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Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents the findings of an exploratory study of a relatively new group of Caribbean migrants, namely second-generation overseas-born Barbadians who have decided to migrate to the country of birth of at least one of their parents, paying particular attention to the development-oriented implications of these migrants. After a brief review of the circumstances surrounding this relatively new and innovative migratory cohort, the insights gained from in-depth interviews with 25 such migrants are presented. The account focuses in particular on the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the young returnees, as well as their pattern of visits to the island prior to migration, and the reasons for their move. The paper then tentatively explores the adjustments made by the returnees and those that they feel they still face. In a number of respects, the essentially 'hybrid' and 'inbetween' positionality of these young transnational migrants is emphasized. Thus, they report difficulties in making friends (especially female friends), problems regarding their accents, feeling like an outsider, culture shock, the Americanization of society, being regarded as 'mad', aspects of resentment and having to accept things as they are. Through the analysis, issues of national and racial identity are shown to be of particular salience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industry productivity growth measures the contribution to the growth of the economy that an industry delivers. Benchmarking international tourism destinations in respect of their productivity is often avoided due to the difference in tourism characteristics between destinations. This paper introduces a novel approach to destination benchmarking that is theoretically motivated to account for this problem. The benchmarking framework proposed uses separate groups of countries with similar characteristics to construct a metafrontier that envelops these groups, and as such represents the world tourism industry. The paper confirms that ignoring heterogeneity (that is, differences in destination characteristics) can lead to bias in the productivity rankings of different countries. The results show that North American and European countries lead the world tourism industry in terms of productivity growth, while African countries lag behind. On average, most African countries are also not catching up with the world tourism industry. The outcome is development of a robust and comprehensive benchmarking methodology that can provide governments and national tourism offices with an accurate assessment of their international tourism performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how certain stories, voices and values around agro-food networks can be made powerful by documentary film. Our central argument is that documentaries mobilize ethics by presenting a partial and affective account of their subject matter, which makes their audience feel differently about the social relations that underpin the production of food and acts as a focal point for media scrutiny and political interventions. We focus attention on three documentaries about Caribbean sugar to explore multiple and disparate ethical claims made about the farmers, workers and communities that embody Caribbean sugar industries. Through a comparison of the three documentaries, we chart how the production and distribution of these films have entailed quite different ethical narratives, encounters and interventions. A key finding is that the context in which films are received is just as important as the content they deliver. The paper concludes with a guarded endorsement for using documentary film to transform the unequal life conditions experienced in the global food system, stressing the need for empirically-grounded critique of the context of documentaries and suggesting the important role that geographers might play as interlocutors in their reception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relative priority of creditors in the administration of the estate of a person who died domiciled in the Caribbean is governed by rules that are substantially taken from outmoded common law and old English statutes. This paper examines those rules and offers a critique of their content, before using goals of efficiency and social policy to propose a structure for law reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essential characteristics of Caribbean cruise arrivals from 1970 to 2008 are a strong and stable concentration and the shift towards the Western Caribbean. This paper validates the profit maximizing behaviour of the cruise companies as the determining factor explaining the spatial dynamic and static distribution of cruise arrivals in the Caribbean. A discursive approach and econometric regressions corroborate this supply-side approach compared with the demand-side approach from the destination's perspective. Excursion revenue and distance are identified as explanatory variables of a destination's arrival numbers. From those elements, the paper highlights overarching principles for the formulation of cruise development strategies by destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of IFLA Journal is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper advances the central argument that since Commonwealth Caribbean courts have been specifically entrusted with the great constitutional power to review not only the substance or merits of executive acts or decisions, but also the awesome power to review and strike down as void any legislation which is inconsistent with the respective Commonwealth Caribbean constitutions, then it logically and necessarily follows that these courts, in order to be able to discharge their constitutional mandates effectively, should have the constitutional power to create new substantive remedies, in general, and remedies which give protection to substantive legitimate expectations, in particular. This power is supported by strong constitutional and democratic imperatives. It should also be seen as a reinforcement of the courts' common law power to develop the law within the context of fairness and justice in suitable cases. Moreover, Commonwealth Caribbean courts may glean useful guidance from the striking developments which have taken place in English and European law in the area of substantive legitimate expectation. It is to be regretted that the vast bulk of the case law emanating from Commonwealth Caribbean courts in this area does not seem to reflect any significant awareness of these courts of their great power and responsibilities in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1960s, the Caribbean has made numerous attempts at regional integration. One of the reasons for the failure of these attempts is the difference in business cycles across the region. Given the importance of tourism to the region, if arrivals to the Caribbean are converging over time, the differences in the business cycle characteristics of each country should decline. Using a panel of 22 countries and monthly data from 1977 to 2004, this study investigates the co-movement in tourism penetration and the growth in tourist arrivals for the region. The empirical results presented in the paper suggest that there is no convergence in tourism penetration across the group but that there are similarities in the rates of growth of tourist arrivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism has emerged as one of the main industries in many Caribbean countries. Jamaica is no exception: tourist receipts are its largest source of foreign exchange earnings. Because of the importance of the tourism sector to the Jamaican economy, accurate forecasts of tourist arrivals are critical. This paper argues that forecasting accuracy can be improved by the use of seasonal unit root testing. Using six tourist arrival series, from 1968:1 to 2001:3, it was found that unit root testing, applying the HEGY procedure, did help to improve the forecasts at all horizons. The exceptions were those series that exhibited considerable volatility; in these cases the seasonal unit root test did not prove superior at the short horizon. These results, however, may not be robust with respect to data at other frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders Sidney W Mintz's classic 1964 chapter 'Currency problems in eighteenth century Jamaica and Gresham's Law' in light of the forms and uses of money in the colonial Caribbean slave economies and the utility of Mintz's approach to understand today's globalizing multicurrency economy. In considering Gresham's Law that 'bad money drives out good', Mintz showed how, in colonial Jamaica, money's four functions – medium of exchange, means of payment, unit of account, and store of value – were transformed by the enslaved themselves as they worked with and in currencies circulating locally and via colonial financial networks. Further, Mintz's ethnographic work suggests an approach to the financial practices of the poor and marginalized that highlights how their uses of money, paralleled in other arenas of their lives, confront and complicate dominating political–economic power. Directions provided by Mintz's insights are used to analyze creative uses of money in the present world economic order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libraries remain crucial for the preservation and dissemination of cultural products in the English-speaking Caribbean. Cultural products span the realm from traditional to contemporary artforms in diverse formats. Technology has facilitated the process allowing cultural intermediaries such as libraries, archives and museums to extend their reach and expand markets. Globalization has also impacted the process, weakening national boundaries to facilitate a polemically viewed transformation. The treatment of cultural products with libraries is an uncommon theme in the literature on Caribbean libraries. This article therefore explores the practices of the Caribbean library in the acquisition, preservation and promotion of the region’s cultural product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential which open access offers to Caribbean scholarly communication in general, and science and technology specifically, is an opportunity to shift the focus from one which has been publisher driven to one which is research driven. However, for this to become a reality, both the university and faculty will need to break free of the practices surrounding traditional publishing, tenure and promotion. In an attempt to assess readiness among science faculty at The University of the West Indies to make this transition, this exploratory study analyses their perceptions, knowledge and use of open access. The results revealed significant gaps in knowledge about, and minimal engagement with open access as a publication modality among this cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The connection between climatic change and social response is complex because change articulates a number of inter-related factors. Human decisions are filtered by social buffers – including social memory, risk perception, and cultural priorities – and the rate and scale of climate change is usually much larger than the scale of human decision-making. In this article, we provide information on climate change based on precisely dated speleothems with the response