Dear Colleagues,

The latest issue of The Caribbean Journal of International Relations & Diplomacy (Vol.2, No.2, 2014) is available online at the following link: http://journals.sta.uwi.edu/iir/index.asp As well as original research, the line-up of articles includes a series of tributes to our colleague, the late Professor Norman Girvan who sadly passed away recently.

Please also note that we have issued four special calls for papers and a call for expressions of interest for book reviewers. More details on these can be found below, with further details shortly to be made available on our website. If you are interested in reviewing a book for us, or, indeed, submitting an article for one of the special issues, please feel free to drop us a line at [log in to unmask]

Best wishes,

Matt Bishop

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CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST: BOOK REVIEWS

In the next issue of the journal (September 2014) we will be carrying, for the first time, a selection of book reviews. We intend to publish reviews twice per year from then on, in the September and March issues of the journal. Over the past few months, we have been negotiating with a variety of publishers to send us review copies of new books that traverse the broad range of issues with which we are interested at the journal, and we have now accumulated a large (and growing!) list. Consequently, we are actively soliciting volunteers from both academia (including MPhil and PhD students) and the policy world – and, indeed, private individuals with relevant expertise – to review books for us.
If you are interested in undertaking a review, all we ask is that you write an original, pithy (meaning up to 1000 words), and constructive analysis of the book at hand, which is predicated on a degree of expert knowledge of the issue under discussion. We also ask that you take no longer than 3-4 months to write the review once you have received the book, meeting the appropriate hard deadline, of which there are two per year: 1st February and 1st August. Please visit our website for a list of the books which are currently available and our review guidelines, and contact us at [log in to unmask] with a brief explanation of your relevant expertise and therefore suitability to undertake the review.
Moreover, if you are a recently published – or soon to be published - author and you would like to have your book reviewed in the journal, please ask your publisher to get in touch with us, and also let us know if you have someone in mind as a potential reviewer of the book. We are interested in reviewing any book that fits, however closely or tangentially, within the broad remit of the journal. Again, more details are available on our website.

SPECIAL CALLS FOR PAPERS

Over the next 18 months or so we intend to publish no fewer than four special issues of the journal, each grappling in-depth with a particular problem of regional importance. The details of each are outlined below. If you would like to submit a paper – or wish to discuss whether or not we might be interested in a particular submission – please feel free to email us at [log in to unmask]

The Future of Regional Integration in the Caribbean and Beyond

Regional integration in the Caribbean is in a state of flux. The well-publicised travails in which CARICOM finds itself, along with the recent decision to ‘pause’ the CSME process, have called into question the traditional modes of integration which have hitherto prevailed. Yet paradoxically these processes of what we might term ‘dis-integration’ exist simultaneously with contrasting patterns of sub-regional deepening, for instance, in the OECS. Moreover, if we cast our lens a little wider, similar reconfigurations can be also identified elsewhere. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the failure of the EU to corral the many countries into an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) – in contrast to its success in the CARIFORUM region – is provoking similarly confusing patterns of resistance and regional disharmony. Bringing Latin America into the picture, new modes of integration – for instance, through UNASUR, ALBA and CELAC – are increasingly making themselves felt, all carrying important implications for the Caribbean, too.

The purpose of this special issue is to interrogate this emerging reality. We are soliciting papers that address any aspect of the regional integration problématique, whether academic or policy-related, theoretical or empirical, focused on the Caribbean or beyond. Please contact us to submit or propose an article.

Deadline for submissions: October 31st 2014

Enter the Dragon: China in the Contemporary Caribbean

In keeping with its global rise as one of the so-called fast emerging ‘BRICS’ countries, China has lately begun to dramatically extend its influence in the Caribbean. There has been a discernible growth in trading relations, investment, diplomatic activity, and cultural co-operation, with the result that increasingly dense linkages have been forged. However, these relatively novel processes are, at present, poorly understood. Certainly when compared to the academic work that has addressed China’s evolving relationship with both Africa and Latin America, there is something of a dearth of literature regarding the increased proliferation of China-Caribbean interactions. We are therefore soliciting papers, both longer theoretically informed academic research articles, or pieces that are shorter and more policy-focused, which address any dimension of the dramatic entrance of the Dragon in the Caribbean.

This special issue of the journal will be jointly edited with our colleagues from Wuhan University in China, the location of the recently established Wuhan-UWI Caribbean Studies Centre.

Deadline for submissions: January 15th 2015

New Directions in Caribbean Critical Thought
(In honour of Norman Girvan)

The recent passing of Norman Girvan has given many of us pause to reflect on his intellectual contribution – and that of his compatriots in the New World Group – to the development of a genuinely critical, indigenous Caribbean political economy. However, as many authors have noted, after the ferment of the 1960s and 1970s subsided, critical attempts to comprehend Caribbean reality to some extent withered on the vine and have since betrayed a degree of colonisation by neoliberal approaches to theory and praxis. This tendency towards conformist epistemological and methodological orthodoxy is considerably more pronounced in much of the social sciences – and especially in economics and international politics - than it is in the humanities and literary studies, but it nonetheless permeates, to varying degrees, many of the developmental debates that take place in and about the Caribbean. Until his death, Girvan himself agitated for greater appreciation of the region’s rich history of intellectual heterodoxy, and a rediscovery of the spirit – in terms of critical thought centred on ameliorating the existential reality of the Caribbean – of New World. Sadly, however, one of his final contributions was grounded in the rather bleak recognition that it is actually a series of troubling ‘existential threats’ which together characterise the contemporary Caribbean development panorama, and the region is a long way from find an appropriate intellectual response with which to underpin new kinds of policy.

This is simply not good enough. Much of the Caribbean finds itself in its most protracted development crisis since the end of colonialism, provoked in part by a neoliberal hegemony which has been left thoroughly wanting in terms of theorising alternatives. This is a pattern which, of course, is mirrored in many parts of the world, and has led to the increasing and long overdue salience of more heterodox thinking regarding the political economy of development.

The purpose of this special issue, then, is about addressing where such thinking exists in - and about - the contemporary Caribbean, and also how this relates to global trends in critical analysis. Our specific agenda is two-fold. Firstly, we seek papers that look back at the Caribbean thought of the past, placing it in contemporary view, and reflecting on where the successors to New World are today. Secondly, we seek articles that look forward by analysing the troubling developmental picture in the region, and suggesting new ways for addressing it intellectually in a genuinely critical and heterodox fashion. Work that seeks to go beyond this intellectual agenda in order to delineate the policy implications of new thinking is especially welcome.

Deadline for submissions: January 15th 2015

Evolving Relations between Cuba and the Wider Caribbean

We propose to publish a special issue of the CJIRD in mid-to-late 2015 that assesses contemporary relations between Cuba and the wider Caribbean. We are interested in papers that address any aspect of the relationship between Cuba and the broader region, whether political and diplomatic, economic, social, or cultural. We are also keen to publish articles that traverse – and help to break down – the linguistic divides between the Anglophone and Hispanophone parts of the region, along with those seeking to reflect on Cuba’s own political and social evolution, as well as its place within a rapidly changing hemisphere.

The special issue will be jointly guest edited by Jacqueline La Guardia Martínez and the Editors of the CJIRD, and it will be a joint endeavour between IIR and the Department of Caribbean Studies at the University of Havana.

Deadline for submissions March 31st 2015

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Dr Matthew L. Bishop
Lecturer, Institute of International Relations
Managing Editor, Caribbean Journal of IR and Diplomacy
University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago
Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Phone: +1-868-662-2002 (ext. 83238)
Web profile: http://sta.uwi.edu/iir/mbishop.asp
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