Caribbean Society and Culture The Role of Historical Experiences

Influences

-Experiences with Plantation Slavery - (Europe, Africa, Caribbean)

-Experiences with Indentureship

-Colonialism

-Indigenous Populations

The Result

   

Caribbean culture is a rich amalgam of European, African, East Indian, Asian, Plantation, Colonial and Indigenous influences, heritages and cultures

Caribbean Theorizing - Creole (process of interculturation), Plural (mixing but not combining), Plantation Society (dependent economies; enclaves of Metropole)

Manifestations of Influences

-Language, Street names, Parishes

-Music, Games, Sport (cricket, football)

-Religion

-System of Social Stratification & Population Structure

-Food

-Legal/judicial, Political &   Educational Systems

-Economic Arrangements

Other Legacies of Plantation & Colonial Heritages

 

>Economic Structure

-Dependence on metropole

-Economies adjuncts of metropolitan economies

-Producers of primary products/raw materials

-Heavy dependence on imports (debt)

-Maintenance of preferential trading arrangements (bananas, sugar)

-Likeness for things foreign

 

Other Legacies of Plantation & Colonial Heritages (cont’d.)

 

>Treatment of Class, Race, Colour

-Light complexion, European physical features & beauty

-Notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ hair

Pride of Caribbean Identity

 

-Music & Festivals

-Rastafarianism

-Language

-W.I. Cricket Team (Chanderpaul, Lara, Powell, etc.)

 

Resistance to Colonialism & Eurocentrism

-Rastafarianism

-Garveyism

-Black Nationalism

-Retention of Cultural forms of Countries of Origin

Creolization

The problem of identity has always been an issue in 

 

the modern Caribbean.

 

One of the earliest lines of cleavage was that 

 

between whites and mixed elements (creoles).

 

Rivalry was succeeded between Afro-creoles and 

 

indentured workers (TT, Guyana and Suriname)

  

 (Selwyn Ryan, 2002: JACAS Symposium Series

15)

The term has varying meanings in the Caribbean.

 

Stuart Hall (1977: 164) states “ the term itself is 

 

hard to define, it’s ambiguity being itself an index of 

its complex articulation with the structured form of

 

the cultures and groups with which it interacts.”

 

nLowenthal (1972: 32-33) The term was originally

 

 

used to define African slaves born in the new world.

 

 

Later extended to “…anyone, black or white, born

 

in the West Indies…then extended to things, habits 

 

and ideas…opinions expressed”

 

 

Creolization

 

Nettleford (1997: 74) Whites born in the American 

 

colonies were regarded as “creoles” by their 

 

metropolitan cousins.

 

Jamaican born slaves were similarly differentiated

 

from their “salt-water negro” colleagues freshly 

 

brought in from West Africa.

 

Genuine Caribbean expressions are regarded as 

 

those that have been “creolized” into indigenous 

 

form and purpose distinctively different from the

 

 

original elements from which those expressions first 

 

sprang.

Brathwaite (1974) Creolization is the process 

 

through which the various groups in the Caribbean 

 

society absorb each other’s cultural products.

 

The Africans and Indians imitated or were forced 

to imitate the Europeans.

 

Europeans inadvertently but at times consciously 

absorbed some of the cultural styles, languages and 

 

mores of the subordinate groups.

 

The Africans and Indians acculturated while the 

 

European’s process was defined as interculturation.

The former is the result of the yoking of cultures by 

 

force and example while the latter is an unplanned

 

 unconscious and osmotic relationship following 

from the yoking process.

African Retention

One of the main proponents of the African retention school is Melville Herskovits

Slavery did not totally destroy the African culture

African culture has survived in various forms in the Caribbean

African Retention

African cultural forms survived in three main ways:

1. Survivals- cultural forms that closely resemble the original African forms. For example, the practice of burying the umbilical chord of a child and planting a fruit tree over it

2. Syncretisms- the practice of identifying elements in the new culture with parallel components of the old. An example is the practice of identifying Catholic saints with African deities

3. Reinterpretations- This is seen where African culture is reinterpreted to suite the new environment. An example of this is the reinterpretations of African polygamy as progressive monogamy.