We salute Norman Girvan

By Ian Boyne

One of the brightest stars in the Caribbean's intellectual galaxy has disappeared into the black hole of the unknown - but not before illuminating countless mortals, each of whom still carries a spark from that radiance. Norman Girvan has been taken from this life. But never from our hearts and minds.

To a generation seized by ideas and fascinated with dev-elopment thinking, Norman Girvan was a rock star. His contribution to intellectual thought not only in the Caribbean, but in the Global South, is prodigious, profound and perpetual. I was delighted that The Gleaner, in a fitting honour to this towering scholar and public intellectual, devoted an editorial to his memory last Friday.

We need to recall great men such as Norman Girvan. He was a scholar par excellence who combined his theory with praxis: a former head of the then National Planning Agency, Norman was a key adviser to Michael Manley in the 1970s and was active in searching for an alternative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Those who want a serious study of the IMF and Jamaica before 1980 should read his collaborative work with Richard Bernal and Wesley Hughes, The IMF and the Third World: The Case of Jamaica. I remember Norman's handing me a copy of that work on his veranda in 1980 when it was published, before a few hours of intense intellectual engagement. Conversations with Norman were characteristically intense, and if you were not up on your reading, it would show from just a few minutes of discourse.

Norman's wide-ranging engagements are too numerous to mention in a brief tribute, but his work with the South Centre, the UN Centre on Transnational Corp-orations, the UN's African Institute for Development and Planning, the Con-sortium Graduate School at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and his leadership of the Association of Caribbean States and his recent appointment as the UN secretary general's personal envoy on the Guyana-Venezuela dispute as a pre-eminent Third World scholar and activist.

Regionalist at heart

Norman had social activism in is genes. He is, after all, the son of Thom Girvan, that stalwart who worked with Norman Manley on Jamaica Welfare. Norman's work with the New World Group and the dependency school of economics estab-lished him as a foremost development economist. One should read the tribute to Norman by Samir Amin, one of the leading thought leaders in Third World scholarship, at the 2008 Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies conference to honour this giant.

Norman Girvan died an unflinching Caribbean regionalism and relentless critic of dependency and neo-colonialism. While some might say that his role in the Manley administration was nothing to be proud of, and that his prescriptions have contributed to our problems, careful examination won't permit such a jaundiced view. Norman's analysis of international capital and its role in the Third World (his book, Foreign Capital and Economic Underdevelopment in Jamaica, remains a classic) is still on point.

And if you believe he has learnt nothing from history, you should read his 2012 lecture at the UWI 50/50 conference, 'Jamaica: 50 Years in Dependence'. Sheer brilliance! Norman understood the nuances of global power and the constraints of developing countries like Jamaica.

But his insistence on agency and our fighting for policy space to advance the people's agenda is noteworthy. In a touching close to his lecture, which I could not miss, this London School of Economics, PhD, called on Jamaicans never to give up hope of liberation. "I say if Marcus Garvey had not dreamed; if the leaders of the 1930s had not dreamed; if Usain Bolt had not dreamed, would we be where we are today?"

Norman Girvan was both a dreamer and a doer. He has left us an exquisitely rich intellectual legacy. A generation of us progressive thinkers salute our hero.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.and ianboyne1@yahoo.com.