An empirical study of 398 business people in the slums of Jamaica and Guyana. Explains that poor women organize local banks as a form of contestation against the threat of violence, partisan and informal politics. Argues that the banker ladies reorganize money markets for themselves and others. By organizing inclusive financial programs the banker ladies also build social capital through managing locally-based economic resources.
The article focuses on the interactions between anglophone blacks, black Caribbeans, and indigenous southern Mesoamericans during the second half of the 18th century. The author discusses the history of race relations between Europeans, Africans, and Indians within the British and Spanish empires, examines the relationship between Mayas and Spanish colonists, and analyzes the role of religious differences within their encounters.
An essay is presented on the relationship between black U.S. feminist literature celebrating author Zora Neale Hurston and U.S.-Caribbean cultural linkages, and the U.S. invasion of the Caribbean during the 1980s. According to the author, black feminists' attempts to reclaim the Caribbean through Hurston contributed to a neoliberal vision of the Caribbean which excluded Grenadian revolutionaries. Grenadian government debt and depictions of the Caribbean in popular culture are discussed.
The urban and territorial changes caused by tourism are well-studied topics in contemporary scientific literature. This article uses an integrative approach that lies between the scientific traditions in urban geography and the geography of tourism to present a case study of a socialist city. Tourism is a strategic economic activity in Cuba, and the country's most popular sun and sand tourist destination is Varadero. At first consideration, its tourism model is not very different from those of other areas in the region (Dominican Republic, Riviera Maya, etc.), but the uniqueness of the Cuban government and emphasis on planning introduce several distinguishing features. The combined analysis of the development of tourism in the city and the recent history of territorial planning leads to conclusions regarding the role of tourism in urban development, which has resulted in the creation of a dual-city model, and the role land planning is playing.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
1 videocassette (ca. 20 min.), Employing footage shot between December 5 and 9, 2003, this documentary looks at the history, life, traditions, and celebrations of the black population of the municipalities of Baião and Mocajuba, located in the Brazilian state of Pará.
Washington, DC: Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
39 p., Restrictions on travel to Cuba have been a key and often contentious component in US efforts to isolate Cuba's communist government since the early 1960s. Under the George W. Bush Administration, restrictions on travel and on private remittances to Cuba were tightened. Congress took action in March 2009 by including two provisions in the FY2009 omnibus appropriations measure (P.L. 111-8) that eased restrictions on family travel and travel related to marketing and sale of agricultural and medical goods to Cuba -- Subsequently, in April 2009, President Obama announced that his Administration would go further and allow unlimited family travel and remittances. Tables.
Explores the onboard experience in situations of extreme musical commodification during cruising, with the ship resembling a floating pleasure palace that provides a monopolistic tourist environment that taps into the 'experience economy' concept. The authors' ethnographic insights reveal how music is a quintessential means to create congenial ambiance in order to encourage consumption of experience enhancements (like gambling, dancing, or drinking) and boost onboard revenue, especially through live music performance of various types and levels of interaction, whereby performer-audience interaction and participation play a major role in consumption of touristic music. While much of this music is drawn from familiar, predictable Western culture, some performances readily tap into tourists' expectations of journeying to and encountering the exotic Other, even if presented as part of their onboard experiences. Such touristic musical performances, which stereotypically include Caribbean bands performing calypso classics, Harry Belafonte and Bob Marley numbers, and tropicalist Western pop songs, are usually promoted as authentic extensions of the culture from which they originate. These situations of extreme commodification have not only transformed some of the most secluded locations into commercially viable tourist destinations, but have turned transport facilities themselves into hyper-commercialized locales of touristic consumption.
Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) is revered as one of the great pillars of American dance history. Her world-renowned modern dance company exposed audiences to the diversity of dance, and her schools brought dance training and education to a variety of populations sharing her passion and commitment to dance as a medium of cultural communication. Often recognized for her research in the Caribbean and on African dance traditions, Dunham's research also extended to black dance traditions of America. her research in American black dance traditions unearthed and contributed to the foundations of jazz dance and black vernacular movement vocabularies.
Gerber,Jane S. (Author) and Bodian,Miriam (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2014
Published:
Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
409 p, "This volume emerged from an international conference, "The Jewish Diaspora of the Caribbean," convened in Kingston, Jamaica, from 12 to 14 January 2010"--Introduction.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
241 p, In the Caribbean colony of Grenada in 1797, Dorothy Thomas signed the manumission documents for her elderly slave Betty. Thomas owned dozens of slaves and was well on her way to amassing the fortune that would make her the richest black resident in the nearby colony of Demerara. What made the transaction notable was that Betty was Dorothy Thomas’s mother and that fifteen years earlier Dorothy had purchased her own freedom and that of her children. Although she was just one remove from bondage, Dorothy Thomas managed to become so rich and powerful that she was known as the Queen of Demerara.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
216 p, A history of the Black Church as it developed both in the United States and the Caribbean after the arrival of enslaved Africans. Examines the parallel histories of these two strands of the Black Church, showing where their historical ties remain strong and where different circumstances have led them down unexpectedly divergent paths.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
286 p., Examines how texts by Diaz, Danticat, and Garcia render coloniality visible and how they offer strategies of plurality and border crossings as a means of liberation and epistemic decolonization, contesting absolute and universal positions of power. This book demonstrates that Caribbean and Western knowledge systems can be read in dialogue, which yields new strategies for solving complex problems such as intercultural conflicts and asymmetric power relations.
