The chapters in this volume represent the output of a transnational collaboration between Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, and the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, in Trinidad and Tobago. This collaboration, entitled ‘Understanding Local Entanglements of Global Inequalities: Socio-Cultural Transformation and Decolonial Thought, focused on three main questions: (1) How does the analysis of local inequalities relate to global processes of political, economic and cultural negotiation? (2) How are processes of cultural transformation channelled by global processes of political and economic negotiation? (3) How are cultural-political-economic processes shaping social formations on the local and global levels? These are timely questions, and we aimed to address them by contributing to decolonial thought and historical, cultural and geopolitical analyses of contemporary global political entanglements.

These questions were discussed in the course of two workshops, which took place in Giessen and St. Augustine during 2017–18. In both workshops, social science scholars, in particular from anthropology, sociology and gender studies, participated and contributed to the establishment of a Caribbean–European Research Network on Local Entanglements of Global Inequalities (CELEGI). The workshops also integrated international perspectives from other regions, such as Australia and Jamaica/UK, which are also represented in this volume. Drawing on debates in sociology proposing a decolonial perspective (Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Boatcă and Costa 2010; Bhambra 2014; Go 2016), this volume works with the premise of connected societies. Challenging methodological nationalism in social research, the chapters in this volume relate to or uncover the entangled histories between Europe and the Global South with special reference to the Caribbean. Although this is not always done explicitly and empirically, it is addressed through the theoretical and methodological approaches taken. Dealing with concrete empirical work, such as care work, the dynamics of financialization, refugee protests, solidarity struggles, the (counter-)politics of racialization, state injustice and judicial systems, transforming higher education institutions, Rastafari cosmopolitics and resistance, the contributions shed light on the local intricacies and manifestations of global inequalities. Accordingly, this volume sets out to understand the local face of the legacies and effects of the global historical and contemporary processes shaping economic and political disparities. The volume proposes an analysis of these processes by revealing local specificities, but also common global traits. Before we present the chapters in more detail, we will engage with the methodological and theoretical framing of this volume.