ABSTRACT
Caribbean thought has been able to traverse the globe as illustrated by the ideas of C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon and Sir Arthur Lewis, which may be among the best known of these. However, these few thinkers provide but a glimpse into Caribbean ideas about the world. Even though grounded in the realities of “islandness”, smallness and post-colonial experiences of the region, the ideas of the region’s thinkers can be usefully applied to conceptualising the ways in which the world functions. Caribbean ideas about vulnerability, peripherality, the diaspora, citizenship, gender and about being both the West and “the rest” through the emergence of “creole” experiences provide important insights for International Relations (IR). However, such ideas have not generally been captured within the ambit of IR theory. On the one hand, few Caribbean authors have framed their ideas as IR theory, and on the other hand, these ideas tend not to fit easily into recognised “schools” of IR theory. Moreover, Caribbean IR has tended to focus on empirical assessments of the effects of external occurrences on Caribbean states or on the role and functioning of Caribbean states with relation to other states or institutions, rather than on theory. In this piece, I will step away from the empirical focus of much of Caribbean IR scholarship by seeking to examine the ways in which Caribbean thought, particularly in the areas of governance and imbued with insights about race, class, gender and the world system, can be viewed as informative for thinking about the world. In doing so, I seek to illustrate that insights stemming from small places have scope beyond island shores and can enhance the ways in which we think about global affairs.
