Caribbean Land and Development Revisited / Studies of the Americas (PDF)

JEAN BESSON (M.A., Ph.D. Edinburgh), a Jamaican, is Reader in Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, England.  She has carried out research in Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean on cultural history, peasantries, land tenure, development, kinship, gender, and religion. Her publications include Land and Development in the Caribbean (co-edited with Janet Momsen, Macmillan, 1987); Martha Brae's Two Histories: European Expansion and Caribbean Culture-Building in Jamaica (2002); and Caribbean Narratives of Belonging: Fields of Relations, Sites of Identity (co-edited with Karen Fog Olwig, Macmillan, 2005). 

JANET MOMSEN is Professor of Geography in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of California, Davis. She has a B.A. and B.Litt. from Oxford, a M.Sc. from McGill, and a Ph.D. from London.  Her research interests include gender and development, rural development and tourism in the Caribbean, Mexico, Eastern Europe and Bangladesh. Professor Momsen's publications on the Caribbean include Land and Development in the Caribbean (co-edited with Jean Besson, Macmillan, 1987); Women and Change in the Caribbean (1993); and Environmental Planning in the Caribbean (with Jonathan Pugh, 2006).

"This ambitious book touches on a variety of issues, ranging from land use to the reorganization of agriculture in Cuba s special period." - New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids

"In this sequel to their highly-acclaimed 1987 volume dealing with land and development issues in the Caribbean, Jean Besson and Janet Momsen provide a treasury attesting to the centrality of land in the Caribbean development equation. The contribution of the text is strengthened by its coverage of land-development issues in parts of the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanic and Dutch Caribbean. All in all, an essential read."

- Rob Potter, Professor of Human Geography, University of Reading

"This rich collection of articles, presenting a significant range of cross-disciplinary research, discusses land as a key to understanding the development of the Caribbean. It demonstrates that land provides a privileged vantage point from which to elucidate the complexities of Caribbean societies past and present."

- Karen Fog Olwig, Professor of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

"Renowned Caribbean specialists Jean Besson and Janet Momsen have produced an invaluable edited volume for seasoned Caribbeanists and novice scholars alike. Twenty-three authors, spanning the academic disciplines and the legal, planning, and land management professions revisit and re-evaluate the impacts of colonialism and post-colonialism on what is arguably the first of the world regions to have its local geographies wrapped into the global economy.The reader is provided with both a review of past land use and land access issues, as well as fresh insights on all that has transpired in the most recent decades regarding Caribbean people and their lands and resources. This book is a must not only for all with Caribbean interests, but especially for all development thinkers andpractitioners in the region."

- Lydia Pulsipher, Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee