Seventeen years after Guyana introduced a positive, liberal abortion law, the government, professional bodies and civil society together have failed to give any leadership in implementing that law. How can one explain that after an outstanding campaign of extensive ministerial and parliamentary consultation, as well as widespread engagement from religious organisations and the media, so little has been done by way of implementing the law? This paper seeks to trace some aspects of the campaign for law reform and to learn from the difficulties of providing services over the last seventeen years.
This essay investigates the key tensions that arise within Jamaica's new cultural policy "Toward Jamaica the Cultural Superstate." The argument presented in the paper is that "culture" is a tricky and potentially dangerous site upon which to hinge national development goals, even though the expansion of cultural industries may well represent a viable and potentially lucrative strategy for economic development. This is because invariably, "culture" cannot do the work policy makers would like it to do, and its invocation within policy spheres usually already signals a kind of developmental distress, a perceived need for retooling through a form of social engineering. In other words, "culture" (in the anthropological sense) reflects and shapes, yet cannot in and of itself solve the most pressing challenges facing Jamaica today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];
Reports on an empirical investigation into how small, family-owned businesses in Jamaica raise financing for business start-up and business growth. Access to finance has been one of the most critical issues affecting the growth and survival of these firms in the Jamaican economy but very little empirical work has been done in this area. This study uses survey data collected from over 250 family-owned enterprises from all the industrial sectors in the economy and analyzed, using multivariate statistical techniques. The results revealed that internal sources of financing are usually used to finance business start-up while external sources are used to finance business growth.
