Colonial Subjects is the first book to use a combination of world-system and postcolonial approaches to compare Puerto Rican migration with Caribbean migration to both the United States and Western Europe. Ramón Grosfoguel provides an alternative reading of the world-system approach to Puerto Rico's history, political economy, and urbanization processes. He offers a comprehensive and well-reasoned framework for understanding the position of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, the position of Puerto Ricans in the United States, and the position of colonial migrants compared to noncolonial migrants in the world system.
Colonial Subjects Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective
About the Book
Reviews
“An excellent book for those interested in the world-system and most especially in the modern Caribbean and Puerto Rico.”—James C. Harrison Multicultural Review"This book is a substantial contribution to the historical and interpretive sociology of the modern world. It is written as both a critique of the modernist paradigm, and as a reinterpretation of the contribution of Puerto Rico to the making of the modern world from a 'decentered' perspective."—Philip McMichael, author of Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective
"Grosfoguel's grounding in the complexities of the Puerto Rican past and present provides us with original and generative scholarship that requires a new self-reflexive approach to knowledge and nationalism, to colonialism and capitalism, to citizenship and subjectivity. Within ethnic studies, Grosfoguel's approach is a crucial contribution to the progress of the field beyond ethnic particularism and toward the identification and understanding of the broader social forces that create social differences and give them their determinate social meanings."—George Lipsitz, author of American Studies in a Moment of Danger
"Grosfoguel's book should become the definitive work on Puerto Rican migratory circuits."—Jose David Saldívar, author of Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies
"Grosfoguel discovers the relationship between the coloniality of power, the migratory movement to the Caribbean, the formation of new global cities like Miami, and tendencies toward a new geo-strategic configuration of a global scale."—Anibal Quijano, Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University
Table of Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction:
PART ONE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PUERTO RICO
1. The Political Economy of Puerto Rico in the Twentieth Century and Puerto Rican Postnational Strategies
2. World Cities in the Caribbean: Miami and San Juan
PART TWO: PUERTO RICAN MIGRATION AND THE CARIBBEAN DIASPORA IN THE UNITED STATES
3. Migration and Geopolitics in the Greater Antilles: From the Cold War to the Post–Cold War
4. Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Comparative Approach
5. "Coloniality of Power" and Racial Dynamics: Notes on a Reinterpretation of Latino Caribbeans in New York City (with Chloe S. Georas)
PART THREE: CARIBBEAN COLONIAL MIGRANTS IN WESTERN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES
6. Colonial Caribbean Migrations to France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States
7. "Cultural Racism" and Colonial Caribbean Migrants in Core Zones of the Capitalist World-Economy
Appendix
References
Index