CAR422H1

Caribbean Regionalism

In a public lecture in 1958, Trinidadian CLR James described Federation as the means to "accomplish the transition from colonialism to national independence." This course explores the shift from James' vision to Jamaican economist Norman Girvan's observation that contemporary "...governments tend to perceive supranationality as less an exercise in collective sovereignty and more a diminution of national sovereignty." Among the topics to be considered are: histories of regionalism; formal and informal dimensions of regional identity-making practices; freedom of movement; governance mechanisms; and widening and deepening debates, with particular reference to the non-Anglophone Caribbean and Latin America.