evident in archaeological sites that have radiocarbon date ranges within the same time frame. A stalagmite recovered from within the catchment area for aquifer recharge of the Pre-Arawak site of Angostura in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico, shows that a significant wet period occurred between 3.9 and 3.1 ka (primarily centered at 3.5 ka). We investigate the effect that this increase in precipitation had on the earliest occupations on the island in the context of palaeoenvironmental, geoarchaeological, and archaeological records from Angostura, Maruca, and Paso del Indio. Our analysis suggests the presence of two different adaptation strategies: settlement relocation and microlandscape modification. Our study concludes that the social response to change cannot be seen as monolithic given that human behavior, even within the same period, addresses the needs of individual groups with different priorities. This multiplicity of responses can indeed enhance resilience as social support can continue through alliances and exchanges, strengthening social bonds that can help buffer catastrophes. The results can help shed light on the range of adaptation strategies to change encompassed within the manifestations of social resilience or vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With a heavy dependence on tourism and unrelenting challenges on the horizon, Caribbean nations are called to collaborate for their survival. This is a trend being observed globally as various nation groupings are banding together for the success of their tourism industries. With the responsibility of steering tourism in the region, the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) has the task of representing all of its member nations and the particularly critical task of marketing them as a region. That being considered, this study aims at examining the effectiveness of the collaborative marketing efforts of the CTO. To aid this assessment, CTO’s member nations were contacted and, those who were willing, interviewed. Palmer’s (2002) study on marketing effectiveness was consulted and from this the measures of effectiveness were obtained and further applied to the interview protocol. Similarity among members, reciprocity, governance style and commitment were the variables used to determine member nations’ views on the effectiveness of the CTO’s collaborative marketing initiatives. Using framework analysis, the data received were analysed and further interpreted. It was found that the marketing initiatives of the CTO are effective insofar as its members are committed but ineffective in that governance is doubted, reciprocity is pegged as minimal and the dissimilarity among member nations fuels perceptions of inequity. In light of the issues revealed, recommendations were made that can be considered by both the CTO and its member nations for the overall development of the Caribbean region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We analyzed diatoms, lithology, and stable isotopes in a sediment core from the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta lagoon to reveal the history of late Holocene relative sea level rise and the ontogeny of the lagoon on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. At ~5300 cal. yr BP, the area was characterized by shallow, freshwater ponds that were prone to seasonal flooding. From ~4250 to ~2060 cal. yr BP, these ponds became brackish as relative sea level began to rise, and since ~2060 cal. yr BP, marine conditions have prevailed. In addition to tracking relative sea level rise, we also investigated periods of greater and lesser precipitation during times of brackish and marine conditions, respectively, as indicated by diatom-inferred changes in water salinity and shifts in the source of sediment organic matter. Comparisons with other regional paleoenvironmental records suggest that humid climate conditions prevailed in the Caribbean until about 4000 cal. yr BP. After that time, climate became more variable, with drier conditions registered from ~ 4000 to 2000 cal. yr BP. Wetter conditions returned after ~2000 cal. yr BP. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The majority of small twin-island states in the Caribbean depend on tourism as the mainstay of their economies. These islands are constantly seeking to remain or become competitive in a challenging global environment. This article focuses on the most appropriate approach to marketing twin-island states. Tourism marketing experts were interviewed in six states to elicit their views on whether or not twin-island states should be marketed separately or collaboratively. While there was no agreement on the best way forward, there seems to be greater movement towards collaboration versus separate marketing agendas. The interviewees identified five factors that must be considered in marketing these states including institutional arrangements, level of infrastructural development, socio-economic conditions, the nature of the tourism product and the impact on destination image. Based on these findings, it was noted that further research should be conducted on collaborative tourism marketing in Small Island States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of Garveyism – the political brainchild of Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey – in the articulation of post first world war labour politics in the greater Caribbean region. Garveyism nurtured a platform of race-first, worker-oriented, anti-colonial politics that both gave encouragement to, and provided a language of grievance for, a series of strikes, riots and rebellions after the war. During the reactionary era that followed, Garveyites nimbly scaled back the stridency of their politics, replacing their emphasis on direct action and worker resistance with a labour politics that privileged organisation building and constitutional reform, but which continued to project the implications of the work in global terms, joined to Garveyites’ end goal of African liberation and racial redemption. By the mid-1930s, a new labour politics emerged that both surpassed Garveyist labour organising in its stridency and relied on Garveyist tropes of racial solidarity; one that distanced itself from Garveyist labour organisers while boasting a leadership that had been nurtured within the Garvey movement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A multiproxy analysis of lacustrine sediments cored in Grand-Case Pond at Saint-Martin, north of the Lesser Antilles archipelago, reveals three distinct climatic periods for the last 3700 years. From 3700 to ~2500 yr cal. BP and from 1150 yr cal. BP to the present, carbonate mud deposition occurred in connection with pond lowstands. These periods were also punctuated by severe drought events, marked by gypsum laminae, and hurricane landfalls, leading to marine sand inputs into the pond. The intermediate time interval, from 2500 to 1150 yr cal. BP, is typified by black organic mud deposition, suggesting that hypoxic to anoxic conditions prevailed at the pond bottom. These were probably linked with a perennial pond highstand and reflect more uniform and wetter climatic conditions than today. The carbon isotopic composition of the ostracod Perissocytheridea bisulcata shows that the lowest δ13C values are recorded during the hypoxic periods, as a consequence of bacterial recycling of isotopically depleted organic matter. Such a climatic history agrees closely with that documented from other records in the Caribbean area, such as the Cariaco Basin, central coast of Belize or Barbados. By constrast, discrepancies seem to emerge from the comparison between hurricane activity recorded at Saint-Martin on the one hand and Vieques (Puerto Rico) on the other hand. We explain this apparent contradiction by a balance between two distinct storm paths in response to latitudinal shifts of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Stronger storm activity over the Gulf coast and the inner Caribbean Sea is favoured by a southern position of the ITCZ in connection with dry climatic conditions. Plausible links with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are also suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies about mass media framing have found divergent levels of influence on public opinion; moreover, the evidence suggests that issue attributes can contribute to this difference. In the case of climate change, studies have focused exclusively on developed countries, suggesting that media influence perceptions about the issue. This study presents one of the first studies of media coverage in a developing country. It examines newspapers’ reporting in Peru during the Fifth Latin America, Caribbean and European Union Summit in May 2008. The study focuses on the frames and the sources to provide an initial exploratory assessment of the coverage. The results show that the media relied mostly on government sources, giving limited access to dissenting voices such as environmentalists. Additionally, a prominence of “solutions” and “effects” frames was found, while “policy” and “science” frames were limited. The results could serve as a reference point for more comprehensive studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much of our knowledge of the development of the welfare state centers on historical contingencies that characterized the industrial, political, and demographic context of Western Europe and North America. However, young welfare states in developing countries are emerging in response to different pressures than those faced by early welfare state; while globalization influences both young and established welfare states. Using newly released data for Latin America, this article provides a systematic comparison of social spending, spending on welfare and social security and government health spending in the OECD and Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1980s and 1990s. Results from cross-section time-series models indicate that the logic of industrialism welfare state approach is useful for examining social spending in Latin America. Namely, unemployment is associated with higher levels of social spending and spending on welfare and social security in both regions while a larger proportion of elderly population is associated with higher spending in Latin America. Globalization in the form of trade openness is associated with lower spending in the OECD across outcomes. In Latin America and the Caribbean the presence of international financial institutions powerfully pattern health and social spending: decreasing spending on welfare and social security and increasing health spending. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of International Journal of Maritime History is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the dismantling of the EU-Caribbean banana agreement and how its decline has been justified by economic critics drawing on dubious knowledge about the benefits of free trade and the negative effects of ‘preferential’ trade. Based on a historical assessment of the banana agreement, it provides a critique of the claims of the economic opponents and argues that their assertions are based largely on the speculative assumptions of the free trade ‘power/knowledge regime’ and not the historical, power, and class conditions under which bananas are produced, traded, and sold. Taking these considerations into account, the banana agreement, despite its shortcomings, was a model of ‘social efficiency’ that demonstrates the benefits of preferential treatment to support development and poverty alleviation among otherwise marginalized communities in the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relatively little is known about the long-term response of Caribbean mangroves to human and natural disturbances during the 'Little Ice Age' (LIA). We present new palynological information on the dynamics of the Bahia Honda mangrove from the eastern coast of San Andres Island in the southwestern Caribbean for the late Holocene. Major changes in the Bahia Honda pollen record show the combined effects of natural events (strong storms and sealevel rise), and human disturbances. These changes are supported by 14C dates, sedimentological and palynological information. A storm (most probably a hurricane) was recorded around AD 1600, caused sediment reworking and the subsequent loss of about 2000 years of the vegetation record. The devastation of tree vegetation by this event allowed the expansion of heliophytic vegetation (e.g. grasses and vines). Mangroves and coastal vegetation started to recover at AD 1700, reaching their maximum extent within a few decades, when microforaminifera shells became abundant at the coring site, thus suggesting a relative sea-level rise because of the geomorphic reconfiguration of the coastal plain after the storm. Furthermore, the pollen evidence indicates more humid regional climates during the late LIA (AD 1700-1850). Mangrove and coastal vegetation declined sharply as a consequence of the establishment of coconut plantations around AD 1850. The recovery of the mangroves after AD 1960 is a result of the combined effect of relative sea-level rise and drastic changes in the local economy from coconut plantations to commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's role in international affairs is generally cast in a favourable light, especially in contrast with the United States. Yet at the beginning of the twentieth century there was a brief period of imperialist rhetoric among the Canadian business elite, the bankers of Toronto and Montreal in particular, who argued the benefits of an annexationist policy for the British West Indies to complement their deepening financial links to the Caribbean region. Focusing on the Royal Bank of Canada, this essay examines this episode in Canadian foreign policy by recounting the history of Canadian banking expansion in the Caribbean while demonstrating the connections between economic and trade policy and the ideologies of Canadian Anglo-Saxonism that shaped the Canadian financial elite's vision of its role in maintaining the integrity of the British empire. It argues that, rather than being mere 'surrogates' to American empire, as Canadian business historians have argued, Canadian bankers were aggressive, active and independent players in the conquest of foreign markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores perceptions on continuing education and professional development among Caribbean librarians. Particular focus is given to employer support, and to the interest and level of motivation experienced by individual librarians. Connections between continuing education and professional development and career advancement are examined and the role of personal ambition in continuing education is discussed. Job satisfaction and security among librarians in Caribbean countries are also discussed.

Studies of peer relations among children living in rural developing communities are rare. This study examined peer status in 168 children (ages 6-12) living in a rural community in a developing community, St Vincent, the West Indies. The present study used ANOVA to test hypotheses about the relations between peer status and academic scores and teacher-ratings of delinquency, learning problems, conduct and sensitivity. Using a peer nomination procedure, children were classified into four groups [i.e. rejected (28), popular (24), average (85), controversial (8) and neglected (23)]. The results of this study revealed that rejected children had significantly lower academic scores than popular children even when learning problems and age were controlled. Unlike children in developed societies, rejected children did not have significantly higher teacher ratings of sensitivity, delinquency and conduct problems. Cultural considerations and future research directions are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Caribbean climate pre-1990 focused almost exclusively on attempts to link spatial patterns in climatic variables to physical processes. Much of this research assumed a 'simple' regional climate, warm year round with a wet season dominated by tropical cyclones, but researchers soon found that a precipitation regionalization of the Caribbean was not as straightforward and simple. Consequently, a satisfactory understanding of the regional precipitation climate has eluded researchers for much of the second half of the twentieth century. Recently, with the increased availability and quality of satellite and precipitation data, researchers have begun to use gridded data sets to identify the spatial boundaries of the bimodal precipitation region and the atmospheric processes associated with the two maxima and minimum in precipitation. The findings of these most recent studies can be combined to construct a five part (North Atlantic high pressure, low level Caribbean jet, subsidence caused by Central America convection, basin wide increased wind shear, and divergence around Jamaica) conceptual Caribbean precipitation model that begins to address spatial variability in the bimodal structure of annual rainfall and the development of the midsummer minimum in precipitation. Such a regional