Envisioning Caribbean Futures

Jamaican Perspectives 

Employing critical analysis of Caribbean intellectual thought and of the postcolonial political economy, Brian Meeks sets about proposing a manifesto for the future. What emerges is a programme for the medium term, which is pragmatic in its efforts to deal with the current crisis without engaging in the romanticism of an all-encompassing revolutionary transformation. Meeks suggests a form of participatory reorganization without, necessarily, dismantling the fundamentals of formal democratic organization. Particular emphasis is placed on rural agroproducers because their empowerment, politically and economically, resolves the problem of elite domination while creating the conditions for economic democracy. He argues, finally, that the proposals can become the basis for a more fundamental social and intellectual transformation from, following Sylvia Wynter, “man” to “human”, based on democracy, community and solidarity.

“This new book, from one of the region’s leading thinkers in social and political thought, breaks new ground in critical analysis and prescription. Meeks . . . points to the shortcomings of the current neo-liberal economic model and proposes for a new paradigm of development that is democratic, inclusive and empowering of the majority of the population. Deserves to be widely read and debated.”– Norman Girvan, Institute of International Relations, University of the West Indies,

Trinidad and Tobago
“The book is a manifesto for dealing with the crisis of globalization in the postcolony through reorganization of the system, structure and processes of governance and through the reformulation of economic organization toward forms of economic democracy . . . There is much to engage with in Meeks’s book, which is just what superlative scholarship is all about.– Percy Hintzen, University of California, Berkeley

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