Holger Henke - Böcker

Despite growing cultural and economic homogenization across the globe, the visible presence of immigrant communities stands out in many metropolises of the world. In almost all major cities the cultural and physical presence of various ethnic or religious groups is very much in evidence. Yet, until now, the academic treatment of international migration has mostly been confined to limited case studies, single ethnic groups, or single locations. Crossing Over offers an alternative to this method, bringing together a diverse group of academics charged with submitting new research that juxtaposes experiences and draws on comparisons between aspects of migration in Europe and the United States. The essays focus on two main issues: security issues—heightened by recent terrorist activities—and the question of citizenship, identity, and host-guest interaction. The result is a collection of accessible research essays that shed light on both the parallels and differences that exist for immigrant groups across continents and cultures.

In this volume, the editors and authors strive to understand the evolving Trans-Caribbean as a discontinuous, displacing and displaced, transnational space. It considers the imagined community in the islands as its psycho-social homeland, while simultaneously pursuing different cultural strategies of redefining and resisting colonial "homeland" conventions (which Kamau Brathwaite appropriately termed the "inner plantation"). Thus, the Trans-Caribbean is suspended in a double-dialectic, which opposes both the hegemonic metropolitan space inhabited, as well as the romanticized, yet colonialized, "inner plantation," whose transcendence via migration perpetually turns out to be an illusion. Given this, cultural production and migration remain at the vortex of the Trans-Caribbean. The construction of cultural products in the Trans-Caribbean—understood as a collection of social and new migratory practices—both reflects and contests post-colonial metropolitan hegemonies. Following Arjun Appadurai's distinction, these homogenizing and heterogenizing counter-trends in Trans-Cariabbean spaces can be observed through cultural transactions manifesting themselves as ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, cityscapes, ideoscapes, etc. For the purposes of this book the editors invited anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, linguists, liberal arts and gender studies specialists, as well as cultural and literary historians to begin drawing some of the diasporic trajectories on the huge canvas of cultural production throughout the Trans-Caribbean.Constructing Vernacular Culture in the Trans-Caribbean will find its audience among scholars in cultural studies, migration, literary theory, and cultural criticism who have a special interest in Caribbean and Latin American Studies, as well as among students and scholars of migration and postcolonialism and postmodernity in general.

Between Self-Determination and Dependency analyses the nature and trajectory of Jamaica's foreign relations from 1972 to 1989. The central argument is that the relative autonomy of the Jamaican state declined due to the evolution of a new international regime which in effect disallowed the political, social and economic experimentation originally envisioned. Neither the attempt at radical nationalism by the People's National Party, nor the 'accommodationist' stance of the Jamaica Labour Party served to reduce Jamaica's structural dependency. The analysis factors in the political and economic interests and policies of both domestic and foreign social forces as they negotiated the foreign policies of the Jamaican state. Thus, the text employs a more holistic perspective. It departs from earlier studies that tended to focus on the diplomatic history of the country's foreign relations without illuminating the various co-determinants that defined the context of state action.

This contribution to the study and analysis of Caribbean politics explores the political culture of the Caribbean in order to understand the regional differences. The contributors, renowned internationally for their expertise in Caribbean studies, explore the topic from their varied cultural experiences and offer a new dimension to the study of political culture.