African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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322 p., Kweh-kweh is an African Guyanese pre-wedding ritual system that emerged among African slaves in Guyana and historically functioned as a medium for music-centered matrimonial instruction for soon-to-be-married couples. The ritual is executed on the eve of a wedding ceremony and encompasses music, dance, proverbial speech, and a plethora of ritual practices that allow participants to chide, praise, and instruct the bride and groom and their nations (relatives, friends, and representatives) on matters of marriage. However, kweh-kweh performances also reveal embedded values of the Guyanese community, such as what it means to be a "real man" or a "proper woman." African Guyanese hold conflicting views on kweh-kweh, but at the onset of a wedding, they devise ways to celebrate kweh-kweh, a "pagan" ritual they also regard "our culture." This work demonstrates how African Guyanese manipulate the kweh-kweh ritual, their religious values, and themselves to articulate the complex of their identities, particularly racial and gendered identities.
50 p., This paper summarizes the findings of the UNRISD-Commonwealth Secretariat research project on Social Policy in Small States. The findings are based on the in-depth country studies of several small states and of the cross-cutting issues that they face. It looked at small states in the Caribbean region (Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago), in the Pacific region (Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu), the Indian Ocean (Mauritius and Seychelles) and the Mediterranean region (Malta). The findings of the papers are examined and compared here to draw out common lessons on how small states can effectively promote developmental, democratic and socially inclusive economies. Tables, Figures, Appendixes, References.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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310 p., Explores aboriginal and Creole identities in Guyanese society. Reveals how Creoles, though unable to usurp the place of aboriginals as First Peoples in the New World, nonetheless managed to introduce a new, more socially viable definition of belonging, through labor. The very reason for bringing enslaved and indentured workers into Caribbean labor became the organizing principle for Creoles' new identities.
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.
Indo-Caribbean music culture includes a stratum of traditional genres derived from North India’s Bhojpuri region. This article discusses three such genres: alha-singing, an archaic form of birha, and an antiphonal style of singing the Tulsidas Ramcharitmanas. Despite the lack of supportive contact with the Bhojpuri region after 1917, these genres flourished until the 1960s, after which the decline of Bhojpuri as a spoken language in Trinidad and Guyana, together with the impact of modernity in general, undermined their vitality. A comparative perspective with North Indian counterparts reveals illuminating parallels and contrasts.
377 p., Examines the representation of history in the Caribbean novel during the era of decolonization. Exploring the period from the 1930s to the 1970s, primarily in Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana, the author argues that the predominance of historical thinking in many of the exemplary novels and works of the time was not only a response to the denial by colonialism of the history of Caribbean peoples. Such prevalence was also to be found in new class relations, which began to appear during the inaugural moment of decolonization in the 1930s when, throughout the British Caribbean, popular rebellions effectively meant the end of colonial rule.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
221 p, Rodney was disturbed by the inability of intellectuals to share common cause with the masses, thus ensuring that they would be unable to contribute to uplifting their talents or participate in the growth of the nation. Guyana and the Caribbean were subject to sugar and slave traffic that constituted cheap labor for the plantations and buttressed the capitalist-industrial system. A significant byproduct of that system was the master-slave relationship; a no-less iniquitous consequence was an active racism. Thus, social inequality became the heritage of Guyanese and Caribbean history.
This paper provides a cross-cultural analysis of the experiences of Oxfam GB in supporting urban community-based disaster risk reduction in Haiti, Guyana and the Dominican Republic. The paper focuses on the efforts of Oxfam GB and its local partners to overcome the determining influence of local governance on who benefits from interventions, and the longevity of positive outcomes.
Assesses if the economies of Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana can form part of a Caribbean monetary union. Correlations between the demand and supply indicate that monetary union may lead to greater stabilization problems for these economies.
210 p., This project examines the ways in which several texts written in the late 20th century by African American and Caribbean writers appropriate history and witness trauma. Analyzes the writings of Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, Paule Marshall, and Fred D'Aguiar as they offer distinct approaches to history and the resulting effects such reconstituted, discovered, or, in some cases, imagined histories can have on the affirmation of the self as a subject. Explores the values of the African diaspora cross-culturally as manifested in the representational practices of these writers.
