The remaking of colonial Barbados as a postmodern nation state has its political roots buried deep within the past. In Chattel House Blues, Hilary Beckles sets out to rewrite modern Barbadian history by centring the evolution of the nation in centuries of grassroots struggle. Democracy in Barbados, he argues, as a social, political and cultural reality, has its origins principally within working class demands for freedom, justice and equality and not as a bestowal upon the masses by elites at moments of imperial and colonial enlightenment. In the second volume of his trilogy, Great House Rules: Landless Emancipation and Workers' Protest in Barbados 1838-1938, Prof. Beckles convincingly shows that for the first one hundred years after emancipation, an unbroken chain of resistance, protest and agitation for democratic governance, resulted in a decisive breach in the walls of the structures of white supremacy culminating in the Clement Payne Movement and the Riots of 1937. Black workers and their middle class allies secured Universal Adult Suffrage in 1950 and finally politically independence in 1966, ending the 'Great House Rule' that had begun three hundred years earlier. This process he further argues, reached maturity in 1994 when Owen Arthur, a young man from the chattel house in the plantation tenantry became prime minister. Independence and nationhood, though critical markers in the journey towards social justice and equity d not mean an end to the struggle. The politically enfranchised workers have since risen to an appreciation of their economic rights and the issue of popular economic democracy is now seen as the next step I civil rights development that Barbadians must confront. Chattel House Blues connects current political thinking with the historical process. In producing this work of historical literature that emphasises a people-centred culture of change and transformation, Prof. Beckles' thesis is challenging if not controversial and is bound to result in widespread debate among Barbadians at home and in the diaspora.

"This retrospective on past Caribbean labour struggles provides the beginnings of a region-wide comparative perspective. Extending initial insights from the Anglophone to the Hispanic Caribbean, and from the momentous upheavals of the 1930s to the present, the essays examine the pivotal role which labour has played, and continues to play, in shaping not only the political culture of the region and its history, but also its domestic and social organization. Moreover, the essays tease out many of the activities and much of the activism which has been obscured not only by biases in the historical record, but by those of the labour leadership. Thus, the role of women in labour and revolutionary activities, and the role of memory on historical consciousness and contemporary activism are crucially brought to the surface. Revisiting Caribbean Labour is written o provide today s Caribean labour movements with an understanding of their history that can help them more effectively face the challenges of today. It is an expansion and tribute to the work of O. Nigel Bolland on the British Caribbean. "

Over the course of the twentieth century, campaigns to increase access to modern birth control methods spread across the globe and fundamentally altered the way people thought about and mobilized around reproduction. This book explores how a variety of actors translated this movement into practice on four islands (Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and Bermuda) from the 1930s–70s. The process of decolonization during this period led to heightened clashes over imperial and national policy and brought local class, race, and gender tensions to the surface, making debates over reproductive practices particularly evocative and illustrative of broader debates in the history of decolonization and international family planning. Birth Control in the Decolonizing Caribbean is at once a political history, a history of activism, and a social history, exploring the challenges faced by working class women as they tried to negotiate control over their reproductive lives.

Places in the Making maps a range of twentieth- and twenty-first century American poets who have used language to evoke the world at various scales. Distinct from related traditions including landscape poetry, nature poetry, and pastoral poetry—which tend toward more idealized and transcendent lyric registers—this study traces a poetics centered upon more particular and situated engagements with actual places and spaces. Close generic predecessors of this mode, such as topographical poetry and loco-descriptive poetry, folded themselves into the various regionalist traditions of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, but place making in modern and contemporary American poetics has extended beyond its immediate environs, unfolding at the juncture of the proximate and the remote, and establishing transnational, planetary, and cosmic formations in the process. Turning to geography as an interdisciplinary point of departure, Places in the Making distinguishes itself by taking a comparative and multiethnic approach, considering the relationship between identity and emplacement among a more representative demographic cross-section of Americans, and extending its inquiry beyond national borders. Positing place as a pivotal axis of identification and heralding emplacement as a crucial model for cultural, intellectual, and political activity in a period marked and imperiled by a tendency toward dislocation, the critical vocabulary of this project centers upon the work of place-making. It attends to a poetics that extends beyond epic and lyric modes while relying simultaneously on auditory and visual effects and proceeding in the interests of environmental advocacy and social justice, often in contrast to the more orthodox concerns of literary modernism, global capitalism, and print culture. Focusing on poets of international reputation, such as Elizabeth Bishop, Pablo Neruda, Charles Olson, and William Carlos Williams, Places in the Making also considers work by more recent figures, including Kamau Brathwaite, Joy Harjo, Myung Mi Kim, and Craig Santos Perez. In its larger comparative, multiethnic, and transnational emphases, this book addresses questions of particular moment in American literary and cultural studies and aspires to serve as a catalyst for further interdisciplinary work connecting geography and the humanities.

This original and exciting book examines the processes of nation building in the British West Indies. It argues that nation building was a more complex and messy affair, involving women and men in a range of social and cultural activities, in a variety of migratory settings, within a unique geo-political context. Taking as a case study Barbados which, in the 1930s, was the most economically impoverished, racially divided, socially disadvantaged and politically conservative of the British West Indian colonies, Empire and nation-building tells the messy, multiple stories of how a colony progressed to a nation. It is the first book to tell all sides of the independence story and will be of interest to specialists and non-specialists interested in the history of Empire, the Caribbean, of de-colonisation and nation building.

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2013. In the contemporary era, the subject of interculturalism is common in academic discussion however these questions of diversity and integration remain vague and in many cases the terminology is unconsolidated as its linguistic root – culture – remains equally ambiguous. As part of the Diversity and Recognition hub, the Inter-Disiplinary.Net project leading to this volume, brought together researchers from different disciplines to explore how these issues affect meaning and identity. Researchers from Australia, Turkey, Canada, Finland, Russia, United States of America, Belgium, South-Africa, China, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Romania, Scotland, Barbados, Ireland, Germany, Slovenia, Poland, and Spain presented arguments and maintained discourse on a wide array of topics emerging from interculturalism and the development of new meanings and identities.

In this provocative book, Stein Ringen argues that the world's democracies are failing to live up to their ideals--the United States and Great Britain most especially. The core value of democracy, he contends, is freedom, the freedom to live a good life according to one's own choosing. Yet he shows that democracy's freedom is on the decline. Citizens are increasingly distrustful of political systems weighted by money, and they don't participate in political affairs as they once did. Ringen warns of the risks we face if this trend continues, and puts forth an ambitious proposal for democratic reforms. The issues that concern him are ones that should concern us all. They include education, poverty, the social and economic roles of families, the lack of democracy in our economic lives, and the need to rejuvenate municipal democracy. Along the way, Ringen proposes policy solutions aimed at restoring democracy, such as universal vouchers for education, substituting the principle of individual insurance for social-welfare pensions, and rethinking how we measure poverty in rich and poor countries. He calls for the revival of local democracy, a democratically grounded global economy, and the protection of political democracy from the transgressions of economic power. The way to protect democracy is not to cheer it, but to reform it. What Democracy Is For offers a bold defense of democratic ideals, grounded in real reforms.