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Cultural Domination and Political Subordination: Notes towards a Theory of the Caribbean Political System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

A. W. Singham
Affiliation:
Howard University
N. L. Singham
Affiliation:
The University of Michigan

Extract

It is no accident that the study of comparative politics, and especially thestudy of political development, has been dominated by scholars from themetropolitan countries, or by those trained in metropolitan universities.This interest in the politics of the subordinate world has resulted in aseries of case studies, which we have assumed have added substantially toour knowledge about these hitherto neglected areas. However, untilfairly recently, little attention has been paid to the underlying assumptionsand ideologies of these metropolitan scholars, and the distortions, consciousand unconscious, introduced into scholarship on these areas underthe guise of scientific and value-free methodologies.

Type
New Views in Political Science
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1973

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References

1 Perhaps the best-known exponent of dualism was Boeke, J. H. (Economics and Economic Policy of Dual Societies, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1933) whose sociological theory of dualism influenced a whole generation of development economists in the post-war period, even when they rejected his metaphysical concepts such as the ‘limited wants’ of Eastern peoples. Like the political scientists of development, few if any of these economists recognized that the ‘backward’ sector of the dual economy is functional and necessary to the lrsquo;modern’ sector, and is thus linked in a situation of domination-dependency, just as the ‘backward’ countries are linked in the same manner to the metropolitan powers. In the 1960s a growing number of scholars have effectively demolished this concept of dualism, one of the best known of whom is Andre Gunder Frank.Google Scholar

2 Marshall Sahlins, ‘Culture and Environment: The Study of Cultural Ecology’, The Voice of America Forum Lectures, Anthropology Series 9, n.d.

3 Bodenheimer, Susanne J., ‘The Ideology of Developmenlalism: American Political Science's Paradigm-Surrogate for Latin American Studies’, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 02 1971.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 97.

5 Ibid., p. 98.

6 Some critics of my previous work have concluded that by using the concepts of Weber and Easton, regardless of how I used them, I have been disqualified as an original ‘Third-World Theorist’. This problem is also at the heart of the Munroe-Beckford debates at the University of the West Indies, in ‘Black Dispossession’ (mimeo), Mona, Jamaica 1971. (A.W.S.)

7 White, Leslie, The Science of Culture, Grove Press Inc., 1949.Google Scholar

8 Some scholars have questioned whether in practice the distinction makes any difference. However, it appears to us that for analytic purposes the distinction is understandable and useful, as long as it is not applied in a simple-minded way to the complex nature of social reality.

9 The question has been raised that use of the term ‘technology’ could be misleading, that technology is neutral, and thus the critical question is the economic and social structure in which technology is utilized. However, it is clear that Whiteapos;s concept of the technological base is a broad one including the organizational structure in which it is used. There are ob-viously strong similarities with the Marxist concept of the modes of production.

10 Sahlins, and Service, , eds., Evolution and Culture, University of Michigan Press, 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Ibid., p. 74.

12 This was written before China's dramatic entry into the institutional structure of the international political system. I am now in the process of completely re-examining the entire classification of the international system, particularly the whole relations of the socialist and imperialist sectors. 1 am grateful to C. L. R. James who has suggested major modifications. These revisions will appear in the final version of my paper, ‘James, C.L.R. and the World Revolution’, in the proceedings of the Conference on the Revolutionary Legacy of C. L. R. James,held in Ann Arbor,March 31–April 2, 1972 (forthcoming).A.W.S.Google Scholar

13 MacEwan, Arthur, ‘Capitalist Expansion, Ideology and Intervention’, The Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter, 1972.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Levitt, Kari, Silent Surrender, Macmillan of Canada, 1970.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 98.

16 Norman Girvan in Jamaica is currently working on an important paper comparing and contrasting the ‘economic dependence’ schools of thought in Latin America and the Caribbean. He notes that the differences in the two schools reflect differences in the terms upon which the two areas were incorporated into the international economy and a different historical sequence, but that in the recent period there is a growing convergence of the schools of thought due to a growing convergence in the institutions of structural dependence. Until recently there have been few links between Caribbean and Latin American scholars working in the same general direction, except for the informal contacts of people like Best, Girvan and Mclntyre. That is why Girvan's paper is important, as is the growing awareness in both areas of the need for closer links, both formal and informal. We are grateful to Norman Girvan for making available to us a preliminary paper he is now expanding on ‘The Develop-ment of Dependence in Latin America and the Caribbean’,prepared for the Conference on External Dependence and Problems of Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, sponsored by theLatin American Studies Committee of the University of Toronto,Toronto,April 1972.Google Scholar

17 Bodenheimer, op. cit., p. 124.Google Scholar

18 Frank, Andre Gunder, Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution, Monthly Review Press, 1969, p. 13.Google Scholar

19 Cf.Best, Lloyd and Levitt, Kari, Studies in Caribbean Economy, Volume I, Models of Plantation Economy (forthcoming);Google ScholarBest, Lloyd, ‘Outlines of a Model of Pure Plantation Economy’, Social and Economic Studies, 09 1968;Google ScholarBeckford, George L., Persistent Poverty, Oxford University Press, New York, 1972;Google ScholarGirvan, Norman, Foreign Capital and Economic Underdevelopment in Jamaica, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, Jamaica, 1971;Google Scholar and Thomas, C. Y., Monetary and Financial Arrangements in a Dependent Economy, ISER, University of the West Indies, 1965.Google Scholar

20 Best, Lloyd, ‘Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom’, New World Quarterly, 1967, reprinted in Readings in the Political Economy of the Caribbean, New World Group, Jamaica, 1971, p. 13.Google Scholar

