Introduction of Caribbean-Oriented Scholarship on Alternatives to Development

Development, as a political project, continues to be a hegemonic exercise of inequitable power relations that is often manifested materially, discursively, epistemologically, semiotically, and prevalent in dominant development strategies and policies particularly in small island developing states in the Caribbean. Consequently, there is a consensus among scholars and practitioners of Caribbean development that there is a significant need for proactive, innovative, and decisive action to foment development pathways that are inclusive and equitable for our region and our people amidst growing endogenous and exogenous national-regional developmental problems, geo-political crises and transnational policy ambiguities that thwart coordinated efforts to promote sustained, social, economic, ecological and political transformation.

It must be established that I am not pessimistic about alternative ideas and approaches that seek to comprehensively address, mitigate, and absolve the region’s quagmire but rather I adopt an approach of cautious optimism. This is due to the fact that I am aware the variegated ways in which poly-centric colonialities of power are foundationally created, configured across time and spaces, re-invented through informal and formal social institutions and deployed to subvert autonomous development pathways, policies, strategies, and praxis that are emancipatory. I am also aware of the urgency to construct and produce knowledge that can be translated into practices and policies with viable implications that will enhance people’s standard of living and sense of dignity in the Caribbean region. 

In his edited book, ‘Caribbean Development in a New Multi-Polar World Order,’ Professor Dennis Canterbury (2021) utilized a critical development studies method to conduct post neo-liberal globalization analysis of alternatives to development in the new multi-polar world order. He describes the new multi-polar world order as global governance and international relations shifting from the West to the East and therefore, the main challenge is for Caribbean states to establish and maintain an autonomous economic and social development within this new multi-polar world order. Canterbury’s (2021) utilization of structural, neo-Marxist analysis is relevant in formulating progressive alternatives to development in Caribbean small island developing states because he has aptly demonstrated the transformation of a colonial slave economies to peripheral economies in the international political economy. He also demonstrates how new forms of colonialism and imperialism perpetuate poverty, social and economic inequalities, under-development, dependency, and non-inclusive social development in the post-independence era for individual Caribbean states and through regional blocs such as Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM).

Post/ Neo-Colonial Strategies of Containment in the Caribbean?

Similar to Caribbean Studies scholar, Alex Moulton (2025) who coined the term ‘post-colonial strategies of containment’ which refers to deliberate practical and policy responses of industrialized countries to structurally and systematically subvert the economic and social development thereby limiting the policy options and alternatives of Caribbean states, Canterbury (2021) asserts Caribbean states experience peripheralization whereby they were left to economically compete and be integrated in international economic regimes and fora while simultaneously experiencing neo-colonial, imperial and post neo-liberal, capitalist domination. Both Canterbury’s (2021) and Moulton’s (2025) astute observations and explanations are relevant in illustrating the exploitation of labour of Caribbean populations and economic resources for capital accumulation in imperial, North American and European countries. This is most evident in the extractivist, mining sector in Caribbean countries like Guyana where the benefits of economic growth remains highly inequitable and results in growing displacement, dispossession, and marginalization of majority of citizens, ecological degradation while mining transnational corporations (TNCs) repatriate profits to industrial centres of the world. 

The uneven spatial flows of capital and labour is also prevalent in-service sectors such as the business product outsourcing (BPO) industry which is one of the highest sources of generating foreign direct investment (FDI) and job creation in Caribbean small island developing states, like Jamaica. Despite the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) touting the success of primarily economic indicators of development, the non-economic indicators of development such as the quality of jobs created, health and well-being, standards of living, and the inadequateness of an enabling macro-economic policy environment to support the protection and enforcement of rights and access to justice remains obscured, absent, or sometimes, partially highlighted in these meta-narratives of development success. These meta narratives of development success are grounded in the neo-liberal logics of marketization, privatization, and de-regulation. De-regulation does not only undermine centralized bargaining strategies of trade unions but it also promotes the interests of domestic and foreign investors at the expense of failing to adhere to local, regional, and international labour standards that prioritize workers’ rights. In the Government of Jamaica’s National Investment Policy White Paper (2022), Section 7 (1) articulates the rights and duties of all investors are strongly protected. This section also iterates that discriminatory practices against employees are strongly discouraged in sectors that are governed by domestic and foreign investors. Although discriminatory practices are strongly discouraged in this policy, employees in service sectors such as the business product outsourcing (BPO) continue to be paid extremely low wages (wages are 40-60% lower in Jamaica compared to North American counterparts), experience poor working conditions, are exposed to numerous occupational health and safety hazards, limited or no social protection and there is no trade union representation to advance the rights of these workers. 

