This study examines Anglophone Caribbean national identities to interrogate multiple and varied economies that manage citizens in the interest of economic and social production and/or the policing of national identities. It is particularly concerned with the gendered character of these economies. The formation and preservation of these national identities rely heavily on gender and sexual difference as Anglophone Caribbean national identities are inextricably linked to expressions of Afro-Caribbean masculinity. Thus I analyze novels and cultural representations of Afro-Caribbean masculinity in cricket, calypso and chutney-soca music in Trinidad's carnival. I also examine Afro-Caribbean religions, Revivalism and Rastafarianism, as well as Afro-Caribbean practices of masking. I examine these practices in order to interrogate the reproduction of colonial practices of marginalization and exclusion. These colonial practices, I argue, are inherent in the cultural politics that inform these cultural performances while denying modes of national belonging that refuse dictated performances of national identities. The literary and cultural performances in this project span three epochs in Caribbean history: post emancipation, independence, and post independence to assess the shifting cultural landscapes that shape postcolonial subjectivities. In Sylvia Wynter's The Hills of Hebron and Orlando Patterson's The Children of Sisyphus, I examine sexual economies in which power is negotiated and contested in a struggle to chart the gendered borders of citizenship and production. I then turn to Lakshmi Persaud's For the Love of My Name to analyze violence exacted against ethnically marked national collectives as an instrument of political and economic aggression that disproportionately affects women. My critique of Earl Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance and contemporary performances in calypso and chutney-soca carnival competitions, considers how operative traditions seek to govern post-independent cultural politics. By drawing parallels between the formation of Afro and Indo-Trinidadian nationalisms, I argue that these identity formations establish cultural difference while also dictating cultural performances to advance and police national identities. Lastly, I engage Lovelace's Salt, Garfield Ellis' Such as I Have and contemporary discourses concerning cricket performance, remuneration, and women's limited access to cricket. I argue that cricket becomes a cultural commodity in the perpetuation of a regional national identity that is dependent on gender constructs. Thus this study demonstrates how representations of culture can be mobilized to challenge ideologies and political practices of exclusion, marginalize women in the formation and performance of national identities and govern cultural politics.

Achieving sustained economic growth and development has been an area of concern for policy-makers in the Anglophone Caribbean since the transition from colonial rule to self-governance. To date, the researcher did not find any research that has explicitly examined the role of policy-making effectiveness as a strategy for achieving the goals of sustainable development. This qualitative multiple case study of Barbados and Grenada was conceptualized from the perspective of critical theory from the World Commission on Environment and Development to explore and understand why sustainability has not been sufficiently realized and how sustainable development may be pursued in territories that are small and prone to hazards. Purposive sampling was used to identify 30 candidates for the study. Eighteen key policy-makers participated in semi-structured interviews. Secondary data from publicly available government documents in Barbados and Grenada were acquired. All data were inductively coded and data analysis was carried out at three levels using thematic, content, and cross-case analyses. Key findings suggest a need exists to increase understanding of the concept of sustainable development and the unique characteristics of the territories to enable policy-makers to better define the safe operating space for human development. Recommendations for positive social change include advice to strengthen institutional capacity across the full spectrum of policy-making practice for sustainable development including mechanisms to promote a learning culture and accountability in policy-making practice in the Anglophone Caribbean, particularly among those territories that are small and prone to hazards.

xi, 180 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation examines the relationship between British and American conceptualizations of the Anglophone Caribbean and the way that Anglophone Caribbean fiction writers and filmmakers tend to represent the region. Central to my project is the process of reexportation, whereby Caribbean artists attain success at home by first achieving renown abroad. I argue that the primary implication of reexportation is that British and American conceptualizations of the Anglophone Caribbean have had a determining effect upon attempts by Anglophone Caribbean fiction writers and filmmakers to represent the region. Chapter I introduces the dissertation. Chapter II, "The 'Double Audience' of Samuel Selvon and The Lonely Londoners ," concerns Trinidadian author Samuel Selvon, who--along with George Lamming, Derek Walcott, and V. S. Naipaul--is cited as being among the most important and influential of the West Indian authors who began publishing in the 1950s. Although I consider all of Selvon's ten novels in that chapter, my main concern is The Lonely Londoners (1956), Selvon's best known and perhaps most pivotal and misread novel. Chapter III, "Contrapuntally Re-reading Perry Henzell's The Harder They Come, " features a reevaluation of the Jamaican filmmaker's 1972 motion picture, which in many complex ways remains the Caribbean film. Chapter IV, " Pressure and the Caribbean," focuses on Trinidadian filmmaker Horace Ove's Pressure (1975), which I deliberately treat as a Caribbean film although it is still best known as Britain's first feature-length dramatic movie with a "black" director. Vital secondary texts include selected works by Edward Said, Mikhail Bahktin, and Richard Dyer, as well as Kenneth Ramchand, Keith Warner, and D. Elliott Parris. The three existing book-length analyses of Selvon's fiction are the main voices with which the Selvon chapter is in discourse. David Bordwell's work in cinematic narrative theory and Marcia Landy's contribution to the study of British genres are essential to the frameworks through which I read the cinematic primary texts. / Adviser: Gordon Sayre

Il presente elaborato si propone di esplorare la tradizione del romanzo di formazione caraibico considerando il genere del romanzo di formazione, le sue caratteristiche, la sua storia, e individuando le peculiarità che il genere ha sviluppato all'interno della tradizione post-coloniale, soprattutto nel contesto caraibico di lingua inglese. Il primo capitolo stabilisce cosa si intenda con “romanzo di formazione caraibico” e introduce i dodici romanzi selezionati per questo studio. La tesi quindi procede identificando quattro argomenti principali, o macro temi, a ciascuno dei quali è dedicato un capitolo, e confrontando il modo in cui questi vengono sviluppati nei diversi romanzi. I temi sono: la scuola e l’istruzione, la cultura e la storia, la politica, la partenza. La tesi si chiude con una breve riflessione sul tema del ritorno. / The present study aims to explore the Caribbean Bildungsroman tradition by considering the Bildungsroman genre, its features, and history, and by pointing out the peculiarities that the genre developed within the postcolonial tradition and specifically in the anglophone Caribbean context. The first chapter establishes what is meant by “Caribbean Bildungsroman” and introduces the twelve novels selected for this study. The study then proceeds by identifying four main topics, or macro themes, each developed in a separate chapter, and by comparing the way such themes are dealt with in each of the novels. The themes are: school and education, culture and history, politics, departure. The study closes on a brief reflection on the possibility of return.