ABSTRACT
A large proportion of these works have been produced by writers of Caribbean extraction – which should come as little surprise, given how predominant the tourist industry has become within the economic life of the region. The Caribbean depends on tourism economically to a greater extent than any other part of the world, with tourist revenue constituting upwards of 70 percent of the GNP of many Caribbean nations. The rapid growth of tourism has been one of the "most obvious forms of globalization", but it has manifested stark inequalities of opportunity and material comfort that mirror the abiding economic and cultural asymmetries of the neoliberal era. Cross-group human interaction thus becomes reduced to acts of consumption, the mode of relation Mimi Sheller sees as typifying Global Northern/Caribbean relations across the centuries. As Aliki Varvogli sees, the experiences of Will and Hand demonstrate how "American cultural and financial imperialism is homogenizing the world".
