Equaliberty in the Dutch Caribbean: Ways of Being Non/Sovereign - Paperback

by Yvon Van Der Pijl (Editor), Francio Guadeloupe (Editor), Linden F. Lewis (Foreword by)

Equaliberty in the Dutch Caribbean is a collection of essays that explores fundamental questions of equality and freedom on the non-sovereign islands of the Dutch Caribbean. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research, historical and media analysis, the study of popular culture, and autoethnographic accounts, the various contributions challenge conventional assumptions about political non/sovereignty. While the book recognizes the existence of nationalist independence movements, it opens a critical space to look at other forms of political articulation, autonomy, liberty, and a good life. Focusing on all six different islands and through a multitude of voices and stories, the volume engages with the everyday projects, ordinary imaginaries, and dreams of equaliberty alongside the work of independistas and traditional social movements aiming for more or full self-determination. As such, it offers a rich and powerful telling of the various ways of being in and belonging to our contemporary postcolonial world.

Author Biography

YVON VAN DER PIJL is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She co-edited the volume Antropologische vergezichten: mondialisering, migratie en multiculturaliteit.

FRANCIO GUADELOUPE is an associate professor of anthropology of the University of Amsterdam and senior research fellow at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV-KNAW), the Netherlands. He is the author of Chanting Down the New Jerusalem: Calypso, Christianity, and Capitalism in the Caribbean.

LINDEN LEWIS is a Presidential Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University. He is the editor of Caribbean Sovereignty, Development, and Democracy in an Age of Globalization and the co-editor of Color, Hair and Bone: Race in the Twenty-first Century.