the region’s small states and their prospects for the future. Among other collections in this tradition, I mention Selwyn Ryan’s Trinidad and Tobago: The independence experience (1988); Rex Nettleford’s Jamaica in independence (1989), Kenneth Hall and Denis Benn’s Contending with destiny: The Caribbean in the 21st Century (2000) and Brian Meeks and Folke Lindahl’s New Caribbean thought: A reader (2001). Published typically at the end of a decade, or, as in the latter two, at the end of the millennia, the purpose has been to achieve a sort of stock-taking of individual countries as well as the region’s performance over the period, and an attempt is made to soberly identify possible pathways for the future. While giving emphasis to questions of political economy, most of these texts have tended to be broader and even eclectic in scope, addressing matters of health, education, philosophy, social policy and popular culture.