Guyanese Society Research Articles

Resisting carceral confinement in Guyana: Legacies of a colonial state

AbstractPrisoners in Guyana have been protesting about living conditions and an overtly punitive environment since British colonial rule (1814–1966). Drawing upon official investigations, colonial records and newspaper reports, this article analyses some of the key features of resistance, including uprisings, escapes and everyday breaches of prison rules from the 19th century to the present day. It argues that Guyanese society is still impacted by the punitive nature of colonial plantation society which compels and informs prisoner experiences and responses in the nation's prisons today.

“My Dead Seeing Eye”: Fantasy, Franchise, and the Image of the Voyeur in Wilson Harris’s Palace of the Peacock

Wilson Harris’s 1960 novel Palace of the Peacock, the first in his Guyana Quartet that center on the history and society of Harris’s, presents a surreal and disorienting account of a doomed voyage up an unnamed jungle river, which culminates in a mystical, visionary experience of the palace of the title, seemingly a metaphysical space beyond death. Understanding the novel’s bizarre qualities requires grasping the way they relate to the development of the motif of voyeurism central to the novel. Specifically, they can be seen as frequently tied to the novel’s use of the image of the voyeur, the voyeur’s appearance to themselves as part of the scene which they are watching, which is employed in the text not only to create its surreal sensibility, but also to comment on the question of political franchise then current in Guyanese society. As the nation moved from British colony to independent state, there was much controversy over who would be allowed to vote in the new country, with many within elite circles holding that franchise should be restricted to the wealthy and well-educated. In its use of the image of the voyeur, Palace of the Peacock critiques these elitist notions by depicting people who were once passive observers of their own lives and desires becoming actively engaged in them, serving as a metaphor for a more egalitarian political future for the country.

The Gaols of Guyana: Hauntology and Trauma in the soundscape of Prison

Using Hauntology, this paper illustrates how the supposed demise of a socio-political and economic system – colonialism – still impacts on and has something to offer contemporary political analysis in Guyana’s gaols. Drawing on Fiddler’s spatio-hauntology alongside the work of Derrida and Gordon this paper shows how hauntology provides an alternative theoretical framework to look at the intergenerational transmission of trauma, which can be traced back to colonialism and slavery. It acknowledges the impact structural violence has on the collective imaginary and how this – consciously and unconsciously – shapes the psychosocial material underpinning contemporary Guyanese identities, desires, experiences, social action, and systems of punishment which includes prisons – its buildings, space, regimes, processes, sounds, laws and rationale. Guyana’s prisons contain phantoms of the past. Only by acknowledging Guyana’s ghosts and the phantasm of past trauma is it that we can begin to understand contemporary Guyana and Guyanese society, which includes their jails.

Inherited “Ancestors’ Collections” of a Devoted Curator: The Museum of African Heritage in Georgetown, Guyana

This essay traces the development of the Museum of African Heritage (MAH) in Guyana, which opened in 1994. The vision for the Museum, however, emerged over a decade earlier within contexts of decolonial cultural nationalist movements in the circum-Caribbean and African diasporic world at large. Exploring particular histories and contemporary functioning of this museum reveals insights into cultural politics of Guyana’s postcolonial nationalist formations, as well as into ways in which museums navigate their often-incongruous political and cultural roles in societies. Museum Director, Jenny Daly, has since the MAH’s inception been the main force behind this institution. Understanding this Museum’s past and current relationships to cultural-nationalist struggles is instructive for historians of Caribbean politics, Africanist scholars, and museologists more generally. Noting how Daly describes her own professional and personal growth realized through relationships forged with artists, their works, and their various communities of engagement can be illuminating. Daly recalls how art served as an effective medium through which she began to engage meaningfully with aspects of her own ancestral heritages, recognizing a profound correspondence between her involvement with the arts and with local Guyanese iterations of African-derived religiosity. Performing and visual arts provide conceptual and practical bridges between African-inflected expressions of devotion, which are generally marginalized in Guyanese society, and positive self-conceptions among African Guyanese individuals and communities. Through didactic means, art holds potentials to demystify stigmatized culture. The MAH is especially well-situated to harness such educational capacities of art, making African Guyanese histories and cultural expressions more accessible to all.

The Necessity of Reinterpreting Identity in Jan Lowe Shinebourne’s The Last Ship

This paper examines how Jan Lowe Shinebourne's The Last Ship deals with issues of West Indian immigrant identity set in a post-colonial Guyanese society. The essay explores how The Last Ship offers a strong suggestion that the immigrant's reinterpretation of identity is crucial to his survival and holistic well-being on the ‘immigrant landscape.' Through the examination of major characters in pairs – Clarice Chung and Susan Leo; Frederick Wong and Mary Leo; and Lorna and Joan Wong, the degree to which the six of them reinterpret their identities and arrive at a sense of ease and fulfilment is evaluated.

Curriculum Implementation Strategies of Primary and Secondary School Teachers in Georgetown

There is a paradigm shift from the traditional instructional strategies to innovative instructional strategies in order for schools to produce graduates who can successfully function in a dynamic society such as the Guyanese society. To achieve this, it is important for curriculums to be effectively implemented among other factors. This is particularly important noting the existence of mixed ability classes in the school system in Guyana. Hence this study focused on curriculum implementation strategies of teachers in the primary and the secondary schools in Georgetown, Guyana. The curriculum implementation strategies were in terms of the teaching and assessment strategies. It was a survey descriptive study of 98 (ninety-eight) teachers in Georgetown. A questionnaire was used to gather data for the study; mean and t-test were used for the analysis. The result of this study showed that the primary and the secondary school teachers highly used traditional instructional strategies, but minimally used innovative instructional strategies; the primary and the secondary school teachers highly used traditional mode of assessment, but did not use performance mode of assessment. The result of this study therefore had implications for effective curriculum implementation and associated outcomes.

