| Publication |
2007.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since 1995, Dominica has endured a massive economic downturn following a series of World Trade Organization decisions that have devastated the banana industry, its major export earner. Yet the trade decisions have not been the subject of much anxiety or debate. At the same time, their second largest contributors to foreign exchange earnings (hucksters) are seldom the subject of public discussion. I suggest in this article that these omissions have to do with the manner in which flexibility is culturally conceptualized. Rather than a recent adaptation to the physiopsychological disciplining of a post-Fordian or "globalized" economy, I argue that in Dominica, flexibility is historically constituted through a much longer engagement with capitalism in the formation of the Caribbean as a cultural area over the last five centuries. The entrepreneurial savvy found among hucksters is autochthonous to Dominica's trade culture.
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