Caribbean Visionary


Book Description

Caribbean Visionary: A. R. F. Webber and the Making of the Guyanese Nation traces the life of Albert Raymond Forbes Webber (1880–1932), a distinguished Caribbean scholar, statesman, legislator, and novelist. Using Webber as a lens, the book outlines the Guyanese struggle for justice and equality in an age of colonialism, imperialism, and indentureship. In this fascinating work, Selwyn R. Cudjoe examines Webber's emergence from the interior of Guyana to become a major presence in Caribbean politics. Caribbean Visionary examines Webber's insightful novel, Those That Be in Bondage, his travel writings, and his poetry. The book chronicles his formation of the West Indian Press Association, his work on British Guiana's constitution, and his championing of its people's causes. Cudjoe studies Webber's work with the British Guiana Labour Union to improve the conditions of the Guyanese working people and Webber's authorship of the Centenary History and Handbook of British Guiana. An important addition to Caribbean intellectual history, Caribbean Visionary is an indispensable work for scholars interested in the region's literature, political science, and economic thought. It is also an invaluable resource for those who wish to understand the genesis of contemporary Guyana and the English-speaking Caribbean.




Global Guyana


Book Description

"This book makes the bold claim that we must put the small, easily overlooked South American nation of Guyana on the map if we hope to understand the global threat of environmental catastrophe as well as the pernicious forms of erasure that structure Caribbean women's lives"--




The Western in the Global South


Book Description

The Western in the Global South investigates the Western film genre's impact, migrations, and reconfigurations in the Global South. Contributors explore how cosmopolitan directors have engaged with, appropriated, and subverted the tropes and conventions of Hollywood and Italian Westerns, and how Global South Westerns and Post-Westerns in particular address the inequities brought about by postcolonial patriarchy, globalization and neoliberalism. The book offers a wide range of historical engagements with the genre, from African, Caribbean, South and Southeast Asian, Central and South American, and transnational directors. The contributors employ interdisciplinary cultural studies approaches to cinema, integrating aesthetic considerations with historical, political, and gender studies readings of the international appropriations and U.S. re-appropriations of the Western genre.




The Cultural Politics of Obeah


Book Description

A study of the importance of debates about obeah, and state suppression of it, for Caribbean struggles about freedom and citizenship.




Guyana: from Slavery to the Present


Book Description

It is common knowledge that slavery and indenture were characterized by long hours of physical labor, restriction of movement and other basic human freedoms, and severe punishment for violations of draconian labor laws. Less well known is the fact that nutrition was very deficient and a range of infectious diseases maimed, debilitated and killed on a large scale. In trying to narrow the knowledge gap with respect to Guyana, Ramesh Gampat shows that extremely poor sanitary conditions, awful hygiene and malnutrition hastened widespread infections and created a vicious cycle. The British protected its own soldiers, officials and colonists by establishing a medical enclave that lasted until Emancipation in 1838. Former slaves were then quarantined to neglected and decaying villages and Indians to plantations. Concern with health conditions appeared only during periods of epidemics and even then it was essentially for the protection of Europeans. Colonial medicine opened the way for stereotyping, labeling, racialization of disease, neutralization of potential leaders in the struggle for justice, and crystallization of the view that Europeans were superior to Blacks and Indians. Shorter stature and shorter life expectancy are good indications that slaves and indentured immigrants fared considerably less well than Europeans. Several infectious diseases sickened and fell Blacks and Indians, including malaria and undefined fevers, pneumonia and bronchitis, diarrhea and enteritis, tuberculosis, pneumonia and hookworm. The conquest of malaria in the early 1950s accelerated the epidemiological transition from communicable to chronic noncommunicable diseases, and today NCDs account for some three-quarters of all deaths in Guyana. Malaria has reemerged, fueled by a gold boom that consumes huge amounts of mercury. The potentially adverse public health consequences of this relatively new dynamic, the combined trio, have been neglected.




Forbes Burnham


Book Description

It is virtually impossible to understand the history of modern Guyana without understanding the role played by Forbes Burnham. As premier of British Guiana, he led the country to independence in 1966 and spent two decades as its head of state until his death in 1985. An intensely charismatic politician, Burnham helped steer a new course for the former colony, but he was also a quintessential strongman leader, venerated by some of his citizens yet feared and despised by others. Forbes Burnham: The Life and Times of the Comrade Leader is the first political biography of this complex and influential figure. It charts how the political party he founded, the People’s National Congress, combined nationalist rhetoric, socialist policies, and Pan-Africanist philosophies. It also explores how, in a country already deeply divided between the descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured servants, Burnham consolidated political power by intensifying ethnic polarizations. Drawing from historical archives as well as new interviews with the people who knew Burnham best, sociologist Linden F. Lewis examines how his dictatorial tendencies coexisted with his progressive convictions. Forbes Burnham is a compelling study of the nature of postcolonial leadership and its pitfalls.




