Search results for ""University of the West Indies Press""

This succinct account the life of Nobel laureate Derek Walcott focuses on his development as poet, playwright and man of the theatre: director, producer, teacher. Friends and colleagues who figured in his career are recalled. The importance of his native St Lucia and family influences in the shaping of his creativity and his view of the world are highlighted, as these evolved in synergy with his receptivity to the poetry and theatre of the wider world. In this evolution, the tensions and complex nuances of the concept “home” are seen as an informing factor. The story points to Walcott’s seminal contribution to the emergence of Caribbean literature, with his response to the region’s colonial history as a central factor.

Read more less

Using a range of primary sources from imperial, colonial and local government records, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, memoirs and reports, this study provides the most comprehensive account to date of public health in Jamaica in the post-emancipation colonial period to the onset of the Second World War. The account is framed by two pivotal Jamaican experiences that were vital in precipitating significant policy changes at the imperial centre. An examination of the development of the part-time colonial medical service reveals it to be underresourced and inadequate. Most Jamaicans accessed Western medical aid through the Poor Law, a distinguishing feature of the British West Indian colonies, and the issues around the intermeshing of medical and Poor Law aid is a vital contextual question. Chapters on the epidemic and endemic diseases of smallpox and malaria expose the attitudes and the nature of the responses of government, elites and the medical services to such threats. The International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation was active in Jamaica from 1919 until 1950. A detailed analysis of their hookworm campaign, public health education programme and tuberculosis work contributes to a critical understanding of this philanthropic endeavour. The contribution of Jamaica to a new imperial development policy, as exemplified in the 1940 Colonial Development and Welfare Act, is also assessed. A story of government and elite reluctance to finance public health services emerges in which Jamaicans were frequently blamed for their own ill health. Socio-economic causation was sidestepped as class and race perceptions, underpinned by the legacy of slavery, held sway.

Read more less

The earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010 thrust the nation into the public consciousness as never before. There is now an unprecedented empathy for and interest in Haiti, and a related need for information on Haitian reality, beyond the clichés often associated with the nation. In particular, there is a special interest in the earthquake and the questions of Haiti’s future development. Haiti Rising responds to this public interest and has three fundamental aims: to raise awareness of Haiti, its people, culture and history; to allow some who were in Haiti during the earthquake a chance to testify.The book brings together more than twenty essays written by some of the most prominent authorities on Haiti, and offers insights on the political, social and historical contexts, as well as the uniquely rich culture of the nation. The first part features survivor testimonies – moving accounts of the earthquake and its aftermath written by authors and academics, Haitian nationals and foreign visitors. The second part presents essays on economics, politics, society and culture (music, religion, visual art), and the ways in which they are interrelated in history and in contemporary life. The third section focuses on the history of Haiti from colonial times to the present and shows the ways in which history has shaped Haitian society. It shows how colonial class and colour structures have persisted, how the revolution has shaped subsequent political, cultural and social structures, and how the legacy of the Duvalier dictatorship has lingered. The final section features contributors who were not in Haiti at the time of the earthquake, but who have strong ties to Haiti. These authors write about their personal connections to Haiti, their reactions to the earthquake, and their hopes and recommendations for reconstruction.

Read more less

This important book provides a fascinating insight into the conceptual underpinnings of the theory of plantation economy, initiated by Lloyd Best and Kari Levitt in the 1960s, as a basis for analysing the nature of the Caribbean economy. While acknowledging an intellectual debt to Latin American structuralists Raul Prebisch, Celso Furtado and Osvaldo Sunkel, and also to the work of Dudley Seers and William Demas, the authors develop an original and innovative analytical framework as a counter to more 'universalist' models which failed to take account of the Caribbean reality. Their work identifies the main features of the plantation economy as a hinterland characterised by subordination and dependency on the dominant metropole. Distinguishing between hinterlands of conquest, settlement and exploitation, Best and Levitt analyse the rules that determine this complex relationship with the metropole. Their economic theories are presented against a background of the historical factors that gave rise to the 'structural continuity' of Caribbean economies and which now impede meaningful structural transformation.

Read more less

During the mid-twentieth century, Wills O. Isaacs was a prominent member of the People's National Party. He was, and remains, one of Jamaica's most controversial figures; beloved by many and reviled by some both within and beyond his party. As a champion of the unemployed and the racially vilified, he condemned capitalism's social failures.

Read more less

Jamaican place names range from the commonplace to the bizarre. Densely distributed across the map of the island, they not only intrigue the visitor and the resident but also provide clues to Jamaica's past landscapes and its social and economic history. Written from a historical and geographical perspective by two authors with an intimate knowledge of the island, this book presents an entirely new approach to the study of Jamaican place names. Maps and other sources dating from the earliest years of European contact to the twenty-first century are used to compile a data base of over 20,000 names. Analysis provides clues to the culture and national origins of the dominant planter population who were the major name-givers but also include many names with distinctive Jamaican 'creole' meanings. Today, Kingston, May Pen, Rio Bueno, Me No Sen You No Come, George's Plain Mountain and Content, names derived from a variety of sources, are all equally Jamaican and equally fascinating. "Jamaican Place Names" is written for both the scholar and the general reader with an interest in the island's landscapes and history.

Read more less

Gray's central thesis asserts that the Jamaican state is a form of predatory state that incorporates contradictory social forces into an arrangement that is hierarchical, often brutal and ultimately debilitating to democracy. He introduces a series of constructs to support this argument, but the more interesting and novel theses are to be found in his vivid description of the social forces that resist the predatory state and how they have carved out a modicum of autonomy based on what he describes as an elaborate value system of "badness/honour".

