INTRODUCTION: Fieldcourse Themes
This fieldcourse explores the social, cultural and economic geographies of Cuba. It provides an opportunity for you to explore issues of post-colonialism, globalisation, socialism and development in the field. The fieldcourse is centred around four themes that inform the visits to different locations within and outside Havana including
- Socialism under challenge?
- Globalisation or dislocation?
- Cultural fusion and identity.
- Post colonial legacies.
- Urban ecologies: green Havana?
- Environmental histories.
Socialism under challenge?
Despite the collapse of state socialism is Eastern Europe over a decade ago, Cuba is still nominally a socialist country. This fieldcourse will explore the impacts of socialism on Havana in a range of areas including the economy, housing, health and education. We will also look for evidence that reveals the increasing 'marketisation' of key areas of Cuban life.
Globalisation or dislocation?
For the neoliberal orthodoxy, disengagement from the global economy will inevitably stifle growth. For Fidel Castro, the global economy is an extremely uneven playing field that holds many dangers for small, developing countries. We will explore these tensions, in particular through reflecting on four key dimensions of Cuba's external relations: the ongoing US trade embargo; historical links to the Soviet bloc and their virtual collapse since 1989; exports of primary commodities; and imports of oil & manufactured goods.
Cultural fusion and identity
Cuba has approximately 11 million inhabitants that represent a diverse heritage of cultural origins yet, the social, political and cultural identity of Cuba differs considerably from that of its Caribbean neighbours. Cuba is a relatively new nation with a long colonial history. Like many other similar young nations, this has resulted in considerable attention being paid to the nature of Cuban identity. In Havana, we will explore the ways in which diverse cultural identities are expressed and the ways in which the geographical & social location of Cuba have influenced the cultural fusion and identity of the nation and its people.
Post colonial legacies
Cuba has multiple histories each of which have left their mark on its people and its landscapes. We will be examing the ways in which these legacies are (re)presented with particular attention paid to the legacy of Spanish colonists from the 17th/18th centuries (in Old Havana), US ‘colonists’ whose legacy is found particularly in Vedado and Soviet Influences around Revolution Square. We will examine these ‘visual’ legacies of past colonists and more subtle legacies evident in the social, political, cultural and economic landscapes of Cuba.
Urban ecologies: green Havana?
We normally think of cities as spaces that are separate from nature. Yet urban areas are intimately connected to the environment: cities are constituted through flows of materials (water, food, energy, wastes) while the city's morphology and infrastructure influence its impact on the environment. Havana is a good place to explore this way of thinking about the contemporary city in ecological terms. While official socialist policy championed rational (environmental) planning over the inefficiencies and failures of the market, there is plenty of evidence in and around Havana that Cuba has not escaped pollution and environmental degradation. Fossil fuel shortages, limited imports and a general lack of purchasing power, however, have driven several innovative approaches to transportation, recycling and agriculture within the city, particularly since the 'special period' of austerity caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today some of the 'green' practices developed in Havana are heralded as models to which other cities might look when planning for a post-oil, carbon-aware future.
Environmental histories
Legacies of sugar, tobacco, tourism and biotech like many tropical economies, Cuban history is punctuated by a series of resource booms as different aspects of its tropical ecology (plants, soils, climate) became valued as commercial resources. The incorporation of Cuba into the world economy from the colonial period onwards- and its partial isolation since the 1950s - has driven several waves of landscape change, each associated with the production of a different tropical commodity: deforestation for timber, the spread of sugar and then tobacco plantations, the development of coastal tourism, and more recently biotechnology. These booms not only transformed the rural hinterlands of the island; the wealth and power they produced also re-configured the urban landscapes of Havana. The fieldcourse will try to interpret the built landscape of Havana as an historical process of ordering and re-ordering natures near and far.