The Haunting Past


Book Description

First Published in 2015. This book places in firm historical perspective the roots of Caribbean dependency, highlighting the ways in which the region has been and continues to be a pawn in Great Power politics and economics. The past is both haunting and daunting, seriously hampering the region's capacity to pursue an autonomous path. The author develops his argument by focusing on how politics, economics and race have shaped Caribbean history and contemporary life. Discussions and analysis include examples from the Anglophone, Spanish, French and Dutch speaking Caribbean islands and countries. Thompson also attempts to provide prescriptions that would free the region from the shackles of the past and place the countries on the path to independence.




Migration, Mining, and the African Diaspora


Book Description

From the late 1800s, African workers migrated to the mineral-rich hinterland areas of Guyana, mined gold, diamonds, and bauxite; diversified the country's economy; and contributed to national development. Utilizing real estate, financial, and death records, as well as oral accounts of the labor migrants along with colonial officials and mining companies' information stored in National Archives in Guyana, Great Britain, and the U.S. Library of Congress, the study situates miners into the historical structure of the country's economic development. It analyzes the workers attraction to mining from agriculture, their concepts of "order and progress," and how they shaped their lives in positive ways rather than becoming mere victims of colonialism. In this contentious plantation society plagued by adversarial relations between the economic elites and the laboring class, in addition to producing the strategically important bauxite for the aviation era of World Wars I & II, for almost a century the workers braved the ecologically hostile and sometimes deadly environments of the gold and diamond fields in the quest for El Dorado in Guyana.




Handbook of Research on Activating Middle Executives’ Agency to Lead and Manage During Times of Crisis


Book Description

The role of lead executives is demanding under normal circumstances, but more so during times of institutional crisis. The existence of ongoing internal organizational crises plus crises triggered by external events and shocks requires that leaders and managers be equipped with the tools to manage such crises. Therefore, further study is required that considers the difficulties of leading various organizations as well as best practices for future management. The Handbook of Research on Activating Middle Executives’ Agency to Lead and Manage During Times of Crisis is a comprehensive reference source that offers practical applications, tools, and skills to equip middle leaders to meaningfully participate in crisis management and resolution in institutions for improved outcomes and discusses a multi-pronged framework for building middle leaders’ crisis response efficacies. The book also invites top-tier educational and industry practitioners to reflect on how they have led during times of crisis. Covering topics such as mentoring, coping strategies, and sustainable development, this major reference work is ideal for educational leaders, managers, business owners, human resource professionals, scholars, researchers, academicians, instructors, and students.




A Vision Becomes Reality


Book Description

A Vision Becomes Reality is the story of how a Seventh-day Adventist educational institution, West Indies College (now Northern Caribbean University) in Mandeville, Jamaica, collaborated with a Seventh-day Adventist health care institution, Andrews Memorial Hospital in Kingston, Jamaica, to develop and implement the Department of Nursing Education and the first baccalaureate nursing programme in Jamaica. This is the first time the early history of this endeavour has been published. Many individuals provided information on the history of this landmark programme in Jamaica. Without the help of the numerous people involved in the story of the college, hospital, and baccalaureate nursing programme, this account would not have been possible. It is the authors’ hope that the content will provide information on the early history of Seventh-day Adventist higher education and medical work in Jamaica as well as provide a blueprint of the process used in developing what is now Northern Caribbean University Department of Nursing and its baccalaureate nursing programme as it reaches its fiftieth anniversary in 2020. “These authors take us on a journey that shows the faith and courage of visionary administrators [and] teachers…within the Seventh-day Adventist church school system and government institutions, as they provided expertise and direction….A must read….” Beverly Henry, JP, MA, Northern Caribbean University “Radke and Fletcher provide a valuable contribution to archiving the legacy of Adventist nursing education globally which can be described as courageous, innovative, and ahead of national norms.” Patricia S. Jones, PhD, RN, FAAN, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists “It was rewarding to read of [Hiram Walters and other key persons’] strong faith and to watch a program of such small beginnings flourish…under God's protecting hand. The book closes with comments from former students sharing their…achievements as they moved out into the world to bless others with their healing skills.” June Kimball Strong, prolific author and speaker