Alternative Considerations for Linkages between Decent Work and Reframing Development

Progressive academics, practitioners, policy makers and civil society organizations should continue to advocate for alternatives to development that reforms investment policies to enhance the protection of workers’ rights through a strengthened compliance framework, facilitate the implementation of flexible working hour arrangements, expand pro-worker legislations to protect employees and providing them the right to collective bargaining and representation of trade unions in precarious work arrangements such as contractual employment. Policy dialogues and actions should be shifting from increasing the minimum wage to implementing a living wage, as inflationary pressures continue to outpace the wages and salaries of workers. Thus, this further contributes to declining standards of living where many families who are working but are still living in abject poverty and cannot afford their basic needs. These lived experiences of hardships are further substantiated by the findings from the 2023 Caribbean Common Multi- Country Analysis Report for Jamaica.  The 2023 Caribbean Common Multi-Country Analysis shows that the average economic growth rate for CARICOM member states is less than two (2%) per cent per capita and that poverty and social and economic inequalities have significantly increased due to rising costs of living, a lack of comprehensive social protection and the political will to foment sustainable, government re-distributive policies and community-based program interventions or initiatives that address the needs of the poor and most vulnerable. For Jamaica, the report also illustrates fiscal and policy space for ensuring sustainable and inclusive development remains constrained by institutional barriers and exacerbated global, systemic inequalities. This has resulted in a continuous six-year decline in purchasing power for many Jamaicans since 2017 (UNDP, 2024). 

Multiple Manifestations of Power in the Globalization of Development

Canterbury’s (2021) conceptualization of ‘peripheralization’ and Moulton’s (2025) conceptualization of ‘post-colonial strategies of containment’ are not only applicable to contemporary struggles of imperial domination and under-development in the Caribbean region but are also relevant in various dimensions colonialities of power are consistently maintained and enacted through non-state actors such as international trade and financial institutions in international relations. I will extend Canterbury’s critical political economy analysis of Caribbean development by incorporating Peter Flemming and Andre Spicer’s (2007:13) conceptual framework of the faces of power in international relations. They purport (2007:13) that power is manifested primarily through a) coercion: using violent force or aggression to compel states to make choices that they rather not do b) manipulation: using behind the scenes politicking to shape agenda setting and outcomes of decision-making c) domination: shaping preferred development pathways or preferences and d) subjectivities: the power to influence how people see themselves and the dominant images that they associate themselves with.

This extension not only compliments Canterbury’s (2021) critical political economy analysis of Caribbean development but it also elucidates the epistemic and ontological manifestations underpinning the practices and discourses in development that amplify the continued, unequal centre-periphery relations in Caribbean region. Canterbury’s (2021) incisive analysis shows how imperial subjectivities position the US as a global and regional hegemon where it utilizes mass economic and military resources to undermine the autonomous development of Caribbean states that are deemed ‘insurgent’ through coercion  We see this exemplified in the US-led destabilization of revolutionary and reformist socialist national political projects in Jamaica, Guyana, and Grenada in the 1970s and 1980s and more recently in 2025, where the US under the 2^nd Donald J. Trump’s Presidency has introduced a National Security Memorandum for Cuba to intensify restrictions on trade, freeze financial assets and further subvert the domestic sovereignty of a country that has pursued an autonomous development pathway for decades through its communist political governance model. These historical and contemporary examples underscore that alternatives to development are met with the geo-political reality of hostility and discontents. These historical and contemporary examples also underscore that they are difficulties of producing alternatives pathways for all in a polycentric world where the neo-colonialities of power, as extensions of racial-capitalist modernity, are reinforced through disciplinary regimes that respond aggressively to decolonial changes and emancipatory political projects that guarantee freedom for all, especially the disenfranchised groups and communities in the Caribbean and black diasporic communities, transnationally (Crichlow and Northover, 2025:11). 

Unfair Terms of International Trade and Weak Institutional Support in Decision Making Mechanisms for Caribbean SIDS and other countries of the Global South

Furthermore, Canterbury (2021) illustrates how dimensions of power such as manipulation and domination are prevalent in international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in CARICOM’s regional, bilateral partnerships with the European Union (EU) and Canada. The former General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and current WTO regime continues to be dominated by the US, EU and Japan and endogenous and exogenous developmental challenges facing small island developing states in the Caribbean have been heightened due to the dismantling of special trade and economic arrangements in international trade diplomacy. Regional and international trade experts such as Roman Gryberg (2006), Richard Bernal (2013), Tony Heron (2013) and Shameh Azhmeh (2024) have all highlighted that small island developing states in the Caribbean have been and continue to be vocal about onerous rules and terms of trade from which they have not benefitted. Additionally, these scholars have also reiterated that that imperial power asymmetries remain prevalent in global institutions such as the WTO and that new and emergent decision-making mechanisms such as joint statement initiatives (JSIs) have further undermine the negotiation power of countries in the Global South, particularly small island developing Caribbean states. These new and emergent decision-making mechanisms have also marginalized priority issues in Caribbean development that are inextricably linked and indirectly connected to international trade diplomacy outcomes such as agriculture. In terms of CARICOM- regional bilateral partnerships with Canada, trade complimentary between CARICOM and Canada has significantly declined for the past two (2) decades. Canada and CARICOM were also unable to establish a bilateral, free trade agreement despite seven (7) rounds of negotiations since 2007/2008. This has resulted in decreased exports from CARICOM to Canada and a shift in focus on Canadian international cooperation on issues such as democracy and human rights in the region (Deonaarine et. al, 2016). 

