Labor, Agency, and State‐building in Trinidad and Tobago: Toward a Postcolonial Sociological Approach to Development

Abstract

Existing development theories predict that factors such as natural resource wealth and the legacies of European colonizers inhibit development. However, the case of Trinidad and Tobago challenges these theories, as a resource-rich former colony that has achieved high levels of development. This article examines what accounts for Trinidad and Tobago's development trajectory. Advancing a novel analytical approacha postcolonial sociological approachthis study emphasizes what existing theories miss, namely, the role of organized labor in enabling Trinidad and Tobago to escape the development trap. The findings suggest that development studies attend to how colonial labor legacies shape post-colonial development.

Towards a Postcolonial Critical Realism

“…And in response to the confinement of postcolonial theory to twentieth-century European imperialism, PCR extends to contemporary manifestations of colonialism. Recent postcolonial work in the social sciences is conducive to a PCR reading: examples include Bhambra’s (2017) genealogy of discourses of Britishness and imperial governance; Go’s (2012) comparison of late imperial military conquests in the British and American Empires; Mahoney’s (2010) exploration of the relationship between colonial conquest and postcolonial development in Latin America; Edwards’ (2017) analysis of anti-colonial popular movements in resource-rich Gabon and Trinidad; and Shilliam’s (2015) account of the racialization of state institutions. What these sociologists share is a recognition that the imposition of colonial ways of knowing holds real consequences.…”

Continuity, change and contradictions in late steel‐based industrialization: The “global color line” in Trinidad and Tobago's postcolonial economy

“…By the late 1960s, social mobilizations posed a formidable challenge to T&T’s young hard‐won independence. Led by university students, trade unionists, workers of African and Indian ancestry and marginalized youth groups, the Black Power Movement sought to challenge this colonial economic legacy that largely benefitted the small but powerful white European elite (Edwards, 2018). In February 1970, as demonstrations ensued, an army mutiny was orchestrated.…”

“…These events prompted the government to purse an industrial strategy. The approach included industry nationalization, creation of employment in new sectors, investment of billions of TT dollars in new state‐owned enterprises in oil, agriculture, steel, media, finance manufacturing, shipping and travel (Edwards, 2018).…”

Communism, Slavery and Social Policy: Investigating the Role of Worker Agency in the Development of Work-Injury Laws Globally

“…Of course, each worker experience and movement has case-specific factors and grouping them into dichotomies based on Communist/socialist rule or the existence of local slave production systems is an oversimplification. None the less, case studies provide vivid examples of the role of worker agency embedded in unique local context as a factor in state and social development (for example Edwards, 2018) and this suggests that having similar contexts might lead to some similar agentic patterns. The impetus for this chapter is to develop tests of this agency fit for generalizing.…”