U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story

U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story

Le Guyana: "Land of Six Peoples" ou "One People, One Nation" ?

Guyana is referred to as both Land of Six Peoples, a phrase extracted from the national anthem, or People, One Nation, One Destiny, the national motto. Using such opposite expressions to talk about one and the same country highlights meaningful divergences as regards Guyanese people’s viewpoints about what their society should be. Although top officials rejoice in the cohesiveness of Guyanese society, the latter is seemingly struggling to overcome the painful legacy of the colonial era. Examining postcolonial questions about Guyana entails transcending the traditional dichotomy former colonizers/former colonized people. Indians and Blacks, who were both subject to colonial power, have indeed developed antagonistic relationships. In the face of a proclaimed unity which nevertheless fails to conceal real divisions, it is worth exploring what problems Guyanese society has faced since it gained independence in 1966 and what strategies it has resorted to in order to solve these issues

Handicap et petite enfance en Guyane française : une analyse des relations entre professionnels et familles

The author reiterates that the transfer of public health policies to French Guyana has still not been able to fill in the gap related to delays in development of infrastructure and the lack of personnel in the social and medical establishments. The system of management for handicapped children in this French county is strongly influenced by the increasing immigrant population and by the vulnerability and instability of the administrative and socioeconomic situations of those families. Furthermore, the obstacles that the professionals from the socio-medical sector must confront in their daily practice and activities are described. An analysis of their portrayals and practices permit the author to show and outline their relationships with the immigrant families who are at risk, particularly that of maintaining and suffering from the general air of stigma to which they are objected to in the Guyanese society.

Cultural Power, Resistance and Pluralism: Colonial Guyana, 1838-1900

Drawing on a wide range of historical, sociological, and anthropological theory and data, Moore describes and analyses the institutions, customs, and beliefs of Afro-Creole, Indian Bhojpuri, Portuguese Latin, Chinese Hua-Qiao, and Victorian elite subcultures that make up Guyanese society. He looks at the way British colonizers used their power to transform and submerge the cultures of other ethnic groups and establish their own cultural model as dominant, and he examines the efforts of the diverse subordinate groups to resist such cultural imperialism and retain aspects of their own traditional cultures. Moore argues that it is the intricate interplay of these conflicting and competing forces that determined the extent of sociocultural integration or pluralism that the society as a whole achieved. Cultural Power, Resistance, and Pluralism makes a significant contribution to Caribbean historiography and the study of multiracial societies.

Educational Developments and Opportunities for Mobility among East Indians in Guyanese Society up to the Early 1970s

Educational Developments and Opportunities for Mobility among East Indians in Guyanese Society up to the Early 1970s

Education for Development or Underdevelopment? Guyana´s Educational System and Its Implications for the Third World

Historical Introduction to Guyanese Society Post-1945 Developments in Guyana Primary Education Teacher Education Secondary Education Post-Secondary and Technical Education Expenditure on Education Conclusion Bibliography.

A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905

Completed shortly before Walter Rodney's assassination in June 1980, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 provides an original, well-informed, and perceptive contribution to the historiography of nineteenth-century Guyanese society. This comprehensive examination encompasses the history of African and Asian immigration into Guyana, the interaction of ethnic groups, the impact of British colonialism, economic and political constraints on the working class, and the social life of the masses. Rodney argues that the social evolution of the Guyanese working people has been guided by specific material constraints and extremely powerful external focuses from Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. He emphasizes the destructive fragmentation of the working class along ethnic, political, and social lines, encouraged by the legacy of slavery, postslavery immigration, legal distinctions between various classes of labor, and the economic bases of the society. in contrast to the well-defined middle and upper classes, the working people appeared divided, disorganized, and leaderless. Rodney's account ends in 1905, when the hardships and frustrations of the masses exploded into violence. A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 will stand alone as a landmark study of the profound social upheaval that characterized Guyanese society in the years following emancipation. Anyone interested in the problems of underdeveloped nations, labor control, and the after-effects of colonialism and imperialism will appreciate the significance of this work.

Ethnicity, Ideology, and Class Struggle in Guyanese Society

Ethnicity, Ideology, and Class Struggle in Guyanese Society

Class conflict and racist ideology in the formation of modern Guyanese society

Pendant toute l'histoire coloniale de la Guyane, la classe dirigeante a imposé de façon disproportionnée une politique de répartition de bénéfices et de charges économiques aux divers groupes ethniques subordonnés. Cette politique se justifiait en termes des stéréotypes raciales des indoguyanais et des afro‐guyanais de la part de la classe dirigeante, ce qui avait comme résultat une disparité sociale et économique entre les deux groupes. Bien qu'une coöpération ait existé périodiquement entre les travailleurs indo‐guyanais et afro‐guyanais dans la lutte contre la classe dirigeante, ils se sont souvent servis des mêmes stéréotypes raciales que la classe dirigeante dans une tentative d'affermir leurs situations sociales et économiques les uns vis‐à‐vis des autres. Les études pluralistes et culturelles‐écologiques de la société guyanaise tiennent rarement compte de ces procédés.Throughout Guyanese colonial history, the ruling class applied a policy of disproportionate allocation of economic benefits and burdens to different subordinated ethnic groups. This policy was justified in terms of ruling‐class racial sterotypes of Indo‐ and Afro‐Guyanese, and resulted in social and economic disparities between these groups. Although there was periodic cooperation between Indo‐ and Afro‐Guyanese workers in struggles against the ruling class, they often used ruling‐class racial stereotypes in attempts to strengthen their social and economic positions vis‐à‐vis each other. Pluralist and cultural‐ecological approaches to Guyanese society seldom take these processes into account.