/library/oar/handle/123456789/56387 2025-12-20T20:28:49Z 2025-12-20T20:28:49Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/56751 2020-05-31T05:22:09Z 2020-05-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Book review : The Grenada revolution : Reflections and lessons Abstract: Political factions, ideological, generational and gender divides, and geographical and national differences are among the categories across which varying insights develop on the Grenada Revolution. The socialist-inspired revolution began on March 13, 1979 when a cadre of young radicals, the New Jewel Movement (NJM), seized power from the nation’s first prime minister, Eric Gairy, and formed the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG). Buoyed by early popular support, the PRG governed the island-nation of 100,000 people for four and a half years until an internal power struggle led to the assassination of prime minister Maurice Bishop by members of his own military. A US military invasion of Grenada followed within days. The revolution and the US invasion were firsts in the Anglophone Caribbean, and changed the face of politics in the region. The Grenada revolution offers readers a multidisciplinary range of accounts reflecting on the place of the revolution in national and regional contexts. (The collection appeared in 2015; and almost all chapters were drafted in 2013: the authors refer to reflecting on Grenada 30 years after the revolution’s October 1983 collapse.) [excerpt from the review]

2020-05-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/56745 2020-05-31T05:22:09Z 2020-05-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Book review : Civil society organizations, governance and the Caribbean community Abstract: This volume by Kristina Hinds represents a recent wave in critical Caribbean scholarship. This wave turns away from liberal, structural and Marxian economics, institutional politics and cultural pluralist paradigms that used to dominate Caribbean studies. These paradigms, driven by the academic elites at the University of the West Indies, had focused on class, race, ethnicity, market, mode of production and small size as organizing concepts for deterministic accounts of Caribbean reality. They lost traction under the changed conditions of neoliberal capitalism and its discourses. The new framing that Hinds represents is more nebulous, emphasising intersubjective meanings from standpoints of gender, language and ethical values. The interpretive methods familiar in History and Literary Studies are applied to social and political phenomena. This new Caribbean approach is part of the constructivist trend in global scholarship. In this epistemology, the main factor in the explanation of social change, is the constructed meanings arising from public discourses, and inherited from the colonial past. [excerpt from the review]

2020-05-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/56740 2020-05-31T05:22:08Z 2020-05-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Book review : Pacific women in politics : Gender quota campaigns in the Pacific Islands Abstract: Gender balance in politics has been a longstanding issue that has attracted considerable scholarly attention over recent decades. Well-documented barriers include gendered stereotyping, traditional attitudes and economic constraints that preclude women’s representation in parliament on an equal footing to men. This is also the case in the Pacific, which has amongst the lowest representation of women in politics in the world. Indeed, Pacific states – including Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Vanuatu – currently have no women in parliament. In order to address this several Pacific Island states have made headway by implementing quotas designed to increase the number of female MPs. These temporary special measures have been contentious. Kerryn Baker’s new book seeks to document and explain the politics behind these recent interventions. When women are so under-represented in Pacific parliaments, how do political actors make sense of attempts to alter this imbalance? This question is asked at the outset of this book which seeks to highlight the goals, pressures and dilemmas of gender quota campaigns. The book presents the steps taken recently towards gender quotas in selected Pacific Island states and territories: Bougainville, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, PNG and Samoa. [excerpt from the review]

2020-05-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/56737 2020-05-31T05:21:11Z 2020-05-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Book review : Palemia : a memoir Abstract: A memoir offer readers a window into someone’s life. It provides an informative snapshot and knowledge about a subject. Simultaneously, it can also attract reactions, at times misguided when given out of context or when one does not possess a degree of familiarity and intimacy with the subject. Outsiders are often accused of this, particularly in cultural spaces where open and critical debate are not encouraged. However, an outsider’s view is just as relevant, so long as it is considered and delivered with an openness and respect towards mutual learning and understanding. Reviews offer this opportunity and, in this particular case, to learn about and engage with story of a visionary statesman and an exemplary Pacific leader, Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, Pālemia or Prime Minister of Samoa, who has penned his memoir with Peter Swain, a long time Pacific development specialist. Samoa is the first Pacific nation to gain political independence (as Western Samoa, in 1962). It has population of approximately 197,000 and has about the same number in the diaspora. Tuila’epa was elected to office in 1998 and is the longest serving Prime Minister of Samoa. In his foreword to the book, Tuila’epa is very clear about the intentions behind the volume: the memoir is “a simple political story”, closely connected to the development and success of party politics and that of the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) against the backdrop of a society navigating the realities of culture and modernity. [excerpt from the review]

2020-05-01T00:00:00Z