Caribbean Dependency Thought Revisited
ABSTRACT — This paper assesses the contribution, limitations, and contemporary relevance of Caribbean dependency thought (CDT). CDT emerged in the early post-colonial period in the English-speaking Caribbean with a mission to extend political decolonization to the intellectual, economic, social, and cultural spheres. While part of broader international currents of radical thought, it had its own special characteristics, associated with the theory of plantation economy and society. After outlining the historical context, the paper identifies four main expressions of CDT for review: “New World” thinking on epistemic dependency; the plantation school and multinational corporations as the institutional foundations of economic dependency; other structuralist formulations of dependency; and dependency as peripheral capitalism. Also discussed are the social and political theories of dependency and their policy prescriptions. CDT had a strong influence in Caribbean intellectual and political circles in the 1970s, but it generated vigorous critiques from both Marxist and mainstream social science. The paper suggests that its eventual decline was due to several unresolved theoretical, methodological, and political issues as well as to wider intellectual and political developments. The paper concludes by pointing to the significant historical contribution of CDT to Caribbean and Third World critical thought, and argues that its stance and method have relevance to critiques of contemporary globalization.
New Publication
Caribbean Trajectories: 200 years on
By Institute of Race Relations
This special issue of the journal Race and Class ‘attempts to resuscitate the Caribbean’s tradition of radical political critique for a generation coming of age amidst spiraling inequalities and violence’ .
A reflection: The revival of critical thought in the English-speaking Caribbean
Caribbean Trajectories follows ‘in the footsteps of the systematic and sharp critiques launched from the 1960s through the 1980s by movements like the New World Group, Workers’ Party of Jamaica, working People’s Alliance of Guyana and Tapia, (embracing) a spirit of diagnosis and contestation’. It resonates with the theme of the upcoming (March 2008) SALISES Conference ‘Reinventing the Political Economy Tradition of the Caribbean’. Are we in the midst of a revival of critical social thought in the region?
