American Geographical Society Review Reviewed Work(s

American Geographical Society

Review Reviewed Work(s): Caribbean and Southern: Transnational Perspectives on the U.S. South by Helen A. Regis Review by: Derek H. Alderman Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 98, No. 2 (Apr., 2008), pp. 304-306 Published by: American Geographical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30034235 Accessed: 22-09-2017 21:23 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms

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304 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

creasingly put to work to maintain and create lan

cal and mental needs of tourists, converting an en

rural agricultural work into one whose natural q their symbolic meanings. In each case, nature was

the emphasis shifting from farm goods to vacation

The literature on New England tourism is alread

geographer, makes the useful contribution of connec ried in their heads and the social relations that they

actual environmental conditions they encountered

popular destination like Vermont-or, indeed, New

a cultural construction but a real place as well.-KE ern Maine

CARIBBEAN AND SOUTHERN: Transnational Perspectives on the U.S. South. Edited byHELEN A. REGIS. vii and 154 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., bibliog. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 0820328316; $19.95

(paper), ISBN 0820328324. The U.S. South has long been of academic interest, but the region has attracted even greater attention from geographers lately. Indeed, in 2007 the Association of Ameri-

can Geographers approved the formation of a specialty group devoted to the critical study of the South and its cultural, political, economic, and ecological aspects. This "Southern turn" in geography is fueled, in part, by a larger, multidisciplinary

effort to analyze the U.S. South in more fluid and hybrid ways than in the past. Although scholars traditionally studied the region as a fixed and tightly bounded entity, current research views southern culture as the dynamic product of exchanges,

influences, and interrelationships. The South is increasingly seen as connected to, rather than cut off from, the larger world. Consequently, a new vocabulary is emerging within the southern studies literature that includes words such as "Transnational

South," "Globalized Regionalism," "Nuevo South," "Atlantic Studies," and even "Southibbean."

Caribbean and Southern is an important contribution to this ongoing project of

investigating the U.S. South through a global lens. Editor Helen Regis and her contributors identify some of the rich connections that exist between the South and the

Caribbean, demonstrating how the analysis of one region cannot truly be analyzed without examining the other. Adopting a largely historical perspective, the authors

join a growing group of scholars who argue that the globalization of the South is not necessarily a new development but part of larger story of international migra-

tions, commodity flows, and creolizations, some of which date back centuries. The book's chapters, according to Regis, "are the result of years, and in some cases decades, of reflection on the transnational linkages between the plantation complexes of the Caribbean and the South, the cultural continuities between the Caribbean,

the South, and Africa, and the structural connections between colonial and postcolonial economies and societies" (p. i). Caribbean and Southern is a collection


GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 305

of essays by anthropologists, but it will no doubt b

particularly students of the African and African

book focuses on the theme of diaspora and the t

identity and culture. The contributors emphasize

cans and African Americans, whether in the contex

ing, or in the context of special celebrations an services and Jonkonnu festivals. All of the book's chapters are worth reading,

Rosalyn Howard, Joyce Marie Jackson, and Mark

thy. Harrison is rightly positioned at the beginn

the larger challenge of researching the sometim tions between the Caribbean and the U.S. South.

both regions, she argues for not only a remappi but also an unearthing of one's cultural "roots."

own genealogy as an entry point to discussing history of Norfolk, Virginia, and the role of th change between the Caribbean and the South.

Rosalyn Howard also embraces the theme of an

the little-known migration of Black Seminoles f

the early 18oos. The Black Seminole identity resulte

Florida and forming alliances with Seminole Indians

Black Seminoles made repeated attempts to reloc establishing the settlement of Red Bays on Andros

ing communities still bear their imprint and legacy

reveal that some of the island's older inhabitan Bahamian identity and hold deep transnational Florida, a result of oral tradition passed down f

Studying the connections between the Caribb that we complicate conventional assumptions ab

aries. As illustrated by Joyce Marie Jackson, a tran

us to rethink certain ideas about gender relations a

ing the role of women in organizing black folk

Bahamas, Jackson elucidates how female leader and authority within churches and communitie vative concept of"hidden transcripts" to capture

tions of rockin' (in Louisiana) and rushin' (i

maximize their influence by upholding the ritua system.

Power relations are not always expressed in latent, symbolic terms, however. Mark Moberg explores environmental justice, a global social movement that originated from a 1984 public protest in the U.S. South. Moberg points to the possibility

of using the environmental justice paradigm to analyze and characterize ecological problems in the Caribbean, many of which stem from a history of European con-


306 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

quest and deforestation, monopolization of land for sug

eign-owned tourist development in marginal coastal locat of these problems and their relationship to patterns of

tion in the region, suggesting that the struggles of Afr

South parallel the inequalities faced by Afro-Caribbean

Yet Moberg says little about the role of advocacy, and o

Caribbean-South connection goes much deeper than sim To what extent have the history and strategies of the So

tice movement informed and inspired the protests of Ca

essay provokes us to consider the potential of transnat

realm of analytical perspective to become a political tool In summary, Caribbean and Southern is a well-illustrated

that makes it accessible to student readers as well as facu

usefulness is somewhat limited by the absence of an index

any book, especially one covering a wide range of topic

volume would also have benefited from a concluding chap

editor or by an outside commentator, that offered some

the contributed essays while also identifying potential ar

U.S. South-Caribbean connections. Despite these limitati leagues provide an important starting point in this int H. ALDERMAN, East Carolina University

A HUNDRED HORIZONS: The Indian OceanBy in the A SUGATA BOSE. xii and 333 pp.; maps, ills., notes, index. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. $27.95 (cloth), ISBN 0674021576. As historians increasingly move beyond the frames of national history to paint more

expansive canvasses they necessarily grapple with geography. One unavoidable spatial issue is that of scale. Should one jump immediately to the global level, or can more be learned at the higher levels of resolution found in macroregional studies?

If one takes the latter course, should one use the familiar units of world regions, or

is more to be gained by delimiting less conventional frameworks? If one chooses to limn novel regions, one must show how they were made coherent by transregional

bonds, giving conceptual weight to the spatial packaging employed. Nowhere is this geographical turn in macrohistorical analysis more evident than in Sugata Bose's A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire.

Throughout this impressive work, Bose explores the spatial dimensions of human

interactions across the Indian Ocean realm. He carefully defines his unit of analysis

as an "interregional arena" that "lies somewhere between the generalities of a 'world

system' and the specificities of particular regions" (p. 6). Working at such an inter-

mediate scale, Bose contends, allows one to grasp features of individual agency and local resilience that are often obscured in the narratives of Western omnipotence found in the world-systems approach, as well as to highlight the broader linkages and comparative vantage points that often vanish in more spatially restricted stud-