Alternatives to Development Do Exist — What Are Some of the Constraints of Implementing Alternatives in the Caribbean?

Canterbury’s (2021:2) poignant first and second book chapters are not just relevant for advocacy for economic re-alignment to development pathways that are people-centred and pluriversal but these chapters represent a compelling call for the reinvigoration of Caribbean scholarship to generate original, critical ideas that will provide working classes their basic needs. It should be emphasized that the problem is not the paucity of critical, alternative ideas and approaches to reframing development in the Caribbean region. It should also be emphasized that critical, alternative ideas, approaches, perspectives and positionalities continue to dismissed as insignificant, questioned and criticized as non-empirical and socially constructed as good enough to be deployed when it is politically convenient and disposable when it’s no longer politically or ideologically palatable. Hegemonic affirming scholarship also shape the subjectivities of regional policy makers and subsequently, the ideas or preferences of majority of populations in these societies. Moreover, alternative perspectives and approaches to development in the Caribbean are suppressed by the ruling domestic and regional elite in favour of technocratic expertise over various forms of knowledges, especially knowledges that are grounded in lived, embodied experiences (Marshall, 2024:23). Progressive academics, practitioners, policy makers and civil society organizations in the region should not only acknowledge the importance and urgent necessity of all kinds of knowledges but continue to strategically leverage alternative knowledges and approaches in ensuring that people’s lives, livelihoods, and environmental sustainability are placed at the forefront of reframing sustainable development in the 21^st century new, multipolar global order.

Possibilities for Reframing Alternative Ideas and Approaches to Development in the Caribbean

Finally, Canterbury (2021) argues there are greater possibilities for reframing alternative ideas and approaches to Caribbean development that are presented by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRICS) represents the re-ordering of international economic transactions away from the structural adjustment conditionalities associated with development assistance from Bretton Woods Institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. While there is voluminous existing research on Caribbean development to illustrate the deleterious consequences on regional social development and human development indicators due to loan conditionalities from Bretton Woods institutions such as devaluation of local currencies, mass privatization of industries, deregulation of labour and industrial policy strategies, austerity-oriented public sector transformation and trade liberalization, it is only vital to be cautiously optimistic about the shift to BRICS, particularly China’s growing economic and cultural influence through its soft power diplomacy in the region as exemplified through its Belt and Road Initiative.

Critical Caribbean development scholars, Annita Montoute and Vincente Gonsalez (2021) have asserted while China’s development assistance to the Caribbean through loans and infrastructure projects have exponentially increased since the 2000s, China’s soft power diplomacy is another manifestation of hegemonic relations that has not significantly alleviated the development impasse of the region. These scholars have also mentioned that China’s bilateral relations and large-scale infrastructure projects reinforce top-down decision making that eschews participatory governance, which is antithetical to the principles of transparency and accountability to citizens. These are legitimate concerns on the re-orienting of economic realignment for the Caribbean region that should be taken into great consideration of crafting and implementing autonomous and pluriversal pathways of development. Similar to Bernal (2013), Canterbury (2021) acknowledges that most Caribbean countries have been forced into a state of re-active and ad-hoc adjustment as a response to dynamic changes associated with the globalization of development. Therefore, one of the approaches that Caribbean policy makers and practitioners should consider strengthening is the deployment and contextualization of foresight analysis. Foresight analysis can help to promote both integrated policy analysis for the 2030 global development agenda and sustained, coordinated regional responses to constant policy shifts and uncertainties that result in reverberating implications for small island developing states.

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Tina Renier is an Afro-Jamaican scholar-activist. She is also a Research Fellow for the Sustainable Leadership and Positive Peace Research Fellowship Programme, a UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab expert and a regular contributor to Global Research. She received a Master of Arts in International Development Studies from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Sources

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Crichlow, M. and Northover, P. (2025). Decoloniality in the Break of Global Blackness: Movement, Method, and Poethics. Routledge. p.11.

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Moulton, A. (2025). Caribbean Racial Ecologies: The Political Ecologies of Race, Nature, and Geography in (eds). Noxolo, P. Cummings, R. and Rhiney, K. (2025). Routledge Handbook of Caribbean Studies. Routledge.

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Featured image: Map of Central America and the Caribbean by the CIA World Factbook (Public Domain)

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