THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES, ST. AUGUSTINE
Faculty of Social Sciences
Department of Behavioural Sciences
SEMESTER 1 2011/2012
Faculty:Social Sciences
Course Title:Peoples and Cultures of the Caribbean
Course Code:SOCI 6020
Level:Graduate
Length: One semester
Credits:Three (3)
Pre-requisite(s):None
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The course is intended to provide an overview of Caribbean society and the evolution and dynamics of its culture(s). The major forces, external and internal, which contributed to the shaping of the region, will be discussed. In the first section of the course Caribbean history and theories of the Caribbean will provide the foundations for our critical understandings of peoples and cultures of the Caribbean. The second half of the course examines contemporary everyday life in Caribbean society, focusing on social practices such as, family, marriage, ritual, gender relations, sexuality, health, music, politics, and popular culture. Although emphasis will be placed on the Anglophone Caribbean, and French, Spanish and Dutch speaking territories will also be discussed. It is hoped that the student will be able to appreciate the diversity within the region and consider possibilities to better manage its pluralistic nature.
OBJECTIVES
At the end of this course, students should:
- Understand the concepts and theories in the study of culture
- Appreciate the history of the region: important developments such as slavery, colonialism, indentureship, independence and decolonization.
- Appreciate the rich diversity of Caribbean cultures and the cultural and social distinctiveness of this region of transplanted peoples.
- Understand the analytical frameworks that have been used to understand the social and cultural life of the region.
- Appreciate the influence of other societies on the culture of the contemporary Caribbean and the region’s wider and continuing impact on culture and consciousness in other societies
INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION
Name of instructor: Dr. Dylan Kerrigan
Office address and phone: FSS 212 / 662 2002 ext. 83576
E-mail address:
Office hours: Mon 10am-12pm
Communication policy: Via email, office hours or appointment by arrangement
COURSE ASSESSMENT: AKA HOW YOU WILL BE GRADED
Keepers and Queries: 25%
Examination: 75%
A Keeper is like a gift. It is a concept the author introduces you to, a question she or he poses, a place described in such a way you want to go there, a problem so movingly invoked you want to fix it, a concept washed over too innocently you need to probe it further. If you find a keeper in your reading(s), reference it and then describe it fully in no less than one full page single-spaced and no more than 2 full pages single-spaced.
A Query is a question posed by the readings. It can be a question about evidence, perspective, bias, conclusion, so what or what now. It should be a question that you do not know the answer to, and it should be a question worth discussing in class.
Over the course of the semester you must complete at least 4 keepers and 1 query. Each will be worth 5% of you final grade. You may choose when to submit your keepers and queries, but to receive credit on them you must turn them in on the Thursday night before the day we discuss those readings. If you hand in more than the 4 keepers and 1 query your top marks will be the ones that count toward your final grade providing you leeway to improve on any keeper/query marks you may lose.
READINGS
For this course you should be doing a minimum of 100-150PAGES reading a week. A comprehensive reading list is provided. The onus is on you to choose the books/articles you want to read. Each book listed for each week’s topic - plus additional articles not listed that I will send by weekly email – is/are relevant to that week’s discussion. Excuses that you could not find a reading for a particular week will not be tolerated. If you are having serious difficulty finding readings contact me and I will provide a reading for you. Do not leave this to a few days before class. Be organised. Pick your readings at least two weeks in advance.
FINAL EXAM
The final 3-hour exam will consist of essay questions concerning the topics from the syllabus. Last year’s questions will be made available to you for your exam preparation.
TEACHING METHODOLOGY
This is a graduate-level discussion seminar, not an undergraduate-lecture course. In order for the discussions to work well, doing reading before class and participating in seminar discussions is extremely important. The keepers and queries assignment is designed to both help develop your thinking about the readings and to provide evidence you are doing some reading. Our main goal in each class will be to isolate what is and is not persuasive and valuable—theoretically, empirically, and methodologically—from the readings. In particular, how do the readings improve or confuse our understandings of the Caribbean and its people(s) and culture(s). Each week we will also concentrate at the beginning and end of class on keywords from the texts and what they mean. Each week class-discussions will be launched byshort student presentation. We will decide the presentation list at our first class.
