Professor Mark Figueroa

Honorary Professor

Focus:

Caribbean Economic Thought, Gender and Socio-economic Outcomes; Political Economy of Jamaica’s Electoral System; Memoirs, Memories and Reflections.

Email:

mark.figueroa@uwimona.edu.jm

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Bio

Up to his retirement in 2017, Mark Figueroa had pursued an academic career at Mona during the 43 years that he spent on the staff of the Faculty of Social Sciences. For most of this time, he was a member of the Department of Economics although he spent his last three years with SALISES and had prior to this, been Dean for eight years. Following his retirement he spent six years as an honorary fellow with the UWI Museum and or Archives, before re-joining SALISES as an Honorary Professor.

His wide-ranging research has explored the development of economic ideas, primarily Caribbean thought within the Critical Tradition especially the work of W. Arthur Lewis; gender and socio-economic outcomes focusing on education, health and leadership in the Caribbean; Jamaica’s inner-city political economy especially the “garrison” phenomenon and the associated crime; violence and electoral manipulation; migration and diaspora studies, mainly remittance flows; and environmental planning and sustainable development among others. Three of his notable contributions are listed below.

He identified commonalities within a broad critical tendency in Caribbean Thought including, Lewis, his radical successors and Ida Greaves who predated him; and helped clarify Lewis’s political economic perspective and its relevance to explain the rise of East Asia in general and China in particular.

Deploying the notion of gender privileging, he demonstrated how ideas about how fe/males should be treated led to transformations in the gender structure of society, over many decades, leading to changes in levels of academic achievement, whereby starting in the late twentieth century, males were often the majority of low achievers while usually constituting a group among the top performers.

He made a definitive contribution to the study of “garrisons” in Jamaican politics, showing that they were not an isolated aberration and how they were linked to the outcome of high levels of criminality.

Education

PhD Economics University of Manchester

MSc Economics UWI Mona

BA Mathematics and Economics UWI Mona

Publications

Caribbean Economic Thought

Figueroa, Mark. 2022. Ida Greaves: A Barbadian Economist who Predated Arthur Lewis and Contributed to the Critical Tradition in Caribbean Economic Thought. Social and Economic Studies. 71(1&2): 130-157.

Figueroa, Mark. 2019. Towards an Accurate and Comprehensive Understanding of W. Arthur Lewis’s 1950s Caribbean Prescriptions. Social and Economic Studies. 68 (1&2): 5-43.

Figueroa, Mark. 2018. W. Arthur Lewis: Mild Afro-Saxon or Militant Anti-racist? In Rupert Lewis and the Black Intellectual Tradition, edited by Clinton Hutton, Maziki Thame and Jermaine McCalpin, Ian Randle, Kingston: 250-79.

Figueroa, Mark. 2004. W. Arthur Lewis versus the Lewis Model: Agricultural or Industrial Development? The Manchester School of Social and Economic Studies 72: (6) 736-50.

Gender and Socio-economic Outcomes

Figueroa, Mark. 2013. Is the Gender Gap in Academic Leadership Disappearing in the Commonwealth Caribbean? In Commonwealth Education Partnerships 2013/ 2014, commissioned by Andrew Robertson with Rupert Jones-Parry. Nexus Strategic Partnership, Cambridge: 140-1.

Figueroa, Mark. 2004. Old (Female) Glass Ceilings and New (Male) Looking Glasses: Challenging Gender Privileging in the Caribbean. In Gender in the 21st Century: Caribbean Perspectives, Visions and Possibilities, eds. Barbara Bailey and Elsa Leo-Rhynie. Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston: 134-53.

Figueroa, Mark. 2004. Male Privileging and Male Academic Underperformance in Jamaica. In Interrogating Caribbean Masculinity, ed. Rhoda Reddock. UWI Press, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago: 137-66.

Figueroa, Mark. 2000. Making Sense of Male Experience: The Case of Academic Underachievement in the English-speaking Caribbean. IDS Bulletin 31: (2) 68-74. Reprinted in You We Quality Education Forum UWI, 2002. 8: 11-15.

Political Economy of Jamaica’s Electoral System

Figueroa, Mark, Anthony Harriott and Nicola Satchell. 2008. The Political Economy of Jamaica’s Inner-City Violence, A Special Case? In The Caribbean City, ed. Rivke Jaffe: Ian Randle, Kingston: 94-122.

Figueroa, Mark and Amanda Sives. 2003. Garrison Politics and Criminality in Jamaica: Does the 1997 Election Represent a Turning Point. In Understanding Crime in Jamaica: New Challenges for Public Policy, ed. Anthony Harriott. UWI Press, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago: 63-88.

Figueroa, Mark and Amanda Sives. 2002. Homogeneous Voting, Electoral Manipulation and the Garrison Process in Post-Independence Jamaica. Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 40: (1) 81-108.

Figueroa, Mark. 1985. An Assessment of Over Voting in Jamaican Elections. Social and Economic Studies 34: (3) 71‑106.

For a complete list of publications see:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1Btj_gUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra

Projects

Currently involved in encouraging, facilitating and assisting colleagues to engage in reflecting on their experiences, documentation their memories, and writing their memoirs

Graduate Studies

Not currently engaged in graduates teaching or supervision

Courses Taught

Not currently engaged in teaching

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Professor Mark Figueroa

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