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Introduction:
This page contains my early works and theses on a variety of topics, mostly based on research in Trinidad and Tobago.
“Rape and the Socio-Economic Conditions in Trinidad and Tobago”
Despite the salience of rape as a continuing problem under mature capitalism in the metropoles and its outbreak in peripheral capitalist societies like Trinidad and Tobago in the emerging Third World pattern of turbulence and
social deviance, the crime of rape is still- one of the most neglected and poorly understood phenomenon in conventional Criminoloqy. Read more...
“A Self-Criticism of “Rape in Trinidad and Tobago 1973-1978” and “Rape and the Socio-Economic Conditions of Trinidad and Tobago””
The writings that follow were done in the period 1981-1982. In 1978 I presented “Rape in Trinidad and Tobago 1973-1978” for my B.A. (Hons) thesis at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. The paper “Rape and the Socio-Economic Conditions of Trinidad and Tobago” authored by Dr Kenneth Pryce and I followed on this thesis. Dr Pryce was the supervisor of my B. A. thesis and my guide into the world of academic criminology in the period 1978 to 1981. From 1978 to 1982 I wrestled with a journey through three discourses: Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism then Western Marxism/Feminism/Marxist Feminism and finally the discourse of Michel Foucault especially the Foucault of the History of Sexuality Vol. 1 and Power-Knowledge. The journey continued from 1982 to the present with the return to the discourse of Franz Fanon the source and foundation to build upon. Read more...
“Constructing a Discourse on Crime and ‘Social Deviance’ in Trinidad (1981)”
This work begins to show my realisation that there are grave limits to applying the ideas of Michel Foucault to an analysis of the social order of T&T in spite of the reality that we insist we are a western, capitalist liberal democracy. This realisation will eventually lead to the prominence of the ideas of Frantz Fanon in my analysis to date as we are a social order and a colonial people who are simply black skins, white masks but in no way western and capitalist as the North Atlantic just simply a people in denial. Foucault is a given for the dissecting the nature of the North Atlantic and there is no body of thought that does it as surgically as Foucault’s and what is apparent in the work is by using Foucault’s thought on T&T you begin to uncover what we are not even though we insist we are. Multiple personalities all in denial in a single body. But Foucault cannot explain it in our context only in the white world’s context which cannot assault our malady for this you need to start at the source: Frantz Fanon and then build a new world! Read more...
“The Islamic realities of the Muharram Massacre of 1884”
The Shia Muslims of India created, via their annual remembrances of the martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Muhammed (uwbp) during the first month of the Islamic calendar,Muharram, the syncretic processions of Muharram. These processions during the month of Muharram were structured events in which the Shia gave space to non-Muslim participants such as the Hindu women who were childless and the dervishes who were outside the pale of mainstream Islam. What was also noteworthyo f the Shia Muharram processions in India was the presence of sections of the procession bent on parodying the colonial Raj and the elements of the Indian
comprador elites who were the vassals of English colonial domination. Read more...
“Cocaine and the Economy of Crime in Trinidad and Tobago”
It's over twenty years ago 'Cocaine and the Economy of Crime in Trinidad and Tobago' was published. At that time T&T was in the grips of a bold attempt by indigenous traffickers attached to the Valle Norte cartel to transform T&T into the major trafficking point of the southern Caribbean island chain. Since then the trade has changed dramatically and presently the new order of the Mexican Transnational Trafficking Organisations (MTTOs) stands unique in the history of drug trafficking in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean island chain. Crime has evolved and ever so often takes a quantum leap in its expanse and operational methodology driven by the evolution of the drug and gun trades, human smuggling and money laundering. Gangland is now undergoing a transformation under the hegemony of the MTTOs. But what has not changed in over twenty years is the course of action adopted by the politicians, elected and non-elected, from the 1990's to 2018. It's the same re-cycled failed actions put into play over and over hoping for the same outcome. Wait, isn't that lunacy as defined by Einstein?