Anne Sutherland - Böcker

First published in 1986. In the last decade, the island of Caye Caulker was transformed from a subsistence fishing village into an affluent enclave within a poor Caribbean country. This ethnographic study of the island recounts the economic success story of Caye Caulker, attributing the island's relative prosperity to several key features: the reorganization of the lobster fishing industry into producer cooperatives, the limiting and controlling of tourism, and the maintenance of sociocultural institutions that historically have created strong family networks and encouraged autonomy and self-sufficiency. Dr. Sutherland's unusual case study of positive development without external assistance makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Third World development in general and local development in particular.

First published in 1986. In the last decade, the island of Caye Caulker was transformed from a subsistence fishing village into an affluent enclave within a poor Caribbean country. This ethnographic study of the island recounts the economic success story of Caye Caulker, attributing the island's relative prosperity to several key features: the reorganization of the lobster fishing industry into producer cooperatives, the limiting and controlling of tourism, and the maintenance of sociocultural institutions that historically have created strong family networks and encouraged autonomy and self-sufficiency. Dr. Sutherland's unusual case study of positive development without external assistance makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Third World development in general and local development in particular.

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.

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.