Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021;64(1-2):112-118.
doi: 10.1057/s41301-021-00282-4. Epub 2021 Mar 17.

Disaster, Debt, and 'Underdevelopment': The Cunning of Colonial-Capitalism in the Caribbean

Levi Gahman  1   2 , Gabrielle Thongs  1 , Adaeze Greenidge  1
Affiliations
Review

Disaster, Debt, and 'Underdevelopment': The Cunning of Colonial-Capitalism in the Caribbean

Levi Gahman et al. Development (Rome). 2021.

Abstract

This article provides a critical overview of the structural forces exacerbating risk related to disasters in the Caribbean. It focuses on the historical antecedents and socio-environmental consequences of extreme weather events across the region via an anti-colonial analysis of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 and Dorian in 2019. The authors contend that the logics, practices and debts of colonial-capitalist development, neoliberal exploitation and post-independence corruption continue to reduce resilience and threaten public health in the region. They also detail the role that political economy and social geography play in the face of disasters. They end by proposing that future critiques of and solutions to vulnerability, disaster, and catastrophe in the Caribbean be more attentive to the historical trajectories of imperialism, debt and 'underdevelopment'.

Keywords: Caribbean; Climate change; Debt; Disasters; Frantz Fanon; Imperialism; Underdevelopment.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Adger W. Neil, Hughes Terry P, Folke Carl, Carpenter Stephen R, Rockström Johan. Social-ecological Resilience to Coastal Disasters. Science. 2005;309(5737):1036–1039. doi: 10.1126/science.1112122. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Arnold Carrie. Death, Statistics and a Disaster Zone: The Struggle to Count the Dead After Hurricane Maria. Nature. 2019;566(7742):22–25. doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-00442-0. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Barriteau, Eudine. 2001. The Political Economy of Gender in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean. Springer.
    1. Barry Tessa, Gahman Levi, Greenidge Adaeze, Mohamed Atiyah. Wrestling with Race and Colonialism in Caribbean Agriculture: Toward a (Food) Sovereign and (Gender) Just Future. Geoforum. 2020;109:106–110. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.12.018. - DOI
    1. Beckford George L. Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1972.