Class schedule and topics
Class 1: Introductions: Who am I, who are you, what is this class about? Overview of syllabus, readings, and assignments. Tips for doing well. Advice for successful reading practice. Discussion of general anthropological and sociological re-presentations of the Caribbean. In class “mapping the Caribbean” exercise.
Class 2: What is the Caribbean? Defining the Caribbean, defining Caribbean culture, change, continuity, retention and persistence. Definitions of colonialism, post-colonialism and neo-colonialism; explanation and general discussion of the Caribbean, its geography, history, people, labels, language, patterns of immigration, and the areas of focus for this course.
Class 3: History: Important phases in Caribbean History (pre, past and modern). Culture contact – constructing a narrative of events that connects Caribbean “pre-history” to the present. We will discuss and imagine how the region came to be populated, the various migratory movements, and the general historical framework of how groups came and went, who came before and after, and who had the power to define history and describe the process of social integration.
Class 4: Theories and Definitions of Caribbean Society. Melting Pot, pluralism, assimilation, resistance, creolisation, acculturation, transculturation, modernity, diaspora, home, culture, race, ethnicity and more – all ideas to flesh out, problematise and understand as concepts in motion, that connect transnationally around the world to complicate singular meaning. Plus what are ‘Caribbean narratives?’ and how do they help us to understand peoples and cultures of the Caribbean.
Class 5: Caribbean Thought. Who are some of the greatest thinkers to come out of the Caribbean and what can we learn from them? What is the role of Caribbean intellectuals and Caribbean focused ethnographies in the development of pan-Caribbean consciousness? How have Caribbean thinkers from Marcus Garvey and Walter Rodney to C.L.R. James and Jacqui Alexander influenced and played a substantial role in the self-actualisation of local Caribbean communities both at home and in the diaspora? What has been the wider impact of Caribbean thinkers around the world?
Class 6:Demographic Trends in the Caribbean (Urbanization, migration, ageing, gender equality, sexual orientation etc). What are some facts and figures about the Caribbean? What do they tell us about the population in the Caribbean, what are some differences and similarities across the region? Why is it important to link sexual orientation to demography in the Caribbean? What are the major demographic transitions the Caribbean has experienced and is most likely to experience in coming years?What ethnographies of the Caribbean exist to support the demographic data? What do demographic trends not tell us?
Class 7: Caribbean Music. From storytelling to calypso to hip hop, Caribbean music tells a story about what, who and where the Caribbean is. From dancehall and reggae to soca and reggaeton today’s billboard charts are full of Caribbean rhythms and suggest Caribbean music is in motion, circulating globally. North American artists sample and collaborate with Caribbean artists for the newest most hip sounds and content (think ‘wining,’ politics, storytelling, video scenery etc.) What does the current music scene in mainstream America tells us about the commodification of Caribbean culture and performances of racial/ethnic identity? Does Caribbean music and video imagery challenge the boundaries of ‘racial’ citizenship around the world, and if so how? What new forms does Caribbean music produce as it circulates globally? And what do narratives about Caribbean music tell us about our own region?
Class 8: Ethnicity and Cultural Identity in the Caribbean. How is cultural identity made and how does it work in the Caribbean? What is the logic of racism? What is difference-making? How do debates and ideas on race, ethnicity, religion and cultural identity in the Caribbean problematise mainstream definitions of these terms elsewhere? How do Caribbean experiences and Caribbean history help to reconfigure debates on race and ethnicity?
Class 9: Caribbean Popular Culture as a “Transnation” (Food, Film, religion, literature, customs, festivals, sport, folklore, art, and magic). What does it mean to speak of Caribbean Carnival as an Indigenous Intellectual device and Cultural Narrative? How does the Caribbean function as a ‘transnation’ and diasporic social movement of great importance to Caribbean identity? Can Caribbean cultural production such as in music, film and literature be read as cultural narratives? How can we use the histories, ownership and participation in cultural production as sites for examining and working through issues of race, gender, sexuality and class in Caribbean culture? What are some of the ways Caribbean people have seen themselves? And how have others seen them too?
