Search

For David Lowenthal, the Caribbean was not simply an academic interest, it was a passionate personal concern for a place, its people, its geographical history and heritage—and the return of that heritage when stolen (a concern that also applied to other parts of the world). His enormous library was as weighted with novels by Caribbean authors as by history and geography texts, and they formed the basis of his book, West Indian Societies, the culmination of many years of detailed observation and investigation of the (non-Hispanic) Caribbean. Lowenthal's works on the Caribbean were to become significant reference points in interpretations of societal institutions and practices in the Caribbean and its diaspora and in the development of important new areas of research, such as environmental and landscape perception, islands and conservation and heritage studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between population mobility and farming is complex and has been the focus of numerous studies. Despite differing perspectives on the subject, there is an increasing realization that migration sustains farming in many rural communities, but with contradictory effects. Notwithstanding this conclusion, there is a paucity of village level studies that explain the precise ways in which migration in its various forms affects the survival of small farms. This paper reports on the results of a village level study of migration and small farming in the Rio Grande Valley of Jamaica. Apart from highlighting the various ways in which migration affects small farming at the local level, the study confirms the contradictory impact of migration on small farming in this remote agricultural community. It is noted, however, that the net effect is positive and the capital and labour resources, which are made available as a result of migration, play pivotal roles in the survival of small-scale farming as an economic activity in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]