emancipation period supported the research and economic agendas of Britain. In spite of government commitments to a regional university over the past seventy years, research in the Caribbean continues to rest upon a tenuous foundation with inadequate resources and infrastructure. More specifically, in T&T, research is conducted within a wider environment best described as ‘patchy with several gaps and weak linkages between key institutions’ (Guinet 2014, p.7), creating a glaring dissonance between the vision of an innovative, knowledge society as articulated in the country’s national development plan Vision 2030 and the reality that exists.
In spite of increased access to higher education over the past decade, the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region’s gross tertiary enrolment rate lags behind other regions (UNESCO 2014). In T&T, only a small number of persons, approximately 0.002% of the population (1.3 million) is officially engaged in a research profession (NIHERST 2012) in T&T. At the STA Campus in the 2015-16 academic year, only 16% of all graduate students enrolled were pursuing research degrees, reflecting a mere 5% of the overall student enrolment (UWI 2017b, p. 83; p. 311). The education culture that has evolved at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels in T&T is one that is extremely competitive, placing significant emphasis on memorization, testing, academic grades and certification.
There is greater demand for taught courses by university students and an increased focus on accumulating academic certificates as a means of enhancing their relative marketability in the world of work. Based on the experiences of RDI Fund researchers at the community level, there is a mixed view of the university, with some showing great respect for the UWI
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as the regional institution of higher learning, and others remaining distrustful of the work of UWI academics and researchers.
More broadly, there seems to be an under-valorization of research and the contribution researchers make to their respective fields. The 2012 Public Perception of Science produced by the National Institute for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (NIHERST) highlights that 57% of the respondents indicated that they had little or no interest in science while 56% believed that persons who want to be scientists had to work overseas. While I recognize the limitations of such surveys and also that research itself is much broader than science, I do believe that such statements are indicative of the wider public perception of research. Moreover, the consistent under-funding of R&D in consecutive national budgets further diminishes the role of research and reinforces the under-valorization of research and indigenous knowledge in the public domain.
This is, however, at odds with government policy pronouncements, which project a commitment to building ‘a knowledge-based society that improves the ability of local businesses to compete globally’ (Ministry of Planning and Development 2016b, p. 41). As Farrell (2017) highlights, ‘outside the oil and gas sector, there is little investment by Trinidadian businesses in enterprises based on science and technology and virtually no investment in R&D’ (p. 158). When compared with Chile whose per capita GDP of US$14,310 is close to that of T&T (US$14,780 (IMF 2017), Chile invests ten times more in R&D than T&T (Guinet 2014, p. 13). In addition to financial resources, Carden (2009) makes the point that governance is also an important factor, which together with a ‘mix of distinguishing features’ (p. 34), makes managing research in developing countries especially challenging:
Assembling needed facilities and equipment in the midst of shortages; overcoming funding uncertainties and disappointments; recruiting, training, and retaining talented staff—all these and innumerable other difficulties inevitably confront the development research manager. (p. 34)
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This dissonance in government policy position versus action is reflected in organizational behaviour and public attitudes. In an assessment of T&T’s progressive and non-progressive cultural factors of development (Ministry of Planning and Development 2016a), T&T was rated as having a progress-resistant culture, attributed in part to the persistence of the colonial value system in education and the ‘lack of courage’ to convert the existing system into a more ‘dynamic, authentic force for development’ (Ministry of Planning 2016a, p. 2). The fact that our own leaders in the public and private sectors have traditionally relied more heavily on research conducted by foreigners or by multilateral institutions (though, admittedly this is sometimes part of the conditionality of development assistance) further weakens the demand for indigenous knowledge. Lewis and Simmons (2010) emphasize that:
Governments of these countries tend also to rely on the imprimatur of the foreign expert or agency to bring credibility to and to cultivate political support for local initiatives. This kind of reflexivity, where more credence is given to the foreign expert than the local, arguably constitutes a psychological hurdle for indigenous researchers in the region (p. 340).
Furthermore, universities in Caribbean SIDS have emulated the British higher education system’s ‘publish or peril’ research culture, which has maintained a narrow, conservative view of research outputs (primarily peer-reviewed publications in journals with high impact factors, though a gradual shift in the recognition of open access journals as well as other forms of research outputs, is slowly occurring). This, in spite of the range of decolonizing methodologies, traditional knowledges and research formats (such as visual representation and oral traditions) that are more culturally-relevant and better suited to the Caribbean context.
This then prompts the question: how can research flourish and achieve societal impact within this wider context? My research study recognizes the historical, political and
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cultural traits of T&T as factors which exacerbate the challenges experienced by researchers in the wider research environment. It acknowledges that research produced in and by Caribbean SIDS is less visible, less valued and not always well understood. It is research that often occurs in an environment that may inhibit (at best) or even undermine the ability of researchers to achieve societal impact.
Within academic institutions, ‘what gets accepted as knowledge is influenced by a larger climate of ideas and conventional wisdom’ (Levin 2004, p. 6) and as a result, in countries like T&T, academic traditions and customs governing the way research is packaged, presented, disseminated, recognized and accepted or rejected continue to be largely influenced by external standards that are disconnected from its social and cultural reality.
This is one aspect of the issue mentioned earlier in which education, knowledge and power come together to reinforce a longstanding hegemonic system that imposes a certain order, which places research and knowledge from small, developing states ‘at the global margins’
(Marginson and Ordorika 2011, p.94). Yet in seeking to rise above these systemic challenges, researchers in T&T also need to take societal and cultural norms into account.
In the context of T&T, cultural norms, attitudes and behaviours may, themselves, be considered antithetical to the goals of research and societal impact. Farrell (2012), in his interrogation of the myriad factors that have contributed to making T&T an
‘underachieving society’ points to the culture factor as one that should not be discounted.
He highlights the ‘carnival mentality’ and explains that citizens have developed a sense of entitlement and:
They may choose to work less hard, be less innovative and productive, and consume more because they value leisure, conviviality and pleasure more than they value work.’ (p. 248)
Farrell (2012) also underscores the notion of ambivalence, which was mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. He presents it as a distinct cultural trait in T&T and believes
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that this ambivalence is the ‘taproot of our values, attitudes and behaviour…[and] the cause of economic underachievement in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean’ (p. 41). A multi-layered concept with historical, psycho-social, cultural and emotional dimensions, this ambivalence is a product of the ‘living conditions and circumstances of survival in colonial societies marked by institutions of plantation slavery and indentureship’ (Farrell 2017, p. 42). Farrell (2017) explains further that:
The colonized mind identifies with the colonizer – adopting his language, manner of speaking, dress and idiosyncrasies – but also, and perhaps simultaneously, rejects the colonizer and repudiates his worldview. (p. 44)
Reflected also in the work of Lamming (2009) as the ‘uncertainty of self’ (p. 6) and in the work of Rohlehr (1992) as ‘the loss of the capacity and the possibility for self-hood’ (p. 9) as a result of the destruction of will during the colonial process, ambivalence has unwittingly been fused into Caribbean consciousness and way of life. Farrell (2012) mentions T&T’s ‘ambivalence towards things local and things foreign’ (p. 249); our simultaneous celebration of symbols of national pride such as the steelpan, calypso, local cricket and football icons (like Brian Lara and Dwight Yorke) and yearning for overseas products and experiences as well as foreign lifestyles; and our ironic position as host country to the Caribbean Court of Justice (to which other Caribbean countries such as Barbados and Guyana have already acceded) while still maintaining the UK’s Privy Council as the final court of appeal (Farrell 2012), as examples of an ambivalence that permeates the macro environment in which the RDI Fund researchers operate.