September-October 2010


Issue Home >>

Why cultural industries remain weak

Caribbean cultural researcher, lecturer and programme coordinator for The UWI’s Arts and Cultural Enterprise Management Programme (ACEM), Dr. Suzanne Burke, recently launched her book, “Policing the Transnational: Cultural Policy Development in the Anglophone Caribbean (1962-2008).”

Inspired to unearth the source of under-performance in the Caribbean's cultural sector, Burke suggests that success of this sector has been elusive because of a lack of cultural confidence, which ultimately determined the type of policies that were formulated and the manner in which resources were deployed over the period under review. In the book, Burke dissects the current predicament facing the region’s cultural industries which, according to her research, remain under-developed due to a shaky policy regime. The book, which was born out of Burke's doctoral research in the field of Sociology from 2003 to 2007, analyses four key sectors (book publishing, the performing arts, popular music and the Trinidad overseas Carnival complex) within Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago