Introduction Errol Miller Dr Canute Thompson was one of those doctoral students that supervisors delight to have. Self-motivated with a voracious appetite for surveying and reviewing literature, there was never the need to urge him to get on with the work. The opposite was true. It was always challenging to keep up with his pace, given one''s other commitments. Possessed of strong analytical skills, there was never any hold-up with research design, data collection, analysis of data, reporting findings and drawing inferences. Moreover, Dr Thompson was never one to follow the beaten path but was always probing and testing the unknown and untried with independence of mind. It is therefore not at all surprising that he is now advancing in the academy as a leader engaged in thinking through Caribbean realities. Central to the book is the fact that Dr Thompson shares the main findings of his doctoral research with a wider audience and in a broader context than the requirements of a postgraduate credential.

While the original findings from this research focused on the perceptions of Jamaican high school students of their principals, he has expanded upon his analysis of the findings of this work extensively and in a systematic form around his novel contribution: proposition modelling, respect, motivation (MRM). His treatment of this issue in chapter 4 is exciting and inviting. The claim is that Proposition MRM is a new interpretation for transformational leadership which he has refocused to inform a new approach to educational leadership in the Caribbean. Dr Thompson has the knack of rescuing, restoring and refreshing concepts, which, over time and because of common usage, have departed from their essential meaning. The most controversial element of the book is the discourse on postmodern- ism. Indeed, anyone interested in a quick overview of postmodernism, point and counterpoint, will find the discourse in chapter 2 informative. While there is no doubt that Dr Thompson is an advocate, or at least an apologist, of postmodern- ism, he has come to this position fully cognizant of its tenets as well as criticisms of those tenets. Reimagining Educational Leadership in the Caribbean is well written in a style of gushing prose, which rushes across wide expanses of thought.

For example, in discussing the dogmatism that is said to characterize a fundamentalist world view, the text states: "One implication of this new dynamic and its relevance to pedagogy is that students enter a world that is crafted on diversity, characterized by ambiguity, propelled by plurality and steeped in complexity with an orientation to reject prefabricated postulations which are deemed to be out of sync with the realities around them" (p. 62). Accordingly, the book has to be read with constant reflection on what is being stated if one is not to be swept away and mesmerized by its eloquence.Fundamental axioms of the book are that current Caribbean realities are best depicted as a postmodern era, as is the case of western Europe and North America, and that postmodernism ought to be the guiding construct in pondering leadership in education and management. By fully asserting these axioms, setting them out in such clear terms and proposing approaches in their application, Dr Thompson has thrown down the gauntlet challenges his readers and colleagues to be equally clear and decisive about the constructs employed in thinking, writing and work as these are focused on the Caribbean. There are numerous conceptual schemes that have been used to depict and interpret the history of civilization and social thought. From a technological perspective, human civilization and society can be traced from the primordial hunter-gather stage through the agricultural revolution, to the revolution in agricultural productivity, to the industrial revolution and now the information revolution. From a political perspective, human civilization could be said to have moved from ethnocentric villages based on subsistence agriculture, to the era of ancient city states premised on citizenship, to the era of imperial city-state empires, to the era of religious empires of believers and to the current era of nation-states of nationals and aliens.

In a sense the conceptual scheme of pre- modern, modern and postmodern condenses elements of both technological and political schemata. If one accepts the conceptual scheme of premodern, modern and postmodern, it is extremely difficult to conceive of Caribbean societies as anything other than modern. There are different markers that have been used in dating the modern era. The earliest is the scientific revolution of the first half of the seventeenth century as Europe emerged from the period, labelled medieval, which was dominated by religion. The latest dating is from the latter half of the nineteenth century when nation-states of the West confronted the challenges of industrialization, urbanization and representative democracy. Sandwiched between these early and late dates is the "Age of Enlightenment", beginning in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Whatever marker is chosen, Caribbean societies fit the timeframe of modern. Colonialism ensured that.

In the seventeenth century, rising imperial nations of western Europe brought their newly established Caribbean colonies into the same status as themselves. Common criteria that have been used to define modernity include representative democracy, public education, capitalist market economy, civil service bureaucracy and notions of freedom, individualism and equality. Representative democracy in the Commonwealth Caribbean evolved in sync with Britain itself. Barbados has had an elected assembly that has operated continuously since 1639 with the holding of general elections as prescribed by its constitution. Similarly, Jamaica has held general elections, with the exception of eighteen years, since 1661. The creation of the sugar plantation economy ensured that Caribbean colonies were part of capitalist market economies since the latter half of the seventeenth century. As Higman (2008) pointed out, plantations were privately owned agro-industrial operations which not only grew sugar cane and timber, but generated their energy by wind, or animals or water, and manufactured sugar, rum and molasses mainly for export from ports, many of which they owned and controlled. Further, the entire operation required effective and integrated management, and, as Higman observed, Caribbean managers were on par or ahead of their peers in Britain.

Public education in the Caribbean dates back to the latter part of the seventeenth century and became more general following emancipation in 1838. The civil service in Jamaica was established about fifteen years after that in Britain and on the same basis of civil service examinations. Issues of freedom, equality and individualism have been part of Caribbean culture from at least the beginning of the nineteenth century. Whether by timeframe or common criteria defining modernity, Caribbean societies have been modern societies, although of lesser means. Historically, by virtue of their colonial past, Caribbean countries were brought into the modern era. Now in the era of political independence, starting in the second half of the twentieth century, the facts of geographical proximity of the Caribbean to the United States and Canada, the great extent of two-way travel of peoples between North America and the Caribbean, the shared English language, the ubiquity and ease of telecommunication, and growing social media have ensured continuous connection of modernity, however it is conceived and defined. Having considered the pros and the cons, Dr Thompson seems to have concluded that history, geography and information and communication technology have combined to tie the destiny of the Caribbean to be conceptualized by the same schema as the West, whether modern or postmodern. In a nutshell, postmodernism is a conceptualization that the Caribbean dare not ignore.

The crucial question becomes whether Caribbean engagement with postmodernism should be one of embrace and application or one of deep critical assessment and alter- native formulation. Either way, Reimagining Educational Leadership in the Caribbean is an important contribution to this conversation. The concept of modernity implies superiority to what went before. Embedded is the notion that Western civilization, characterized by modernity, is not only superior to civilizations of the past but also to all other civilizations that exists in the contemporary world. Yet, postmodernism embraces the notions of decline, decadence and transition. It declares modernity to be obsolete. As Jurgen Habermas asserts, while there is still the unfinished business of modernity, there is transition to something new. Lyotard agrees but for a different reason.

He maintains that modernity perpetuates the myth of human progress and entertains grand or metanarratives that have been found wanting and must be abandoned. Regardless of perspective, the term postmodernism is similar to terms of yesteryear such as post-primary and post-secondary. Postmodernity is a stage beyond modernity but cannot yet be defined in terms of itself because, as an emerging stage, it is too embryonic to be endowed with settled form and unambiguous definition. If postmodernism is subjected to the tool of deconstruction, at least three critical issues immediately rise to the fore. First, postmodernism is a resisting form of affirmation of the superiority of Europe and of the West. Even in decline and decadence, postmodernism implicitly asserts that Europe and the West are ahead of the rest of the world, some parts of which are still to struggling to become modern. The destiny of the world is to follow Europe and the West. The stage into which.