From Antiquity to the Renaissance

This analytical overview of the situation of women in society from historical to modern times and the redoubtable problems they have faced in winning acceptance of their right to an equal place in it, not only from men but also from the society as a whole, is intended to be non-partisan and objective. I fully recognize that for a man to undertake such an endeavour is like him deciding to walk through a minefield without the benefit of a mine detector, so much has this subject area come to be regarded as an exclusive female preserve…

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Editorial, January 28, 2009

Controversy continues in the Caribbean and well beyond on the nature of the negotiations and accompanying dealings which the various ACP member-states have had with the European Union in arriving at regional Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The various contenders in the pro and anti-EPA contentions as it evolved continue to do verbal and journalistic battle, the contentions arising again particularly after it was announced that Jamaica was going to have to increase its General Consumption Tax in order to maintain revenue lost as a result of the liberalization of its imports from Europe under the EPA…

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Isaac Saney

Latin American Perspectives, January 2009

Cuba’s internationalism has been treated as epiphenomenal to the overall trajectory of the Cuban Revolution rather than as a central component. The emphasis has been on the external rather than the internal dimensions: internationalist missions.. are often treated as divorced from the domestic sphere. Internationalist programs have always been dialectically linked to socialist development in Cuba, however; and their role of cannot be ignored or underestimated. Internationalism is a reservoir of socialist values and revolutionary fervor that was drawn on during the Special Period and an important factor in explaining the resilience of the revolution.

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Isaac Saney is from Trinidad and Tobago and  teaches at Dalhousie University and Saint Mary’s University. He is the author of Cuba: A Revolution in Motion (2004), a new edition of which will appear in 2009.

European Centre for International Political Economy, January 2009

“The recent EC-Cariforum Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) draws a line under thirty years of preferential access to European markets enjoyed by Caribbean producers. In this new paper by Pierre Sauvé and Natasha Ward, the authors delve into the services and investment dimensions of the agreement - how they advance liberalisation, development and policy lessons for other ACP regions, particularly in Africa. They argue that the Cariforum EPA has set the bar high and demonstrates how a well-negotiated agreement between highly unequal partners can nonetheless generate outcomes that offer tangible benefits to the weaker side. It brings a welcome positive outlook on the much-maligned EPA process”

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Jane Kelsey is Professor of International Law at the University of Auckland, New Zealand

Serving Whose Interests? explores the political economy of trade in services agreements from a critical legal perspective. The controversy surrounding the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and its variants at the regional and bilateral levels can be seen as a clash between two paradigms. The socially based and state-centred approach of most of the 20^th Century has been progressively displaced since the 1980s through neoliberal policies of privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation, the transnationalisation of finance and production, and new technologies. The explicit aim of ‘trade in services’ agreements is to lock in national regulations and policies that enhance the profitability of international services markets. This book argues that there is a fundamental contradiction between the global market model and the intrinsically social nature of services. It examines these tensions and contradictions through a combination of theoretical analysis and a series of global case studies.

Contents: Introduction: Taking Services to Market 1. Reading the GATS as Ideology 2. How the GATS was Won (and Lost?) 3. Trade-related Development 4. The Illusion of Public Services 5. Ruling the Services Infrastructure 6. Trade in People 7. Minds and Markets 8. Dominion Over the Earth 9. Energy Wars; 10. Serving Whose Interests?

Published by Routledge-Cavendish 2008. More on Serving Whose Interests?

Third Patrick Emmanuel Memorial Lecture, St. Lucia, Novermber 27, 2008

Kenny Anthony

“The CSME is at a delicate juncture, its foundations compromised and weakened, its cohesiveness shaken, its momentum and direction lost. Amazingly, the Heads of Government are yet to meet to prepare the people of the region to face the future that lies ahead’. Dr. Anthony’s lecture analyses reasons for the drift and outlines a number of proposals for revitalising the integration movement. Among these are restoring primacy to the CSME, convening  a special Heads of Government meeting to review the impact of the global economic crisis, addressing the issue of the free movement of skills and bringing Opposition Parties and Civil Society into the mainsteam of Caricom decision making.

Click here for Dr. Anthony’s lecture

This paper examines the potential nature of future trade relations between CARICOM and the United States and Canada, bearing in mind the features of the CBI/CBTPA and CARIBCAN schemes and CARIFORUM commitments to the EU under the EPA. In particular it:

• Analyses the current contribution of CARICOM-US and CARICOM-Canada trade
• Provides a historical overview of the structure, role and function of the Caribbean Basin Initiative and CARIBCAN and analyses the extent to which the benefits of CBI and CARIBCAN have been affected or modified by trade liberalisation;
• Examines the scope and tenor of recent FTAs by the United States and Canada and identifies key negotiating issues that are likely to arise in any future CARICOM-Canada and CARICOM-United States FTA negiotiation
• Examines and identifies the mechanisms used to incorporate civil society into US and Canada FTA negotiations with the aim of making recommendations which could be adopted in a CARICOM context.

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The 2009 Errol Barrow Memorial Lecture, Bridgetown, Barbados, January 20, 2009

The 1973 Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing the Caribbean Community and Common Market – CARICOM – is today sometimes regarded as the resumption of West Indian regionalism after the debacle of ‘federation’. The truth is otherwise. The event that marked that resumption was the Agreement of Dickenson Bay in Antigua – the CARIFTA Agreement of 1965; and the credit for that resumption must go primarily to Errol Barrow. It was he that initiated the post-federal détente…

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The failure of the Federation and of the Little Eight attempt, has, over the years           continued  to hang like a shadow over successive efforts at what today, following the jargon of the academics, we call “political integration” in the English-speaking Caribbean. The federal effort has allowed detractors of subsequent efforts of integration to instantly advise that, most of all, the inclination of leaders to accumulate, and hold a tight grip on the reigns of power and control in the separate jurisdictions, ipso facto, preordains failure, whatever the nice-sounding and persuasive verbal pronouncements of the actors….

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