Introduction: Caribbean Entanglements in Times of Crises

I am interested in projects related to citizenship, nationalism and development mainly in the Atlantic and Pacific regions. My current projects are focused on the sorts of claims that populations deemed diasporic make on states, and how these reconfigure their communities and general sociocultural practices. I am also interested in development's impact on social and economic environments, and the way this structures and restructures people's assessments of their spaces for the articulation and pursuit of particular kinds of freedoms. I have attempted to project these perspectives in my recent book, "Globalization and the Postcreole Imagination: Notes on Fleeing the Plantation" (July 2009) and my current project: "Governing the Present: Vistas, Violence and the Politics of Place" that examines the quests for place and freedoms among populations in the Caribbean, Pacific and South Africa.

I am also an associate research fellow on a project called 50:50 at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, that examines post-independence socio-economic developments primarily in the Anglophone Caribbean, and suggests new ways for rethinking development in the region. As well I am part of a SALISES international working group, on Rural Resilience and Agricultural Development Studies. The Agrarian component of my contribution to these projects, utilizes the arguments and methodology developed in my earlier text, "Negotiating Caribbean Freedom: Peasants and State in Development." Combining the theorizing of creolization in my recent text, "Globalization and the Post-Creole Imagination: Notes on Fleeing the Plantation," with issues of development particularly related to notions of resilience, sustainability, governance, processes of rural "othering," that emerge from this vibrant and highly productive project; I am better equipped to tackle the question of governance, violence, otherness, and the quest for freedoms-subjects centered in my new work.