Book review…The Challenges of regional integration and identity

Oct 15, 2017 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

Book: Ideology, Regionalism, and Society in Caribbean History
Editors: Shane J. Pantin and Jerome Teelucksingh
Critic: Dr Glenville Ashby

Ideology, Regionalism, and Society in Caribbean History is seminal in its multi-polar approach to understanding the historical, political and social dynamics that shape a region. More so, it showcases the perennial factors that stymie

The book cover of Ideology, Regionalism, and Society in Caribbean History

an effective response to global challenges. Throughout, identity and culture in its myriad manifestations are explored.
No doubt, Caribbean society is characterized, if not marred by a slew of paradoxes that threaten homogeneity and solidarity. Albeit rich in agricultural resources, the region has failed repeatedly in the area of sustainable development.
Further, culture has been a source of social fissure despite it being a syncretic marvel. And for all its searing intellectual achievements, colonialism and imperialism continue to remain an albatross around its people and leaders.
The region’s ego is sabotaged by an unsettling unconscious and political id that was born centuries ago. In so many ways we are our own worst enemy.
This assessment is evident in many contributions to this work. Fareena M. Alladin’s ’More than what we eat: The Place of Food in Caribbean Development’ acknowledges the region’s rich culinary heritage, a testament to the existential spirit of a people; yet it falls short in attaining food sovereignty. Food, she argues, “is a reflection of [a society’s] history [and] its current place…”
But despite its unique mélange of foods, scant emphasis is paid to the agro-industry. “The history of colonialism in the Caribbean is the history of its food insecurity,” Alladin writes.
Citing Trinidad and Tobago with its substantive gas and oil reserves, she pens, “economic growth does not bring about food security.”
The impact of multinational corporations and the burgeoning fast food industry have accentuated the region’s dependence on outside actors and have also contributed to a health crisis. Here, the statistics are staggering in Trinidad and Tobago: “In 2014, the International Diabetes Federation of North America and the Caribbean noted that there were 135,699 cases of diabetes in the country.” A similar scenario is evident in Jamaica. The prevalence of obesity in the region is also attributed to marked shift in dietary patterns of which the media shares culpability.
Another contribution, Carnival Celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago and Abroad: Cultural Diplomacy in Action/Practice by Georgina Chami and Jerome Teelucksingh is progressive and hopeful. Over the last two decades, cultural diplomacy has emerged as an academic discipline aimed at fostering understanding and peace among nations. Carnival, in theory is that consummate medium. But cultural psychology and other socio-historical forces have shaped perceptions and expectations.
Chami and Teelucksingh raise important issues, for example, the role of feminism and symbolic resistance. More importantly, they delve into cultural stereotyping and its adverse effects on national homogeneity. The $64,000 question stands: Is Carnival a unifier or divider? Undeniably, bacchanalia and debauchery (imagined or real) are condemned in many quarters.
According to these writers, “[The] conservative and religious elements of society have continuously condemned the negative impact of Carnival activities [that] is a deterrent for tourists and local participants…”
They add, “Trinidad’s Carnival reflects creativity and gaiety but also masks continued segregation, class divisions, gender stereotypes and ethnic problems which are inseparable component of Caribbean society.”
Most revealing is Dane Morton-Gittens’ Sir Rawson William Rawson: Governor of Barbados, 1868-1875. Chronicling the life of a noted statesman, it speaks volumes of the Herculean obstacles barring Caribbean unity. A statistician, politician and thinker, Rawson bowed to pressure from the planter class who resisted the inclusion of Barbados in a Windward Island Federation.
Interestingly, the reasons advanced for Barbadian exclusivity mirror those that denounced West Indian Federation decades later.
“After his initial assessment of Barbados,” we learn, “Rawson then investigated the Windward Islands and, in January 1870, reported [that] a single government and legislature with Barbados as its head would be difficult…” He identified local pride, fear of being ignored, local jealously, unqualified members and fear of losing power as reasons for the island’s defiance.
And it is the likes of Sir Rawson, a bastion of white privilege that spurred the rise of Pan African intellectuals such as CLR James. Christian Hogsbjerg’s ’The most striking West Indian Creation between the Wars’: C.L.R James, the International African Service Bureau and Militant Pan-Africanism in Imperial Britain, details the roots of James’ shifting views on Africa and his emergence as a pioneer of African Thought.
“The ISAB not only built solidarity through its networks with anti-colonial and workers’ struggles across the African Diaspora. It also helped to ideologically arm a number of key pan-African activists in Britain and in colonial Africa through it publications…,” writes Hogsbjerg.
And although James’s political fortunes were short-lived, his contribution to literature and the region’s cultural philosophy is undeniable. From his classical work, The Black Jacobins, are the indelible words, “Imperialism vaunts its exploitation of the wealth of Africa for the benefit of civilization. In reality, from the very nature of its system of profit it strangles the real wealth of the continent – the creative capacity of the African people…”
Dr Matthew Quest’s New Beginning Movement: Coordinating Council of Revolutionary Alternatives for Trinidad and the Caribbean, delivers a measured, sobering account of the 1970s revolutionary trajectory in the Caribbean. He offers, “Besides having a basic political program, workers’ self-management and direct democracy, and highlighting past slave and worker rebellions, NBM attempted to read the self-organization of the ordinary people of Trinidad through an enchanted and constructed imagining of their ethnic and national origins.”
Shaped by international influences, the NBM is said to have “forged a remarkable intellectual and political legacy. They projected the idea that Black Power in the Caribbean meant black autonomy through popular self-management. More importantly, they initiated very profound steps to make Indo-Caribbean toilers the peers of Africans in history and political theory, and projected a Pan-Caribbean International with ties across linguistic and national boundaries, in imperial and peripheral nations.”
The extent to which modernity and globalization have effaced the spirit of communalism is worth exploring.
Every other contribution – Danalee Jahgoo’s Challenging Strategy of Imperialism: Chaguaramas and the Quest for American Security, Shane Pantin’s Regional Integration and Caribbean National History, Renee A. Wilson’s The Promotion of the West Indian Federation: The Federal Information Service, 1957-1961, and The Masses Speak: Popular Perspectives on the West Indian Federation by Dexnell Peters, prove insightful and thought-provoking.
Editors Shane J. Pantin and Jerome Teelucksingh have presented an eclectic array of themes on the Caribbean ethos – a must read for students and policy makers. No doubt, they invite additional discourse and research toward viable integration and self-determination.

Feedback: glenvilleashby@ gmail.com or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
Ideology, Regionalism, and Society in Caribbean History
Editors: Shane J. Pantin and Jerome Teelucksingh 2017
Publishers: Palgrave Macmillan, Switzerland
ISBN 978-3-319-614117-5
Available at Amazon
Ratings: Highly recommended