precipitation climate model provides hypotheses to be tested and investigated in future research. Further, researchers must work towards a more effective and clear communication of the bimodal nature of Caribbean precipitation and the associated summer decrease in precipitation, integrate upper air analysis into the current working hypotheses, and further examine the interannual to interdecadal variability of the Caribbean midsummer drought for prediction purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While marginalisation is a term usually used to refer to the experience of young Caribbean men, it is women who are the poorest and most economically exploited. Youth activists in Trinidad are primarily focused on sexual and reproductive health issues but do not generally address issues to do with women's rights and equity, while feminist organisations focus on personal issues and do not make links with the wider political context. At the moment, it is the land rights movements and particularly the opposition to the construction of aluminium smelters that offer the best hope for politicising, empowering and uniting young men and women in the Caribbean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent establishment of a Caribbean Court of Justice prompts reflection on the nature of legal regionalism in the Caribbean. This commentary explores the development of a regional identity around a shared legal system and the concept of 'West Indian law', describing the forces underlying these processes and their contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we define a multiracial unity, and what does it mean in practice? Our understanding of it needs to go beyond notions of cultural and group rights, to embrace the challenges such unity has posed to the postcolonial status quo in the Anglophone Caribbean. The active creation of multiracial unity in specific political struggles has had a liberatory impact, but we also need to go beyond this to look at it vis-à-vis human relations more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encouraged by the US, the Caribbean is being drawn into a global panic over human trafficking, leading to greater policing and surveillance of migrant women and the sex trade. Drawing on colonial precedents, the moral outrage about women trafficked into prostitution. embodied in legislation such as the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act, obscures the deeper causes of exploitation and oppression and leads to the demonisation of those in undocumented, hyper-exploited labour forces. Moreover, the false equation of trafficking with prostitution renders sexual labour as coerced labour and, as such, misrepresents sexual agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common theme to the political crisis of the contemporary Anglophone Caribbean is the denial of full citizenship to many persons in the nation state not primarily in a legal sense but in the variety of practices, tropes of belonging and identity concerns that frustrate and deny the aspirations of many Caribbean people. This 'coloniality of citizenship' is a complex amalgam of elite domination, neoliberalism and the legacy of colonial authoritarianism Independence from British rule did not bring with it a break from existing forms of citizenship and middle-class nationalism left intact the underlying racial order. The consolidation of elite models of development and their concomitant exploitations tan be seen in the Caribbean tourism industry, which demands sexual caricatures of the Caribbean similar to those of the colonial project. It can be observed, also, in the Caribbean state's patriarchal and heteronormative policing of gender and sexuality, carried out without any apparent awareness of the colonial provenances of such practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the work of radical dependency theorist Clive Thomas as its starting point, this article examines the structural effects on Caribbean economies of capitalist globalisation, neoliberal 'adjustment' programmes and the imposition of 'free market' rules of trade. It looks at the interplay between the powerful corporations and nation states and asks whether the region's 'underdevelopment' is a product of its comparatively small size or of its colonial history. Arguing that the latter was the principal factor, it analyses both the sugar and the banana industries in terms of their forced accommodation to the dictates of imperialism, to provide lessons for the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this wide-ranging interview, the renowned development economist Kari Polanyi Levitt reflects on the nature of social transformation in the English-speaking Caribbean and the cultural conditions that would facilitate it. Describing her long-standing collaboration with Lloyd Best and the innovative work on Caribbean economies that they undertook, she indicates both the continuities with the past and the more recent obstacles to the achievement of social and economic justice thrown up by globalisation. In this, she shows how concepts and understanding of what development means have shifted, from a process that, despite shortcomings, entailed some notion of public betterment to one in which the dictates of neoliberalism are paramount with disastrous social effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents reflections on the violent black diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean. One of the greatest human afflictions to the African diaspora is the history of different African ethnic groups used as a labor force. Post-slavery societies are still observed with dimensions of struggle and instability of social positioning for African Diaspora in such places.

