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Founded in 1948, the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies is located in Kingston, Jamaica, and is the largest campus in the unique multi-campus, multi-island university system. Internationally known for its scholarship, the Mona campus is also renowned for its commitment to and preservation of a rich historical legacy. Built on the site of former sugar and slave plantations, the campus has several outstanding historical features which have been partially preserved. This carefully researched and well-written publication investigates the historical ruins on the campus, which include an eighteenth-century aqueduct, an intact bookkeeper's house, a distillery, a boiling and curing house, and the wooden barracks of Gibraltar Camp, which housed at various times during World War II Jewish refugees, Gibraltarian evacuees, and interned Germans and Italians. Beautiful photographs of historic campus landmarks are featured, including the exquisite University Chapel, which was originally part of an eighteenth-century sugar estate in Trelawny. The Georgian building was disassembled, moved and reconstructed on the Mona campus in the 1950s. The book provides a useful guide for a walking tour of the campus, and survey maps point out where slave villages were originally located. It is replete with charming anecdotes that capture the spirit of the times and bring the rich history of the campus to life.

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Landslides and flooding in the Caribbean are destructive, endemic forces that destroy homes, businesses and schools, cost millions of dollars annually and kill hundreds of men, women and children. This book promotes a holistic approach for managing geohazards in the region. It emphasizes a preventive, proactive approach rather than a reactive one. It demonstrates and evaluates the use of current approaches and technologies such as geographical information science, remote sensing and geographical positioning systems for managing geohazards. The book is structured in three parts: the first focuses on landslides; the second on floods; and the third on managing geohazards in small island nations including the development of early warning systems.The book is useful for both undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in geohazards and geohazards management, geographical information science, remote sensing, engineering, geography, geology, hydrology, environmental sciences and management. Decision makers in government, industry and commerce will find in this compact overview of flooding and landslides in the region, the best approaches and technologies for managing them.

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Caribbean firms cope with international competition both in their small domestic economies and as they extend their operations outside their home countries. This volume explores their struggles and successes in fifteen case studies developed from interviews with Caribbean firms at key decision points in their internationalizing processes. The cases ask the reader to offer direction; to evaluate choices made or to opine on paths not taken. The cases feature over thirty countries in the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean. These appear as markets, domiciles or hosts of subsidiaries of the internationalizing Caribbean firm. For example, one of the Barbadian cases describes a food caterer operating in ten countries in South, Central and North America.

The cases cover multiple industries including cement manufacturing, supermarkets, shipping, remittances, banking, tourism, rum production, shrimp harvesting, food manufacturing and airline catering, and reflect the conversations with practising managers, who raised such questions as, How does one define the Caribbean manager? How do we exploit our diaspora markets? How can small firms scale up? Where should we locate headquarters? What should be the role of regional governments? How do we pick allies and manage alliances?

The managerial challenges described are diverse: decision-makers from GraceKennedy, Goddards Enterprises or Trinidad Cement Group share practical experiences including decisions on marketing (e.g., pricing and retail locations); financing and accounting (e.g., alternative financing options); international strategy (e.g., alliances and take-overs); corporate governance; operations and personnel. All fifteen cases add to understanding emerging market multinationals, particularly those domiciled in small island developing states characterized by tiny internal markets, limited international influence and environmental fragility. They add insight to work on Caribbean entrepreneurship, business and economics and to studies of international business in developing countries.

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Canute S. Thompson examines the nexus between the place and scope of the educational enterprise of a country and a country's developmental prospects and experience. His central claim is that the sustainable development of a country is a function of the quality of its education system and the levels to which its citizens are educated. He argues that in this calculus, the quality of post-secondary and tertiary education systems is a determinant of a country's prospects for development.

In examining the issue of underdevelopment facing the Caribbean, Thompson explains that institutions of higher learning in the region face the imperative of finding ways of becoming both more accessible and more relevant to the developmental needs of the region. Taking account of the provisions of the General Agreement on Trades in Services, he points to the disadvantages this trading arrangement poses for higher education institutions in small developing states and suggests ways in which the vulnerabilities these institutions face may be addressed.

While asserting that higher education institutions, including and especially the University of the West Indies, must find ways to remain viable in a highly competitive marketplace, Thompson argues that governments of the region have a duty to ensure the survival and success of these institutions. In this vein, he advances recommendations for the public funding of access to higher education.

Thompson also examines impediments to development  such as crime, the decline in social activism, weak institutional processes and leadership, and public mistrust  and explores their connection to education. He concludes that the path to sustainable regional development is dependent on improving the quality of, and access to, education, and that such improvements will in turn help contain crime, inspire social activism, strengthen institutional processes and leadership, and ultimately restore public trust.

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The contributors to Caribbean Realities and Endogenous Sustainability discuss alternative theoretical perspectives, sustainable growth-inducing economic policies, and special challenges in this era of neoliberal globalization. These perspectives, policies and challenges have to be seriously considered if appropriate interventions towards changing the Caribbean status quo and eliminating social and political ills are to be pursued. The authors evaluate past efforts and policies, criticize failed perspectives, and offer alternative strategies, policies and realistic options to the regions current socio-economic impasse and misery from a distinctly Caribbean viewpoint. The chapters are informed by such important factors as historical legacy, the role of institutions (including market and government), geopolitics and international relations, security, local culture and social psychology, which clearly stand in contrast to the starry-eyed analysis of the current orthodoxy. Overall, the essays not only expand the body of knowledge but, more importantly, provide a rich menu for alternative strategies and policies related to Caribbean international relations and social and governance ills in the twenty-first century.

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