Feb 01
In an address to graduating UWI students in Arts and the Humanities, Angela Cropper points to seven negative cultural facets of Caribbean culture and challenges her audience to transcend them. Ms Cropper, ‘a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean and the Rest of the World’, recently retired as Deputy Director of the United Nations Environment Programme.
The concept of creators and custodians of our culture is not only intriguing; it is complex, wide-ranging, potentially far-reaching, and certainly demanding. It is also fundamental to the future of Trinidad and Tobago and Caribbean society, and to the way in which we contribute to, and engage with, the global civilization of which we are a part…
Jan 03
How to describe it? The extraordinary work of Jasmine Thomas-Girvan, who twists pieces of palm fronds into tongues of flame, who places a cage within a cage within a cage, whose human figures twist into tortured, glorious creatures: bodies illuminated by the mahogany that encases them?…
Dec 31
Jasmine’s exhibition is a paean to Nature, to Mother Earth, and to the power, beauty and (inner) strength of ancestral Amerindian and African-Caribbean women. It radiates symbolic meaning and glorious subliminal messages…
Dec 17
Construction Of Inclusive, Culturally Diverse And Environmentally Responsible Societies In Latin America And The Caribbean
Call For Applications For Research Funding From The ALBA Cultural Fund
The ALBA Cultural Fund has issued a call for applications for funding of research projects on the building of inclusive, culturally diverse and environmentally responsible societies in Latin America and the Caribbean; with an emphasis on projects that generate theory from a critical analysis of the realities of the region. Researchers may be from both ALBA and non-ALBA member countries. Applications for research grants of up to $5,000 will be considered. Details are provided in the attached documents. For further information contact Ambassador Joan Underwoo,Office of the Prime Minister, Government of Antigua and Barbuda. email jhunderwood@gmail.com
It is important that scholars from the English,Dutch and French speaking Caribbean are adequately represented in ths research. Please pass this information on to others.
Aug 06
In the special issue of ALAI–Latin America on the Move–to mark the International Year for Peoples of African Descent, Mervyn Claxton reviews Africa’s s outstanding contributions to world civilization with examples from iron technology, the creative arts, agriculture, gender equality and governance.
Feb 02
In January 2009, Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, whom the Western press regularly (not at all innocently) describes as a former coca leaf planter, submitted a new constitution (the country’s 17th) to a national referendum… The constitution was reformulated to reflect Bolivia’s indigenous reality. The referendum, in which 90% of the population ..participated,was approved by a plurality of 61% of the electorate…Perhaps the most controversial provision (for the United States and its Western allies) in
Bolivia’s new Constitution is the one that protects coca and its traditional usage, on the grounds that it forms part of the countryʼs cultural heritage..
Sep 03
Third Distinguished Lecture, The Cropper Foundation; UWI, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago; September 1, 2010
Biodiversity, indigenous knowledge, and sustainable development are very closely linked. The indigenous knowledge systems of the peoples of the South constitute the world largest reservoir of knowledge of the diverse species of plant and animal life on earth. For many centuries, their indigenous agricultural systems have utilized practices and techniques which embody, what one scientist has called ‘Principles of Permanence’- ..
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Feb 04
No country endowed with the outstanding creativity, originality, and inventiveness of Haitian culture - its world-class art, its world-class literature and the astonishing technological/scientific/medical knowledge embedded in its voodoo culture - can be considered poor, let alone “the poorest country in the Western hemisphere”. Those who hold such an absurd opinion evidently suffer from an acute form of cultural myopia.
Nov 05
Chimamanda Adichie
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding…
Sep 15
It is not for me to say whether religion (that is to say, the acts committed in the name of religion, since an abstract ideology or belief system cannot in itself produce any concrete effects) has caused more harm than good. I leave such judgements to others who are better informed, or wiser, than I am. It does appears to me, however, that the harm done in the name of religion over the centuries has greatly obscured the good done in its name. I am open to correction if my impression is wrong in that respect. It is true, human nature being what it is, that the good that is done in the world often goes unsung - forgotten, minimized or dismissed as uninteresting - while the bad that is done keeps our attention riveted…
