Decolonization in St. Lucia
244 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:18 Mar 2013
ISBN:9781617038273
CA$43.95 Back Order
Ships in 4-6 weeks.
Hardcover
Release Date:16 Aug 2011
ISBN:9781617031175
CA$138.00 Back Order
Ships in 4-6 weeks.
GO TO CART

Decolonization in St. Lucia

Politics and Global Neoliberalism, 1945–2010

University Press of Mississippi

Tennyson S. D. Joseph builds upon current research on the anticolonial and nationalist experience in the Caribbean. He explores the impact of global transformation upon the independent experience of St. Lucia and argues that the island’s formal decolonization roughly coincided with the period of the rise of global neoliberalism hegemony. Consequently, the concept of “limited sovereignty” became the defining feature of St. Lucia’s understanding of the possibilities of independence. Central to the analysis is the tension between the role of the state as a facilitator of domestic aspirations on one hand and a facilitator of global capital on the other.

Joseph examines six critical phases in the St. Lucian experience. The first is 1940 to 1970, when the early nationalist movement gradually occupied state power within a framework of limited self-government. The second period is 1970 to 1982 during which formal independence was attained and an attempt at socialist-oriented radical nationalism was pursued by the St. Lucia Labor Party. The third distinctive period was the period of neoliberal hegemony, 1982-1990. The fourth period (1990-1997) witnessed a heightened process of neoliberal adjustment in global trade which destroyed the banana industry and transformed the domestic political economy. A later period (1997-2006) involved the SLP’s return to political power, resulting in tensions between an earlier radicalism and a new and contradictory accommodation to global neoliberalism. The final period (2006-2010) coincides with the onset of a crisis in global neoliberalism during which a series of domestic conflicts reflected the contradictions of the dominant understanding of sovereignty in narrow, materialist terms at the expense of its wider anti-systematic, progressive, and emancipator connotations.

Tennyson S. D. Joseph is lecturer in political science at the University of the West Indies in Cave Hill, Barbados. He is coeditor of At the Rainbow’s Edge: Selected Speeches of Kenny D. Anthony and coauthor of General Elections and Voting in the English-Speaking Caribbean, 1992-2005.

Find what you’re looking for...

Free shipping on online orders over $40

Stay Informed

Receive the latest UBC Press news, including events, catalogues, and announcements.


Read past newsletters

Publishers Represented
UBC Press is the Canadian agent for several international publishers. Visit our Publishers Represented page to learn more.