Misir book published
Guyana Chronicle
February 25, 2007
PREM Misir’s book `Ethnic Cleavage and Closure in the Caribbean Diaspora: Essays on Race, Ethnicity and Class’ has now been published by The Edwin Mellen Press of New York, Wales (UK), and Canada.
This collection of essays addresses racism as one of the major themes in political commentaries in the multiethnic Caribbean and its Diaspora. In this context, several ethnic groups ply for scarce resources, so the principles of fairness and equality in resource distribution become critical to societal stability.
The book advocates an understanding of inter and intra-ethnic class structure as a useful conceptual tool to address the issues of ethnic cleavage, racism, and discrimination, using a power-conflict framework that illustrates that inter and intra-ethnic class structure emphasizes economic stratification, caste, internal colonialism, and a diversity of class-based and Marxist theories.
The subject areas are: Ethnic and Immigrant Studies, Latin America, Iberia, Caribbean - History, Sociology, Development Studies.
The book is available through mellenpress.com and regular bookstores, both locally and internationally.
“Dr. Misir has made a most welcome addition to the literature of Caribbean social science with his compilation of this book. It deals with enduring and tense issues in Caribbean societies, both in the region itself and beyond, for the Diasporas are both within and without. In addition to his skilful compilation of themes and choice of contributors, Dr. Misir makes a major contribution to the volume himself with characteristic scholarship and commentary of a high order.” – Dr. Colin Brock, University of Oxford.
“Dr. Misir’s personal knowledge of the East Indian Diaspora experience in Europe, North America and the Caribbean positions him to speak with conviction, and even passion, on the scope and challenges of that social reality. He offers a firm perspective from within that invokes a response from without as part of an ongoing discourse on race and ethnicity in the Caribbean.” – Dr. J.A. George Irish, City University of New York.
“It is not often that one is presented with a book that succinctly and deftly dissects the social and political dynamic in the mini diasporic nation-states in the Caribbean with such clarity and force of arguments … This book leaves the reader with a well-informed feeling about colonial and postcolonial analysis, and is required reading, I would contend, for anyone interested in truly understanding how these arrived at their current dilemma. – (from the Foreword) Professor Aubrey W. Bonnett, The College at Old Westbury, State University of New York.
Misir’s recent book is `Cultural identity and Creolization in National Unity: The Multiethnic Caribbean’, published by University Press of America of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.