Class 10: Socio-economic inequality in the Caribbean and its relationship to health, illness, poverty, violence and discrimination. What is the relationship between poverty and illness in the Caribbean? How can “structural violence” help the researcher to better understand the connection between socio-economic inequality and illness? What is the relationship in Caribbean societies between economic inequality and social stratification? Is the Caribbean poor and unequal – if so how, and why? What is the correlation between inequality and public health? How does socio-economic inequality impact social development, discrimination and levels of violence in the Caribbean?
Class 11: Family and kinship in the Caribbean. What are some interpretations of Caribbean and kinship forms? What are the pros and cons of these definitions? Do studies of kinship and family in the Caribbean over generalise about these institutions? What does kinship and the family in the Caribbean tells us about the dialectic of continuity and change in the Caribbean? What do economic, social and cultural conditions of a time and place have to do with family and kinship?
Class 12: Review and Consolidation. What have you learnt about peoples and cultures of the Caribbean? What is the Caribbean revisited
Dec ??: FINAL EXAM: Date and time to be confirmed.
Reading List:
What is the Caribbean?
Aub-Buscher, Gertude. 2003. The Francophone Caribbean today: literature, language, culture. Cave Hill: UWI Press. PQ3940F73 2003 [Main Lib/West Indiana]
Craig, Susan. 1982. ‘Sociological Theorising in the English-Speaking Caribbean’ in Craig, S. (Ed.), Contemporary Caribbean, Vol. II, St. Joseph, Trinidad and Tobago, College Press
Geddes, Bruce. 2001. Caribbean. CA: Lonely Planet. WI.641.3009729 Ge C [POS Adult/Heritage]
Henry, Keith. ‘Language, culture and society in the Commonwealth Caribbean’, in Journal of Black Studies. 7: p.79-94. 1976. F1609.5H22L2 [Main Lib/ West Indiana]
Laughlin, Nicholas. 2006. ‘What “Caribbean” can mean’ in Guyana Arts Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, March 2006. Available online [
Knight, Franklin. 2005. Contemporary Caribbean cultures and societies in a global context. Mona: UWI Press. F1741.C67 2005 [Main Lib/West Indiana]
Knight, Franklin and Colin Palmer. 1989. The Modern Caribbean. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Lowenthal, David. 1972. West Indian Societies. New York: Oxford University Press
Mintz, Sidney. 1960. The Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History. New Haven: Yale University Press
-1974. Caribbean Transformations. Chicago: Aldine
Mintz, Sidney W. and Sally Price. 1985. Caribbean Contours. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.
Taylor, Douglas. 1957. ‘Languages and Ghost Languages of the West Indies’ in the International Journal of American Linguistics. No. 23, p.114-116 1957. PM5071.T239L2 [West Indiana]
-1977. Languages of the West Indies. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. PM6239T241L2 [Main Lib/West Indiana]
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1992. ‘The Caribbean Region: An Open Frontier in Anthropological Theory’ in Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 21: 19-42
Wilson, Peter J. 1973. Crab Antics: The Social Anthropology of English-Speaking Negro Societies of the Caribbean. Yale University Press, New Haven and London
Young, Virginia Heyer, 1993. Becoming West Indian: Culture, Self, and Nation in St. Vincent. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London.
History (pre, past and modern)
Allaire, Louis. 1997. ‘Agricultural societies in the continental Caribbean’ in General history of the Caribbean Vol. 1, (ed.) Jalil Sued-Badillo. London: Unesco Publishing; Basingstoke: Macmillan
Anthony, Michael. 1978. The Making of Port of Spain, 1757-1939. Port of Spain: Key Caribbean
Bates, Lindon Wallace. 1893. The path of the conquistadores, Trinidad and Venezuelan Guiana. Boston, Houghton Mifflin co.
Birbalsingh, Frank (ed.) 1989. Indenture and Exile: The Indo-Caribbean Experience. Tsar, Toronto, Canada
Bisnauth, D. A History of Religions in the Caribbean, Jamaica, Kingston Publishers, 1989.
Bolland, O. Nigel, 1977. The Formation of a Colonial Society: Belize, from Conquest to Crown Colony. The Johns Hopkins University Press,
Brereton, Bridget. 2010. ‘The historical background to the culture of violence in Trinidad and Tobago’ in issue 4 Caribbean Review of Gender Studies Available online [
Clarke, Colin G. 1986. East Indians in a West Indian Town: San Fernando, Trinidad, 1930-1970. Allen & Unwin, London.
Craig, Susan. 1988. Smiles and Blood: The Ruling Class Response to the Workers Rebellion in Trinidad and Tobago. London: New Beacon Books
Crane, Julia G. (ed.) 1987. Saba Silhouettes: Life Stories from a Caribbean Island. Vantage Press, New York.
Curet, Antonio L. 2005. Caribbean Paleodemography: Population, Culture History, and Sociopolitical Processes in Ancient Puerto Rico. University of Alabama Press
Froude, James Anthony. 1888. The English in the West Indies. New York.
Gomes, P. I. (ed.) 1985. Rural Development in the Caribbean. St. Martin's Press, New York.
Gonzalez, Nancie, L. 1988. Sojourners of the Caribbean: Ethnogenesis and Ethnohistory of the Garifuna. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago
Goodenough, Suzanne Stephanie. 1976. Race, status and residence in Port of Spain, Trinidad: a study of social and residential differentiation and change. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.
-1978. ‘Race, Status and Ecology in Port of Spain, Trinidad,’ in Caribbean Social Relations, (eds.) Colin C. Clarke. Centre for Latin-American Studies, University of Liverpool: Monograph Series No. 8
Hall, Douglas, 1989. In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750-86. Warwick University Caribbean Studies, Macmillan Publishers, London and Basingstoke.
Henry, Jeff. 2008. Under the Mas’: Resistance and Rebellion in the Trinidad Masquerade. Lexicon Trinidad Ltd.
Hulme, Peter. 1986. Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797. New York: Methuen
James, C.L.R. 1932. The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of British Government in the West Indies. Nelson, Lancashire: Coulton & Co., Ltd., Stanley Street
-1989 [1963.] The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage Books
Keegan, William F. 1992. The People Who Discovered Columbus: The Prehistory of the Bahamas. University Press of Florida: Gainesville
Ledgister, F. S. J. 2010. Only West Indians: Creole Nationalism in the British West Indies. Africa World Press: Asmara, Eritrea
Lewis, Gordon K. 1968 The Growth of the Modern West Indies. Monthly Review Press, New York.
-1987. Grenada: The Jewel Despoiled. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London.
Neptune, Harvey. 2007. Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occupation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Manley, Rachel. 1997. Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood. Ivan Randle Publishers. 1997 Kingston, Jamaica.
Mavrogordato, Olga. J. 1996. Voices in the Street. Trinidad: Paria Publishing Co. Ltd
Millette, James. 1970. The Genesis of Crown Colony Government: Trinidad, 1783-1810. Curepe, Trinidad: Moko Enterprises
Morrissey, Marietta, 1989. Slave Women in the New World: Gender Stratification in the Caribbean. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. Oldendorp, L. G. A.
Olwig, Karen Fog, 1985. Cultural Adaptation and Resistance on St. John: Three Centuries of Afro-Caribbean Life. University of Florida Press, Gainesville
Palmer, Colin, A. 2006. Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
Parry, J. H. and Sherlock, P. M. 1957. A Short History of the West Indies. McMillan and Co., Ltd., London.
Patterson, Orlando, 1967. The Sociology of Slavery. MacGibbon and Kee Ltd., London. Price, Richard.
Richardson, Bonham C., 1985. Panama Money in Barbados, 1900-1920. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville
Reddock, Rhoda. 1988. Elma Francois The NWCSA and the workers struggle for change in the Caribbean in the 1930's. New Beacon Books
Steward, Julian (ed.) 1956. The People of Puerto Rico. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
Stewart, John O. 1989. Drinkers, Drummers, and Decent Folk: Ethnographic Narratives of Village Trinidad. State Univ. of New York Press, Albany
Williams, Eric, 1970. From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492-1969. Andre Deutsch Ltd., London.
Theories and Definitions of Caribbean Society.
Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. 2001 The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective, 2nd ed. trans. James Maraniss. Durham and London: Duke University Press.