The Caribbean Cruise Ship Business and the Emergence of a Transnational Capitalist Class

Abstract

This paper will provide an overview of the fundamental changes that the cruise ship business has undergone with the emergence of capitalist globalization and in the context of the Caribbean region. Rising profits and investments in tourism during the later decades of the 20th century and into the 21st century have been an important part of the globalizing economy. This has been a consequence of both the major technological andThe cruise ship business is not motivated by the national economic development of any single country. Rather, it is capitalism's anti-social character at any level-local, national, regional, international, and, most importantly in recent decades, the transnational, that propels this business. Yet, when we add up the ecological impact of mass cruise ship tourism, the costs to humanity become increasingly unbearable. This analysis of the expansion of capitalism in the Caribbean via leisure travel reinforces the point that capital accumulation is substantively a contradictory and unsustainable global process in which those exercising state power play a very important role. State policymakers from a variety of states (most importantly, from the U.S.) have become complicit in the reworking of capital-labor relations to benefit the TCC. It shows us that sovereignty, states, and power are not so tightly tethered to a self-interested territorial logic, but, rather, exhibit what John Agnew (2009) Traditionally, scholars have looked at different nation-state-based elites as dominating the resorts and cruise ship destinations. Dotting the Caribbean's new array of privatized beaches, these businesses are under the control of a coalition of foreign, expatriate, and local elites (Klein 2005(Klein , 2009). In fact, it is clear that the world-system that came about through earlier phases of capitalism has played a key role in shaping many terms and conditions of today's transnational class relations form (Watson 2015).World-systems scholars have looked at the cruise ship business and tourism industry in the developing world as based on the flow of resources from "periphery" nations to wealthy "core" nations (Boyce 2003;Weaver 2001). Through this perspective, we would then see the U.S. state as facilitating the profiteering activities of U.S. national capitalists (with a fraction being internationally oriented) (Sprague, 2014a). This is in fact also a perspective underlying nationalist sentiments that many scholars and activists have embraced, including within the Caribbean: that poorer nations and their business communities must then compete with influential foreign national power blocs. Yet as capitalist accumulation has undergone fundamental changes over recent decades, we need to recalibrate how we understand political economy in the global era. Developmental models and relations tied to the inter-state system continue to erode, as many state leaders and local elites promote transnational capitalist interests and global competitiveness-even if this does include national rhetoric (and some poli...

Complex Stratification in the World System: Capitalist Totality and Geopolitical Fragmentation

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Seasonality of cruise ship activity in neighboring regions

“…The studies on cruise traffic, primarily, are focused on the two main destination regions worldwide. In this regard, one can find the works of Brida et al, 4 Diedrich, 5 and Sprague-Silgado 6 focusing on the Caribbean Sea and the works of Carić and Mackelworth, 7 Esteve-Perez and Garcia-Sanchez, 8 and Tsiotas et al 9 focusing on the Mediterranean Sea.…”

Eluding National Boundaries: A Case Study of Commodified Citizenship and the Transnational Capitalist Class

“…Other studies concerning multiple citizenships tend to emphasize changing life courses [37] or are discussed from the nation-state point of view and the pressures experienced therein [38][39][40]. Other similar works on transnationalization in the Caribbean have focused on the tourist industry [41], security [42], or the Caribbean's colonial history and its role in current issues of globalization, sovereignty, and citizenship [43]. This article contributes to both the literature on transnationalization and inequality, areas of research which have not specifically addressed commodified citizenship.…”