Synopses & Reviews
This collection of eighteen chapters plus an editorial introduction brings together studies of land and development throughout the Caribbean region by historians, anthropologists, geographers, land use planners, a sociologist and a human rights lawyer. Themes include post-emancipation access to land for the former slaves, soil erosion, crop production, agro-biodiversity, tourism, fishing, migration, land tenure, landscape and environment, and various aspects of land policy, planning and management. The chapters cover a range of territories in the Hispanic, Francophone, English-speaking and Dutch Caribbean. This volume is a sequel to the editors' earlier ground-breaking book Land and Development in the Caribbean (Macmillan, 1987) and, with a new cast of authors and an entirely new collection of essays, provides fresh perspectives on Caribbean land and development based on both historical and contemporary research.
Review
“This ambitious book touches on a variety of issues, ranging from land use to the reorganization of agriculture in Cubas special period.”--New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids
"In this sequel to their highly-acclaimed 1987 volume dealing with land and development issues in the Caribbean, Jean Besson and Janet Momsen provide a treasury attesting to the centrality of land in the Caribbean development equation. The contribution of the text is strengthened by its coverage of land-development issues in parts of the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanic and Dutch Caribbean. All in all, an essential read."
--Rob Potter, Professor of Human Geography, University of Reading
"This rich collection of articles, presenting a significant range of cross-disciplinary research, discusses land as a key to understanding the development of the Caribbean. It demonstrates that land provides a privileged vantage point from which to elucidate the complexities of Caribbean societies past and present."
--Karen Fog Olwig, Professor of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
"Renowned Caribbean specialists Jean Besson and Janet Momsen have produced an invaluable edited volume for seasoned Caribbeanists and novice scholars alike. Twenty-three authors, spanning the academic disciplines and the legal, planning, and land management professions revisit and re-evaluate the impacts of colonialism and post-colonialism on what is arguably the first of the world regions to have its local geographies wrapped into the global economy. The reader is provided with both a review of past land use and land access issues, as well as fresh insights on all that has transpired in the most recent decades regarding Caribbean people and their lands and resources. This book is a must not only for all with Caribbean interests, but especially for all development thinkers and practitioners in the region."
--Lydia Pulsipher, Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee
Synopsis
The book is an interdisciplinary collection of fifteen essays, with an editorial introduction, on a range of territories in the Commonwealth, Francophone, and Hispanic Caribbean. The authors focus on land and development, providing fresh perspectives through a collection of international contributing authors.
About the Author
Jean Besson (M.A., Ph.D. Edinburgh), a Jamaican, is Reader in Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, England. She has carried out research in Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean on cultural history, peasantries, land tenure, development, kinship, gender, and religion. Her publications include
Land and Development in the Caribbean (co-edited with Janet Momsen, Macmillan, 1987);
Martha Brae's Two Histories: European Expansion and Caribbean Culture-Building in Jamaica (2002); and
Caribbean Narratives of Belonging: Fields of Relations, Sites of Identity (co-edited with Karen Fog Olwig, Macmillan, 2005).
Janet Momsen is Professor of Geography in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of California, Davis. She has a B.A. and B.Litt. from Oxford, a M.Sc. from McGill, and a Ph.D. from London. Her research interests include gender and development, rural development and tourism in the Caribbean, Mexico, Eastern Europe and Bangladesh. Professor Momsen's publications on the Caribbean include Land and Development in the Caribbean (co-edited with Jean Besson, Macmillan, 1987); Women and Change in the Caribbean (1993); and Environmental Planning in the Caribbean (with Jonathan Pugh, 2006).
Table of Contents
Introduction--Jean Besson & Janet Momsen *
PART I: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON LAND AND CROP PRODUCTION * The Importance of the 1897 British Royal Commission--Bonham C. Richardson * The Colonial Office and Soil Conservation in the British Caribbean, 1938-1950--Lawrence S. Grossman * Domestic Food Production in Guadeloupe in World War II--Glenroy Taitt * Cuba's Farmers' Markets in the "Special Period", 1990-1995--Torres, Momsen & Niemeier *
PART II: POLICY, PLANNING, AND MANAGEMENT * Land, Development, and Indigenous Rights in Suriname: The Role of International Human Rights Law--Ellen-Rose Kambel * The Management of State Lands in Trinidad and Tobago--J. David Stanfield & A.A. Wijetunga * The Participation Paradox: Stories from St. Lucia--Jonathan Pugh * Land Disputes and Development Activity in the Dominican Republic--Donald Mcleod * Land Policy in Jamaica in the Decade after AGENDA 21--Learie A. Miller & David Barker *
PART III: LAND FOR THE PEASANTRY? * "Squatting" as a Strategy for Land Settlement and Sustainable Development--Jean Besson * The Triumph of the Commons: Barbuda Belongs to All Barbudans Together--David Lowenthal & Colin Clarke * The Contested Existence of a Peasantry in Martinique: Scientific Discourses, Controversies and Evidence--Christine Chivallon * The Waxing and Waning of Land for the Peasantry in Barbados--Janet Momsen * Agro-biodiversity as an Environmental Management Tool in Small Scale Farming Landscapes: Implications for Agro-Chemical Use--Balfour Spence & Elizabeth Thomas-Hope *
PART IV: LANDSCAPE, MIGRATION, AND DEVELOPMENT * Arboreal Landscapes of Power and Resistance--Mimi Sheller * From the Pre-Colonial to the Virtual: The Scope and Scape of Land, Landuse and Landloss on Montserrat--Jonathan Skinner * "Leave to Come Back": The Importance of Family Land in a Transnational Caribbean Community--Beth Mills * Collateral and Achievement: Land and Caribbean Migration--Margaret Byron