The present study examined the relationship between religious practice and psychological distress in a culturally diverse urban population to explore how religious affiliation, gender, ethnicity, and immigrant status affect this relationship. Data were drawn from a study of health care utilization in Montreal. A stratified community sample of 1485 yielded four religious groups: Protestant (n = 205), Catholic (813), Jewish (201), and Buddhist (150), and a group with no declared religion (116). The sample was composed of five ethnocultural groups: Anglophone Canadian-born, Francophone Canadian-born, Afro-Caribbean, Vietnamese, and Filipino immigrants. Psychological distress was assessed with the 12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Religious involvement was measured with three items: 1) declared religion; 2) frequency of attendance at religious meetings; and 3) frequency of religious rituals performed at home. Multiple regression models examined the relationship of religious practice to distress, controlling for sociodemographic variables including ethnicity. Overall, attendance at religious services was associated with a lower GHQ score. Attendance at religious services also was inversely related to psychological distress for females, Protestants, Catholics, Filipinos, and Afro-Caribbeans; but not for males, Buddhists or Jews. Religious practice at home was not associated with level of distress for any group. The ‘no declared religion’ group had the highest mean GHQ score of all the groups. Results confirm the association between attendance at religious services and lower levels of distress, but reveal ethnospecific and gender effects indicating the need to understand the impact of religious practice on mental health in social and cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1994, fundamentalist Muslim Islamists in the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago organized a campaign to institutionalize the wearing of the traditional Muslim headscarf - the hijab - in non-Islamic schools. A lawsuit was brought on behalf of an 11-year-old Muslim schoolgirl who had been told that she would not be allowed to wear the hijab while attending the Catholic-run but state-supported Holy Name Convent school. The ‘hijab case’, as it came to be known, was framed as a religious matter, but it was essentially a political contest that was played out in court in an unprecedented case in which law was mobilized as a mechanism for cultural change. Drawing on extensive research and participant interviews, this article examines the strengths and limitations revealed in this attempt to use the law as a means of promoting religious pluralism in a complex, multicultural, secular society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many Caribbean countries, secondary school positions are rationed to children who pass an examination they take at age 12. In St Vincent, children from villages are more likely to fail this examination, the Common Entrance Examination, than are urban children. Despite being a major determinant in children's futures, little withincommunity research has been conducted on factors influencing children's ability to pass this examination. We analysed longitudinal data from village children to identify accurate and early predictors of CEE passes. We included 66 children (35 boys, 31 girls). Academic scores and achievement test scores assessed academic performance. The Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices assessed abstract reasoning. A modified version of the Revised Behaviour Problem Checklist completed by teachers assessed behaviour problems. Amodified version of the HOME Inventory and other measures assessed home environment. Discriminant analyses indicated that children's achievement, academic and behaviour problems and cognitive abilities as early as age 8 can predict later examination success or failure. Of these variables, achievement and academic performance were the most significant contributors. Results suggest that children's academic paths are established by at least age 8 (Grade 3) and that children diverge academically and cognitively over the primary school years. Interventions designed to reduce the rural/urban gap in secondary school admissions may be more effective if started by age 8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black Caribbean parents often immigrate in order to increase their fortune and improve opportunities for themselves and their families. Frequently, they leave their children in their country of origin, to be raised by family members. Reunification with their children often occurs at the time of adolescence and, for a multitude of reasons, is often fraught with conflict which sometimes necessitates the involvement of social services and other agencies. Some reasons for these difficulties are presented and are illustrated through the use of case histories. Mental health professionals are advised to take societal and cultural factors into consideration when creating treatment plans for this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines theoretical and political ramifications of the work of the late Caribbean historian and activist Walter Rodney in Jamaica and Guyana during the late 1960s and 1970s. Emphasis on influence of pejorative colonial-era constructions of the various racial diasporas in the region; Interventions in public life; Examination of how 'blackness' work within and across nation-states.

The article highlights the process of establishing and maintaining a new field, necessary for field education in a developing country in the Caribbean. Field education is an essential component of social work education. In developed countries where social work education is well established, there exists a network of agencies and trained social workers to provide the practicum. The main antecedents of Caribbean development can be traced firstly to the labor uprisings which took place between 1935 and 1938, culminating in the appointment of the Moyne Commission by the Colonial Office to study the situation. Tourism and technological improvements in agriculture have been the main growth engines for Caribbean development, although the region has not been immune from its negative impact. The Caribbean economy suffered reversals and recessionary conditions in the 1980s as a result of external and internal factors, necessitating a series of structural adjustment measures with the International Monetary Fund to stabilize the economy.

One of the criticisms made in the 1970s of the media in the English-speaking Caribbean was that, even when given the opportunity to do so, they did not report on the region's advances, or development. This criticism is significant in light of the position taken by Caribbean and other developing countries on the New World Information Order debate of the 1970s. This study content analyzed news stories submitted to CNN World Report by broadcast stations of the Caribbean to determine whether the criticism made of the Caribbean media in the 1970s still have relevance. Further, the study suggests new ways to define `development news", and challenges previous definitions as being too narrow. The authors found that a large proportion of the Caribbean story, as told on World Report, comprised development news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy approaches that advance ideals of self-reliance and equitable participation in planning, while emphasizing the centrality of cultural autonomy to full development, are most often lauded by development scholars as the most emancipatory options for emerging societies. Such perspectives are relevant to the discussion of the media planning environment of the English-speaking Caribbean, especially within the television area where overall disproportionate amount of foreign programming is perceived by some to contribute to the erosion of indigenous cultural character. These concerns have prompted many leaders throughout the region to re-examine existing policies and systems of control, and to consider appropriate alternatives. This article examines the television programming framework of the country of Barbados, and assesses the extent to which endogenous capacity exists for the development of alternative policy approaches that engender self-reliance and equitable participation in media planning. Based on field research conducted in Barbados in 1992, this examines how key sectors influence the nature and direction of television programming policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of the decision made by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) regarding press freedom in the Caribbean Area and in Latin America. It states that the decision determined that the licensing law of Costa Rica for journalists violates the American Convention on Human Rights. According to "IAPA News" of Inter American Press Association, the ruling would affect the proliferation of the government-approved collegia. Furthermore, the decision of the IACHR stressed press freedom in the increasing acceptance of the licensing of journalists worldwide.

The article focuses on the educational and socio-cultural role of radio stations for the majority of inhabitants of their broadcasting region in Latin America and the Caribbean. It says that radio is an instrument part of a socio-political reality and a means of oppression in Latin America, wherein its radio activities are divided into a public and private sector. It mentions that the Radio Nederland Training Centre (RNTC) has organised an international courses in program production for radio and television (TV) producers or directors. It adds that RNTC's project, the "Training and Research with regard to the Application of the Mass Media for Education and Information in Latin America and the Caribbean" was to be aimed at the escuelas radiofónicas.

The article focuses on the Caribbean News Agency (CANA), a not-for-profit company which was jointly owned by shareholders, private and public mass media. It states that CANA has expanded after five years of its establishment in 1976 while maintaining its independence and had managed to thrive financially. It says that the agency was established to increase regional information flow among Caribbean Region countries and territories as well as the region with the world. It adds that the agency had experienced financial losses along with small profit in its first years, due to a shareholder's debt.