Identity and Social Formation P2

• Cultural Diversity

  • Existence of a range of cultures, multi-cultures or plurality of cultures within one society or community.
  • Groups of people share similar spaces but have unique practices and traditions.
• Cultural Diversity Cont...

  • Caribbean has a rich history of diverse cultures and influences, with a strong presence of British, Spanish, French, and Dutch since the 1500s.
  • There is the influence of the Europeans, Africans, Asians and Amerindians are evident.
  • Cultural diversity is evident in aspects such as race, ethnicity, language, dress, traditions, beliefs, music, and value.
• Cultural Diversity Cont...

  • Diverse ethnic and racial groups also practice common cultural forms.
  • African descent has different language and religion forms due to their different origins from West African tribes.
  • Cultural diversity implies that each group in a diverse society accepts and conforms to the idea of living in a communal setting with many different groups and people.
• Positive Effects of Cultural Diversity

  • Cultures have different ways of thinking and analyzing issues from a variety of perspectives. They bring different experiences and provide Caribbean society with a sound and vast knowledge base.
  • Different cultural practices can be shared and learnt about each other's culture. Development of tolerance and acceptance of different groups. People become broader minded.
• Positive Effects of Cultural Diversity Cont...

  • Peaceful co-existence of different groups within society translates into an enrichment of culture. Many traditional festivals are now shared among the various other cultures.
  • Reputation for diversity and tolerance can encourage immigration from other communities, further enrich society. Many ethnic groups migrate to the Caribbean knowing that they will be accepted, offering their skills and resources. Trinidad has a sizeable Syrian- Lebanese & Asaian groups in Jamica.
• Negative Effects of Cultural Diversity

  • Different languages spoken cause communication problems. issues of inferiority and superiority in language, food, dress and customs. Educational institutions establish syllabi that mostly focus on culture of the dominant ethnicity.
  • Individuals may become overly sensitive with the simplest expression of racial pride as attempts to racism. Difficult for white Creoles to celebrate their Europea heritage.
• Negative Effects of Cultural Diversity

  • Different cultures mix it can give birth to new cultural practices. Greater risk for erasure and ethnic minorities (subgroups). No one knows the true method of how Tanios originally made BBQ however different groups have added their own style.
  • Different and inflexible views concerning lifestyle, religion and politics that can lead to tensions, strife and conflicts. Hindu Trinidadians are usually against interracial marriages and this causes tension. One group may struggle to gain dominance and promote their culture as real and ideal.
• Ethnic and cultural Differences in the Caribbean

  • Complex racial, ethnic and cultural mix that has become a main cultural trait of Caribbean society is a result of colonization, migration (forced and voluntary) and social mobility.
  • Mainstream institutions derived from the European cultural traditions.
  • Caribbean society outwardly conform to the established Christian churches while adhering to some of their own cultural traditions.
  • Standard English (or French, Dutch or Spanish) is viewed as the lingua franca of business, government, education, the media, etc. (patios spoken for private use)
• Social Visibility

  • Individual must have a certain level of acceptance of the general values and belief systems of that space.
  • Caribbean society; a general tolerance and acceptance of the religious and cultural views of other.
  • Caribbean countries protect their citizens from discrimination and ensures human rights are respected.
  • Different ethnic communities exist side by side, with different cultures, tensions can arise.
• Social Visibility Cont....

  • Guyana and Trinidad have large East Indian population that has historically been kept apart from the Afro-Caribbean community.
  • This separateness has its roots in the plantation system when plantation owners sought to keep the communities apart in order to be able to maintain social control.
  • East Indians drove down plantation wage and at the end of their contracts they granted land (not a privilege of the ex - salves)
• Political and Economic Power

  • Ethnic and cultural differences have extended into the political arena, with elections being contested along ethnic lines, and underlying tensions have exploded into violence between the communities as each attempt to lay claim to a sense of social and civil 'ownership'.
  • Bottom of the social hierarchy however the Asians established small business - upward social mobility.
  • Trinidad accompanied by social assimilation, shedding some of their cultural traditions and adopting more 'socially acceptable' ones such as the nuclear family.
• Social Stratification

  • Caribbean society is quite paradoxical because of its diversity and hybridized but also highly stratified and divided.
  • Stratification is society's way of placing a value on individuals.
  • Important job requires rare skills and talents - placed on top and unimportant and easily replaceable jobs - at the bottom.
  • Discrimination is assessed and summed up based on general assumptions about ethnic, racial, class or religious. (assumption of all the Chinese living in Jamicia enjoy wealth)
• Social Stratification Cont...

  • Stratification in the Caribbean is also based on social perceptions and is a result of historical experiences from the colonial era and plantation system.
  • Instances where the social stratification systems of countries outside of the region emerge as features in Caribbean society (The East Indian Caste System).
• Planation Society and its Impact on Social Stratification

  • The Europeans established the plantation system - unit of production.
  • Organized social system that pervaded all aspects of social, cultural, economic and political life.
  • Plantation was the institution which played a significant role in the development of the caribbean culture.
  • Planation was geared to large - scale monoculture - sugar, tobacco, coffee - exported to metropole.
  • Plantations were self - sufficient communities.
• Plantation Theory

  • Argues that the legacy of the plantation system lived in Caribbean society even after independence.
  • Closed social system with power and wealth concentrated among the whites occupying the upper strata and the majority occupying the lower strata and the black impoverished laborers.
  • Pervasiveness of plantation attitudes and trends in modern Caribbean society, such as a general taste for foreign goods and a perception of their superiority derived from the plantation’s reliance on imports.
• Plantation Society and its Impact on Social Stratification Cont...

