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Mister.
Industrialization, Poverty and Paradigmatic Thinking in the English Speaking Caribbean

Davin Ramphall Department of Geography and Anthropology Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803

Prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Caribbean Studies Association, Havana, Cuba, May 21-24, 1991

1. Introduction

There js currently a crisis in development thinking in the English speaking Caribbean (and for that matter, in the entire Caribbean area). The timeworn, top-down, macro models of industrialization, be they of the import substitution mode or, more recently, of the export promotion variety, have failed to address seriously the concerns of the region 's poor, Indeed, by any measure of poverty, many countries of the English speaking Caribbean are worse off today than they were ten to fifteen years ago. The problem of endemic poverty, in turn, has led to periodic crises of legitimation for the states of the region. In this paper I look briefly at industrialization patterns in the English speaking Caribbean over the past three decades and suggest some reasons why they have failed to ameliorate significantly the poverty problem in the region. The following section elaborates on a conceptual framework which I find useful for theorizing and evaluating the industrial patterns--the framework of dependent capitalism. This is followed in section three by an overview and assessment of the industrialization strategies themselves. Given the failure of past attempts at industrialization, does there exist a viable alternative strategy of development for the poor? In sections four and five I shall argue that a viable alternative lies in community empowerment at the grassroots level.

2. Industrialization Within Dependent Capitalism: A Conceptual Framework 2.1. The Meaning of Dependent Capitalism Virtually all radical political economy analyses of underdevelopment in the less developed countries (LDCs) start off with the following basic theoretical



References: Baran, Paul (1957) The Political Economy of Growth, New York, Monthly Review Press Beckford, George (1972) Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Planttation Economies of the Third World, New York, Oxford University Press Deere, Carmen D. et al. (1990) In the Shadows of the Sun: Caribbean Develo~ment Alternatives and U.S. Policy, Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press Demas, William (1970) _The Political-Economy of the English Speaking Caril.lbbeean, Bridgetown, Barbados, CADEC The Development Gap (n.d.1 CNIRD Directory, The Development Gap, Washington, D.C. Dos Santos, Theotonio (1970) "The Structure of Dependence," American-Eou~mic Review, 60(2): 231-236 ECLA (1949) Economic Study of Latin America, New York, United Nations Foucault, Michel (1980) PowerLKnowledge, New York, Pantheon Books Frank, Andre Gunder (1967) Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America:Historical SLudies of Chile and Brazil, New York, Monthly Review Press Harvey, David (1982) The Limits to Capital, Oxford Laclau, Ernesto (1971) "Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America," New Left. Review, 67( May-June) :19-37 Lewis, W.Arthur (1950) "The Industrialisation of the British West; Indies," Caribbean Economic Review, 2(1): 1-53 Meeropol, Michael (1972) "Towards a Political Economy Analysis of Underdevelopment," Review of Radical Political Economics, 1(1): 77-108 Palma, Gabriel (1978) "Dependency: A Formal Theory of Underdevelopment or a Me thodology for the Analysis of Concrete Si tuations of Underdevelopment '?," World Development, 6(July-December): 881-924 Rey, Pierre-Philippe (1975) "The Lineage Mode of Production," Critiaueof AnLhrouology, 3(Spring) :27-79 Tapa, Lakshman (1990) "Social Theorizing of Community EmpowermenL," paper presetited at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Americat~Geographers, Toronbo, Carrada, April 19-22

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