Free Trade and Freedom: Neoliberalism, Place, and Nation in the Caribbean

This ethnography examines farmers’ lives on the island of St. Lucia amidst the threat of market loss for their primary export product, bananas. Karla Slocum’s study demonstrates how, when prices for bananas declined and trade policies changes, St. Lucia’s banana producers formed a social movement. They deployed their labor and land use practices and discourses in ways that affirmed the meaning of their local communities and their nation rather than taking on global market pressure directly. Slocum reveals how local and national areas remain important to people’s lives even when they must live in a globalizing world. Specifically, Slocum’s work disagrees with popular claims that globalization overtakes local communities. This book will be of particular interest to those in the fields of social movements and activism, labor, Afro-Caribbean populations and those concerned with African Diaspora studies.