Suzanne Burke

Policing the Transnational:: Cultural Policy Development in the Anglophone Caribbean (1962-2008) Suzanne Burke

The book examines the efficacy of the cultural policy tradition in the Anglophone Caribbean during the forty-five odd years since independence. It argues that cultural policy development is in stasis because it has consistently been at odds with the transnational character of Caribbean people as well as the organisational structure of the cultural industries. Moreover, the current approaches are inadequate to the demands of the new policy paradigm that require linkages with the economy, technology and the society at the micro and macro levels. These assertions are amplified through an in-depth analysis of four sectors in the Caribbean arts and cultural industry domain, namely the Trinidad carnival complex, the performing arts, book publishing and the Jamaican music industry. The study concludes that a more collaborative approach to cultural policy formulation, namely one that embraces the dynamic structure of the region's cultural sector, along with the convergence of other public policy areas is necessary to harness the region's cultural wealth and strategically reposition the Caribbean within the emerging high growth areas of the global creative economy.