Read more less

This biography of Marcus Garvey documents the forging of his remarkable vision of pan-Africanism and highlights his organizational skills in framing a response to the radical global popular upsurge following the First World War (1914–1918).Central to Garvey’s response was the development of organizations under the umbrella of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, which garnered the transnational support of several million members and sympathizers and challenged white supremacist practices and ideas.Garvey established the ideological pillars of twentieth-century pan-Africanism in promoting self-determination and self-reliance for Africa’s independence. Although Garvey travelled widely and lived abroad in New York and London, hespent his early years in Jamaica. Rupert Lewis traces how Garvey’s Jamaican formation shaped his life and thought and how he combated the British colonial authorities as well as fought deep-rooted self-doubt and self-rejection among Jamaican black people. Garvey’s much neglected political and cultural work at the local level is discussed as part of his project to stimulate self-determination in Africa and its diaspora.

Read more less

In this wide-ranging study, Stephen Stuempfle explores the transformation of the landscape (material environment) of Port of Spain from the cocoa boom era at the turn of the twentieth century through Trinidad and Tobago’s independence from Britain in 1962. In addition to outlining the creative work of planners, architects, engineers and builders, he examines depictions of the city in journalism, travel literature, fiction, photographs and maps, and elucidates how diverse social groups employed urban spaces both in their day-to-day lives and for public celebrations and protests.Over the course of the seven decades considered, Port of Spain was a dynamic centre for interactions among British officials; American entrepreneurs, military personnel and tourists; and a rapidly growing local population that both perpetuated and challenged the colonial regime. Many people perceived the city as a vanguard space – a locale for pursuing new opportunities and experiences.By drawing on a rich array of written and visual sources, Stuempfle immerses the reader in the sights and sounds of the city’s streets, parks, yards and various buildings to reveal how this complex environment evolved as a realm of collective endeavour and imagination. He argues that the urban landscape served as a key site for the display and negotiation of Trinidad’s social order during its gradual transition from colonial rule to self-government. For Port of Spain’s inhabitants, the construction of a modern capital city was interrelated, both practically and symbolically, with the building of a society and a new nation-state.

Read more less

In 1977, Bob Marley composed Exodus, a reggae masterpiece that evokes the return of Rastafari to Africa. Over the past 50 years, Rastafari have made the journey to Ethiopia, settling in the country as “repatriates”. This little-known history is told in Exodus! Heirs and Pioneers, Rastafari Return to Ethiopia. Giulia Bonacci recounts, with sharpness and rigor, this amazing journey of Rastafari who left the Caribbean, the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Exiting from the Babylon of the West and entering the Zion that is Ethiopia, the exodus has a Pan-African dimension that is significant to the present day. Despite facing complex challenges in their relations with the Ethiopian state and its people, mystical and determined Rastafari keep arriving to Shashemene, their Promised Land.Revealing personal trajectories, Giulia Bonacci shows that Rastafari were not the first black settlers in Ethiopia. She tracks the history of return over the decades, demonstrating that the utopian idea of return is also a reality. Exodus! is based on in-depth archival and print research, as well as on a wide range of oral histories collected in Ethiopia, Jamaica, Ghana and the USA. Previously unseen photographs illustrate the book.

Read more less

The late Wycliffe Bennett (1922–2009), widely regarded as the godfather of the Jamaican theatre in the second half of the twentieth century, brings all his experience and insight to this last, formidable production. Wycliffe Bennett saw almost every theatrical production of note in this period, directed some productions himself, and, in addition, worked as a manager and trainer in speech, radio and television. His wife, Hazel, co-author of this liberally illustrated work, adds her skills as documentalist and witness. Together, the Bennetts have produced the first book of its kind, a panorama of performance, from the imported touring companies and fledgling local elitist groups of the 1920s and 1930s, to the birth of the Little Theatre Movement during the war years; from the small, ambitious groups of the 1950s and 1960s to the thriving commercial “roots theatre” of the new century. The book also chronicles the development of drama on radio and television, and Jamaica’s small but important film industry. In extensively documenting and analysing dance, it considers modern foundation groups like Ivy Baxter and the National Dance Theatre Company, as well as their precursors and myriad offspring. A pioneer of the Jamaica Festival movement, Wycliffe Bennett describes it from the inside, culminating with eyewitness accounts of the spectacular Caribbean Festival of the Arts, Carifesta ’76, over which he presided. As well, the authors treat music in all its variety, from classical through the Frats Quintet to reggae. There are also sections by experts in their fields: Yvonne Jones Brewster writes on Theatre 77 and Barn Theatre; Dr Maria Smith examines Revival; Barbara Requa discusses dance techniques; and Mary Brathwaite Morgan considers the golden age of drama at the University of the West Indies. To complete this panoptic view of the performing arts, there is an A to Z of the scores of outstanding personages in the different fields.

Read more less

The book presents a representative selection of the papers presented at the second Conference on Caribbean Culture in honour of Kamau Brathwaite. It offers an interdisciplinary range of studies that range from analyses of Braithwaithe's creative and critical work to interventions in the fields of social history, cultural studies, gender studies, linguistics and sociology, that have been either directly or indirectly influenced by Braithwaite's own pioneering work in Caribbean social history and cultural studies. The manuscript offers the most current critical commentary on the work and ideas of Kamau Brathwaite, and it also provides an extremely useful range of analyses of contemporary Caribbean culture and social history. The primary target audience is academics and students working in the field of Caribbean and cultural studies, while the secondary audience includes researchers working on Kamau Brathwaite's creative and critical work.

Read more less