Distinguished Lecture, Year of Sir Arthur Lewis, UWI, St Augustine, February 20, 2008
Sir Arthur Lewis was a man of this time in his anti-imperialism, his nationalism, his regionalism… his conviction that what matters is to make the best use of one’s own resources, his theories of economic development for poor countries…he was ahead of his time in maintaining the necessity for an agricultural revolution and insisting that trade should be at the service of development…
From Stabroek News, 24/02/08
“For much of the last week I have been speaking to smaller Caribbean companies about the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe….To a man and woman they were perplexed and unsure what the EPA might mean for their businesses. …the public debate had begun to alarm them because they were unable to check the final document and its schedules to ascertain what the EPA meant for them”.
Read David’s column in the Stabroek News
Previous columns
Having the confidence to walk towards the future (February 17, 2007). ‘Two distinct Caribbeans are emerging’.
EPA-EC Options, (October 26, 2007). The Caribbean has been ‘comprehensively outmanouevered’ by Europe.
EPA in crisis (September 28, 2007) Europe’s ‘unloved Trade Commissioner’ (is) ‘continuing to threaten that failure will result in Europe imposing GSP tariffs when the WTO waiver on the Cotonou Convention expires on December 31.’
Influences on my choice of subject and approach
My field is the political economy of development. My work has been mainly concerned with the harmful effects of certain metropolitan institutions on the development of the
From the Jamaica Gleaner, 22/02/08
For a number of years in the late 1990s, rice producers in Guyana and Suriname were lobbying in Europe to try to achieve language in the Cotonou Convention that would ensure greater access for exports of Caribbean rice to the European Union (EU)…
Go to article in the Jamaica Gleaner
Press Release from Caribbean Banana Exporters Association, February 12, 2008
“Grave concerns were expressed that, despite prior assurances, the EU now appears willing to dilute or nullify the benefits of the agreements even before they are formally signed and ratified…”
Lecture delivered at Public Forum on the Post Colonial Ecnomy and Society, Kingstown, St Vincent anf the Grenadines, February 12, 2008.
The basis of colonial economy and society was the disempowerment of the majority of the population. Accordingly, the basis of the post colonial economy and society must be the self-empowerment of the population by meams of access to resources, education, science and technology and developing the production and marketing capabilities to compete successfully in local, regional and global markets. The Caricom Development Vision and the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe are reviewed in that light…
The current near-universal admiration of European peoples of the North by non-European peoples everywhere, which implicitly acknowledges the former’s superiority, did not always exist…The colonial period gave rise to different attitudes and reactions, on the part of peoples of the South, to European peoples in the North. The different attitudes of peoples in the South (or of non-European minorities or majorities to those who dominated them in their own countries) towards individual nations in the North were largely influenced by the manner in which they were treated and the attitudes adopted towards them…
All peoples, societies, and cultures believe their myths to be true and those of other peoples to be mere myths. It is, indeed, most puzzling that so many people in the South are persuaded, if one is to judge from their attitudes and actions, that Western/Northern myths are true and that their own ancestral myths are false. That astonishing phenomenon appears to be more prevalent in Black Diaspora societies than among other societies in the South…
A sort of collective psychosis appears to have taken hold in many post-colonial societies, resulting in a mass identification with the people, history, and culture of Northern/Western societies which are generally perceived, but rarely admitted, as superior. The flip side of the coin is that the cultural imitators often perceive their own people, history, and culture as inferior. That most intriguing socio-cultural phenomenon, which could be called “the post-colonial psychological syndrome”, will be explored in-depth in two consecutive articles (Part 1 and Part 2) under the title above.
A properly functioning political system, capable of channelling and satisfying social demands, is needed to ensure the social stability which would reduce the potential and the opportunity for social conflict. An effective, properly functioning legal system is required to resolve civil disputes, to restrain, control, and punish criminal acts, and to sustain the regulatory framework that is so essential for ensuring the investment (domestic and foreign) needed to promote and stimulate economic development…Unfortunately, the departing colonial powers failed to leave behind them either a tradition of impartial justice dispensed or legal and judicial structures with the capacity to achieve the above objectives.
It is most extraordinary that Western law and justice continue to be acclaimed, admired, and adopted by many countries in the South whose peoples, in the past, have suffered so much from their shortcomings..
