Identity Politics in the Caribbean and Africa

4 credits · Graduate

An exhaustive examination of the conditions under which identity constructs (race, ethnicity, nation, religion, language, region, etc.) come to occupy the symbolic center in the organization of mass political movements in non-industrialized Third World societies. The course will be comparative in scope using case histories from Africa and the Caribbean. It will focus on the relationship between the "politics of identity," national economic decision making, and the distribution of economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital.