Synopses & Reviews
Globalization theorists predict that the forces of globalization will divide the countries of the world into a few winners and many losers. This book challenges that idea and suggests that the very margins of the global world system—where the construction of local relations and group identities within a deterritorialized, transnational political economy allows for a creative postmodernism—may become the areas of the most creative cultural activity. The difficulties facing those who are globalizing in the margins come from powerful transnational movements such as the environmental movement, the international drug trade, and migrations of people including international tourists. Ironically, instant contact with the rest of the world has created a sense of local identity that transcends the local and is truly multicultural.
Belize is a diverse, multicultural society that is both cosmopolitan and deterritorialized, searching for new forms of collective expression, identity, and imagined possibilities, coming into its own as a nation at a time of increasing awareness of global social realities. Perhaps the rreatest challenge faced by Belizeans is the power of the transnational eco-colonialists who have, with missionary zeal, garnered control of land and resources and placed themselves in positions of political power. The present is an end of history for Belize and the beginning of a new era, one that is peculiarly postmodern, globalized, and creative.
Review
Sutherland's perceptive book on Belize combines antropological analysis with a deep knowledge of local culture. Essentially, it is a portrait of a small nation in transition. The central theme of the study is that globalization on the margins carries both opportunities and special risks....A fine study of the limits of sovereignty and the difficulties and hopes experiences by one small postcolonial society. General readers, upper-division undergradutes, and above.Choice
Synopsis
Documents the history and rapid globalization of Belize as it confronts postmodernity.
Synopsis
Belize, until recently undeveloped, underpopulated, and unknown, has become a star destination for ecotourism, a crossroads for the international drug trade, a sanctuary for persecuted people, and a giant nature reserve. This postmodern, multicultural nation in the margins is now being made, or remade, in a globalized, deterritorialized world that rewards social and cultural creativity. Theories of globalization that paint marginal areas as losers in the world economy are challenged by this book, which documents the history and the rapid globalization of Belize as it contronts postmodernity.
About the Author
ANNE SUTHERLAND is Professor of Anthropology at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Table of Contents
Making Belize
An Ethnographic History
Political Economy and Cultural Mosaic
Family Ties on Caye Caulker
Flapping Around
A Nation in the Making
The Nation in the Making
Belizean Ethnicity
The Tourists Are Coming
Tour Guides and Rastas
Globalization in the Margins
The New Missionaries
The Sea Lottery
Bananas and Banks
Belize Communicating with the Globe
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index