Environment and Labor in the Caribbean (PDF)

The Caribbean Perspectives series began as a response to the need for scholarly investigations into social, scientific, and economic conditions affecting the least understood, or written about, part of the Americas. In this second volume the authors have included explorations of aspects of management and climate; as well as social, literary, and educational concerns in the eastern Caribbean, along with an extended study of the labor situation in the U.S. Virgin Islands.The opening chapter on resource management training in the Caribbean underscores the need for cooperation among eastern Caribbean universities and provides a practical model for implementation. This is followed by a significant study of rainfall patterns that could influence economic and cultural planning in the Virgin Islands. School environment is assessed in the next chapter, and educators will see how the quality of social support and interactions function in organizational contexts, especially as they relate to teacher morale.How fact becomes fiction is chronicled in a chapter dealing with Samuel Selvon's autobiographical novel, A Brighter Sun. The media clearly had a se-rious problem separating fact from fiction in their reporting of the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo in St. Croix. The next chapter investigates the causes of looting following that storm and lays to rest some widespread misconceptions.The final chapters focus on the labor movements in the Virgin Islands, both from historical and sociological points of view. These chapters not only help explain certain tendencies in the Caribbean work force but also outline social implications for the future. Some of these findings are bound to be controversial, such as the author's contention that the legacy of slavery is still being felt. This volume of Caribbean Perspectives offers both factual accounts and challenging insights into the diversity of Caribbean life and culture. The ideas and data found here will reverberate and suggest a host of analogous circumstances elsewhere. This volume, and the series as such, will interest students of the Caribbean, Latin America, and social development in the Third World.