This essay considers how literacy, specifically reading, facilitated slave
rebellion in Jamaica in the age of revolutions. During the 1831-1832 slave
uprising, Samuel Sharpe, a literate, enslaved Baptist preacher used literacy
to advance his sense of freedom and organise a non-violent labour strike.
This essay provides an overview of Christian instruction among blacks
prior to emancipation in Jamaica and contextualises the role that reading
played in Sharpe’s insurgent activity. It closes with a reading of fictional

For most antebellum observers, the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia
figured as a geography ripe for colonialisation, either economically as
farmland or space for development, or creatively as a haunted and
mysterious wilderness. But the swamp was more than just a geography to
be exploited for profit by powerful white planters; it was also a space of
interaction between slave society and a community of self-freed people of
colour. As scholars have increasingly noted, the swamp provided a sort of

This paper historically situates conservation as a phenomenon, drawing
out its cultural particularity by placing it alongside Jamaican Maroon
environmental philosophies. Conservationists tend to care for non-human
life anonymously, in the abstract, and seldom for particular beings.
Maroons tend to exercise care toward intimately known non-human
others, revealing the potential harm anonymous care can enact when
exercised in places like Jamaica’s Maroon towns. However, emergent

NOTES and COMMENTS

NOTES and COMMENTS

Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) should be acknowledged as a pioneer of social
entrepreneurship because he developed mission-driven businesses: social
enterprises long before the concept was even named. Garvey tied racial
justice theory to business and he did so with a deliberate plan to bring
social change within markets. In today’s world Garvey would be known as
a “social entrepreneur” and the movement as a “social enterprise” because
both were focused on creating socially conscious businesses, at a time in

Universities across the globe are exploring the implementation of best
practices that can improve the professional and academic life of its
members. Identifying this as an unexplored issue in the Caribbean, we, the
members of the recently formed group, St. Lucian Women Academic
Research Network (SWARN), have begun to explore the role of Caribbean
universities and informal networks in the formation of professional
identity and development among emerging academic faculty. Using

This article examines the impact of neo-liberal global hegemony on
perspectives of the role of the intellectual in the English-Speaking
Caribbean. It focuses on how neo-liberalism has resulted in shifting the
notion of the politically engaged public intellectual to that of the marketdriven
“politically neutral” consultant. Specifically, the article interrogates
the question of the role of the Caribbean intellectual around three
contending perspectives: the “Platonic” view (which sees good

Using a newly created dataset, this article demonstrates that income
inequality has increased in Guyana based on the Palma and P90/P10
ratios. It follows that the top 10% gained income share at the expense of the
poor and the powerless. However, the Gini coefficient shows a marginal
reduction of inequality, which represents gains for the middle class. The
article argues that privatization and high agricultural prices are the key
factors for the growth in the income share of the middle class. Indo-