Focusing on the critical years after the abolition of slavery in Guyana (1838-1900), Brian Moore examines the dynamic interplay between diverse cultures and the impact of these complex relationships on the development and structure of a colonial multiracial society.

Provides an in-depth analysis of the forces that contributed to the shaping of the West Indian society covering the the crucial inter-war years from the 1920s to the period of the 1960s.

With the presumption that review essays, and statements written for special occasions may reveal as much about the writer as those written about, Irving Louis Horowitz has collected thirty-five years of his criticism and commentary. Included are comments on the famous, near famous, and infamous sociologists, political scientists, and assorted literary figures in between. Taken as a whole, this volume will surprise and delight readers who are acquainted with Horowitz's other works as well as those who are interested in the people he writes about. Written with characteristic verve and nerve, these statements sometimes combine two or more reviews into one statement, often of substantial length. Altogether the collection gives a picture of twentieth-century social science as an ongoing dialogue within itself about the nature of social reality, as well as the nature of the disciplines seeking to define that reality. The results are sometimes serious, other times amusing, but uniformly compelling. The book covers Arendt to Zetterberg, and such major figures in between as Becker, Bell, de Jouvenel, Mills, Parsons, Solzhenitsyn, and more than eighty other leading lights who have had an effect on the contemporary social landscape. All are critically examined, sometimes positively, other times negatively. Long recognized as a major figure in his own right, Horowitz writes with the kind of refreshing frankness experts will appreciate and the general reader will understand. The underlying assumption behind the volume, giving its disparate parts a unified characteristic, is that together these observations on others amount to a general theory of social science held by the author. Whether his larger ambition is accepted or disputed, there is no doubt that the volume provides a standard against which to measure the literary quality of reviewing in the world of professional social research.

This book is the first overall survey of the British West Indian press in the early nineteenth century—a critical period in the history of the region. Based on extensive and ground-breaking archival research, this volume provides an in-depth history of early nineteenth-century British West Indian newspapers and potted biographies of the journalists who produced them. The author examines the economics underpinning newspapers, and a political spectrum, unique to the West Indian press, is also posited. Towards one end sat a small group of ‘liberal’ newspapers that outraged white colonists by arguing for civil and political rights to be extended to so-called free coloureds and for the abolition of slavery; scattered at various points towards the other end of the spectrum were newspapers still best collectively described as the ‘planter press’—the traditional term used in the literature. Starting from this basic conceptual framework, the volume shows how the press landscape in the British Caribbean at this time was more volatile and complex than has been previously thought. This volume will be of value to academics, undergraduates and postgraduates studying Caribbean and media history and those interested in modern history.

First published in 1986, East Indians in a West Indian Town explores the complex geographical, sociological and anthropological dimensions of Trinidad society before and after its political independence, by employing three sets of materials – census data, questionnaires and participant-observation records. Cartographic, humanistic and statistical approaches are combined in a historical perspective to deal with the significance of race, cultural distinctions and class in San Fernando. A major concern of the book is to examine the social complexity that lies behind geographical patterns, and to compare aggregate data with group behaviour. This book will be of interest to students of geography, sociology and anthropology.

In small plural societies, cultural differences can be exaggerated, exploited and intensified during political contests. The survival of these societies as democracies - or even at all - hangs in the balance.