Study on race relations, nationalism and politics in Trinidad and Tobago - covers Caribbean history from 1919 to the present, examines the role of political partys and interest groups, economic resources and racial conflicts and explains the failure of the radical decolonization assumed by nationalists and the absence of a socially relevant development policy. References and statistical tables.
The nation-state of Trinidad and Tobago offers a unique case for the study of the forces and ideologies of nationalism. This book reveals how this ethnically diverse nation (40% African origin, 40-45% East Indian origin, plus those of Syrian, Chinese, Portuguese, French and English descent), independent for less than forty years, has provided fertile ground for the creative tension between the imagination of the writer in his or her search for a habitable text of identity and the official discourse on nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago. This discourse has in turn been embedded in a struggle that propels the nation's story. Following on from this background, the study examines the changes and influences on the sense of nationalism and peoplehood caused by migration and the ethnicization of migrant communities in the metropoles.
Celebrants of an ever-emerging 'globalization' fly the banner of free trade, the mass marketization of once faltering economies, and rising economic and social standards for all. Many opponents to globalization rightfully point out that borders still exist largely for the purposes of keeping one 'commodity' in its place: the labor commodity or, the more familiar, immigrant. Arguments of this type are often steeped in economic and social discourse. Race and ethnicity are seen as either being subsumed by this discourse or are entirely ignored as incidental to this type of political thought. In Ethnicity, Class and Nationalism: Caribbean and Extra-Caribbean Dimensions specialists writing on the Caribbean form of the nation-state place race and ethnicity—along with class—in its proper context: at the very foundations of the modern nation. Editor Anton L. Allahar has handpicked scholarship that is both contemporary and expert in its consideration of Caribbean geo-politics. Furthermore, essays in this volume include comparative cases from around the globe. In the interest of locating race and ethnicity as sociological and political categories that are inimical to contemporary conceptions of the nation state, Allahar explores spaces other than the Caribbean. The result is a comparative study that is unique in scope and also in its level of scholarly reflection. This book is the first of its kind. It is essential reading for anyone interested in advancing their analysis of political, economic, social, and cultural thought in the Caribbean.
This work is a deconstruction of the political discourse of politicians in Trinidad and Tobago from the 1950's to the present. This deconstruction has revealed a discourse of racist hegemony is the basis for political mobilisation in Trinidad and Tobago as it frames a mental image of a hegemonic race wielding state power over a dominated race consigned to the wilderness of opposition politics. The resources of the state exist then for the benefit of the hegemonic race and those who conceive of self as belonging to races in competition for state resources must then do their political duty to ensure the hegemony of their race. Politics has nothing to do with governance, personal and social development.
"This collection of more than a dozen essays focuses on the political dynamics of race, class, and nationalism in the contemporary Caribbean. Despite the plethora of studies on nationalism in the Caribbean, few have attempted to look at the phenomenon as a political invention that does not-and cannot-serve the interests of all. How essentialist, reductive, over-determining nationalism is a political and conceptual confusion that forever stalls the project of universal human emancipation. The book gathers and frames chapters that, in their collective expression, help trace the process of race, class, and nationalism through the contours of a broader political, economic, and social geography. Notions of racial identity, these chapters argue, have changed over time, but those reformations are not independent of class rule or nationalism. By using several case studies that span the Anglo, Dutch, French, and Spanish Caribbean and focus on the development of political organizations, hardships, and ideology. Each of these essays continues the struggle for liberation against elite entrenchment"--