21 Lewis, Vaughn, ‘Comment on Multinational Corporations and Dependent Under-development in Mineral Export Economies’, Social and Economic Studies, 12 1970, p. 531.Google Scholar

22 Rosenau, James N., ‘Towards the Study of National-International Linkages’, in Rosenau, , ed., Linkage Politics, Essays on the Convergence of National and International Systems, The Free Press, 1969, p. 45.Google Scholar

23 Lewis, , op. cit., p. 528.Google Scholar

24 Bodenheimer, , op. cit., p. 126.Google Scholar

25 For Asia, for example, this type of analysis is being carried out by scholars associated generally with the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, and a number of Japanese scholars. For Africa, Walter Rodney of the University of Dar-es-Salaam, in a lecture given at the University of Michigan (March 1972) indicated that there is a growing body of analysis being undertaken in Africa along similar lines.

26 Bodenheimer, , op. cit., p. 127.Google Scholar

27 Thomas, Clive, ‘Meaningful Participation in Industry: Meaning and Scope’, Ratoon (mimeo). Occasional Paper No. I, Georgetown, Guyana, 1971, pp. 56.Google Scholar

28 Quoted in Bhagavan, M. R., ‘Problems of Socialist Development in Tanzania’, Monthly Review, 05 1972, p. 32.Google Scholar

29 ‘Liberated Documents: New Imperial Strategy for Latin America’, Nacla's Latin America and Empire Report, Vol. V, No. 7, November 1971, p. 23.Google Scholar

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31 Cf.Fanon, Frantz, The Damned, Presence Africaine, Paris, 1963.Google Scholar

32 James, C. L. R., ‘The West Indian Middle Classes’, Munroe, and Lewis, , eds., Readings in Government and Politics of the West Indies, Dept. of Government, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, 1971 edition.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., p. 195.

34 Ibid., p. 196.

35 Vedic Enterprises Ltd., Trinidad, 1962.

36 Lewis, , op. cit., p. 533.Google Scholar

37 The Vietnamization of Latin America’, Naclaapos's Latin America and Empire Report, Vol. VI, No. 5, 0506 1972, pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

38 Yale University Press.

39 Ibid., pp. 37 and 41.

40 Ibid., p. 239.

41 Tilly, Charles, ‘Does Modernization Breed Revolution’, prepared for presentation to the Seminar on Revolution and Social Change, Pennsylvania State University, May 1971 (mimeo), p. 10.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., p. 9.

43 Ibid., p. 11.

44 Halpern, Manfred, ‘A Redefinition of the Revolutionary Situation’, in Miller, and Aya, , eds., National Liberation, Revolution in the Third World, The Free Press, 1971, p. 46.Google Scholar

45 Since we wrote this paper, Norman Girvan has pointed out to us a classic case of the pre-eminence of the multinational corporations over national sovereignty. He cites the Alcoa-Costa Rica bauxite agreement of 1968: ‘This agreement has the status of a so-called “contract-law”—i.e. it has the properties both of a contract and of a national law. Now since the agreement can only be terminated under provisions contained in the agreement and all of these provisions require the agreement of the company, in effect the state of Costa Rica is constitutionally bound to the provisions of the agreement for its entire life of 40 years. Neither the Government nor the Legislative Assembly can make any regulation or pass any law until the year 2010 which unilaterally alters any of the provisions of the agreement, or terminates it. Thus in this case the abrogation of national sovereignty is total and complete.’ Girvan, Norman, ‘Making the Rules of the Game: Country-Company Agreements in the Bauxite Industry’, Social and Economic Studies, 12 1971, p. 416.Google Scholar

46 Because of the political strife in Guyana where the two major political parties were deeply divided by race and by ideology, there were more modifications to the basic West minster model. However, these modifications were in the main imposed by Great Britain to prevent the return to power by the avowedly Marxist Cheddi Jagan rather than representing attempts by the local political leaders to devise more suitable indigenous institutions and instruments.

47 Munroe, Trevor, The Politics of Constitutional Decolonization, Jamaica, 1944–1962, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, Jamaica, 1972, p. 156.Google Scholar

48 Best, Lloyd, ‘Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom’, op. cit., pp. 27–8.Google Scholar

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50 Ibid., p. 166.

51 Singham, A. W., The Hero and the Crowd in a Colonial Polity, Yale University Press, 1968, p. 319.Google Scholar

52 Best, Lloyd, ‘Options Facing Williams, the Ruling Party and the Country’, The Express, Trinidad, May 31, 1969.Google Scholar

53 Munroe, , op. cit., p. 148.Google Scholar

54 Verbatim Record of the Proceedings of the Joint Constitutional Committee, 1961–1962 (unpublished), quoted in Munroe, op. tit., p. 161.

55 Munroe, , op. cit., p. 150.Google Scholar

56 Ibid., p. 161.

57 For a detailed case study of this conflict in one of the territories, Grenada, see Singham, A. W., op. cit.Google Scholar

58 Tapia, No. 16, May 23, 1971, Tapia House Publishing Co. Ltd., 91 Tunapuna Road, Tunapuna Trinidad, p. 3.

59 Halpern, , op. cit., p. 40.Google Scholar

60 Cf.Thomas, C. Y., Monetary and Financial Arrangements in a Dependent Economy, op. cit.Google Scholar

61 Monroe, , op. cit., p. 217Google Scholar

62 These views are amply documented in the radical newspapers that sprang into existence after the Rodney affair, particularly Abeng in Jamaica, Moko and Tapia in Trinidad, and Ratoon in Guyana.

63 Sahlins, , op. cit., pp. 67.Google Scholar