  • Perception of superiority extended to foreign culture, values, norms, beliefs and institutions, particularly those of the metropole.
  • Independence was still dominated by decision-makers from outside the system and this continues with today’s dominance by multinational corporations that are headquartered in the developed world.
• Plantation Society Under Slavery

  • No social mobility
  • Closed system - ascribed social status was determined by race and color.
  • Wealthy white plantation owners of European origin held power, Africans had no rights and were deemed the property of the owners.
• Plantation Society After Emancipation

  • Social stratification remained rigidly based on race, color and wealth until well into the 20th century.
  • Power and wealth remained in the hands of the white few while the majority remained powerless and poor.
  • Acquisition of education and wealth, once their contract had ended, allowed members to rise through the social strata (T&T, Guyana)
  • Number of blacks and mulattoes move up, acquired wealth, voting rights and became members of the local assembly.
• Plantation Society After Emancipation Cont...

  • Jamaican assembly member, George Gordon involved in the Morant Bay Rebellion.
  • Today's Caribbean society is still largely based on race and wealth.
  • Engrained that whites are usually the owners of the means of production and historically that was the group that controlled the government.
  • Rights were not extended to the poorer ranks of society until universal adult suffrage in 1944 onwards.
  • automatically place them at the upper end of the social hierarchy regardless of their actual wealth or any other attribute.
• Plantation Society After Emancipation Cont...

  • Despite any improvements in status through the acquisition of wealth and/or education, can be said to be laid at the door of their history of oppression and slavery.
  • Independence - European descents no longer viewed as superior, racial discrimination is not promoted, social mobility is achievable, and merit is an important factor rather than color and ethnicity.
  • Ethnic tensions that continue to exist in some territories and the factors of race, color and wealth still play a significant role in contemporary societies.
• Role of Education as a Basis for New Class Formation and Upward Mobility

  • Level of education can determine your ability to acquire wealth.
  • Emancipation that education started to become an important factor in social mobility.
  • Plantocracy did not think it was wise to broaden the outlook of laborers as they wanted them to focus on their manual tasks.
• Role of Education as a Basis for New Class Formation and upward Mobility

  • Slow but gradual access to secondary education but largely to males from the lower classes to achieve upward social mobility (law, medicine, engineer, teaching)
  • Children of the richer members of the plantocracy were either educated at home or in the metropole, basic elementary education was deemed sufficient for the majority.
  • Causing the view of blacks as poor, menial laborers to change to a more positive image. (capable in all areas as other ethnic and racial groups)
• Concepts

  • Intelligentsia - enjoyed education to a high level and form an intellectual elite rather than one based on socio – economic power and wealth.
  • Plantocracy - Ruling class, political order or government composed of or dominated by plantation owners. Describe the poltical, social and economies power wielded by plantation owners and other wealthy whites during the 17th - 19th century.
  • Mulatto - person of mixed African and European ancestry. Result of sexual relations between white slave owners and female slaves.
• Creolization

  • A term specific to the Caribbean, used to describe a kind of fusion of ideas, beliefs, culture, customs and traditions, and even people, resulting from hybridization.
  • Creole forms can appear to be very similar to or different from the original, but they will always differ in essence, nature and context.
• Hybridization

  • The deliberate or unintentional development of new cultural forms out of the integration of cultures; in the case of the Caribbean, imported through the migration of the Amerindians, Europeans, Africans and Asians – syncretism.
  • Caribbean societies are mostly characterized by a high degree of hybridization and creolization.
• Cultural Change in The Caribbean

  • Acculturation - merging of cultures caused by living in a shared community over time. (involves the dominance of one culture over other(s)).
  • Enculturation - socialization whereby one learns and absorbs one’s own culture or becomes part of another culture.
  • Interculturation - mixing of cultures between groups living together that celebrates the interaction between individuals of different ethnicities, religions and cultural practices.
• Cultural Change in the Caribbean

  • Assimilation - dominant culture is accepted by different groups in society.
  • Plural society - existence of separate and distinct ethnic or racial communities within a society.
  • Creolization/ hybridization is a feature of Caribbean society. Various nationalities culture of the slavery/ indentureship era altered over time to become creolized and hybrid.
  • Mestizo and dougla to culinary practices, music, literature, art, folklore and language. They all retain a hint to the west Indian environment.
• Edward Kamau Braithwaite on Creolization

  • Response of blacks and whites to their colonial situation and disposition.
  • Cultures emerged in response to the situation that faced migrant groups: whites were the masters and other groups were subservient.
  • Caribbean slave society to conform and aspire to Eurocentric views.
  • From the base of the creolization of Caribbean society as blacks would now mix.
  • Acculturation that led to creolization among blacks, slaves were given European names and taught a common language (conditioned and socialized to view the white culture as superior_
• Edward Kamau Braithwaite on Creolization Cont...

  • All cultural forms within society are mixed to differing degrees and in complex endless ways to create something new and unique.
  • Enculturation - in which this creolized culture is passed on from generation to generation while acculturation continues to feature as an ongoing means of enriching Creole culture through non-Caribbean influences.
• Edward Kamau Braithwaite on Creolization Cont...

  • Creolization is an ongoing process and that the culture of the ‘Euro-Creole elite’ remained dominant in the mix.
  • Continuation of the creolization process to ultimately produce ‘a new parochial wholeness, a difficult but possible Creole authenticity’.
• Role of Racial Admixture and Colour in the Formation of Caribbean Society and Culture

  • Caribbean society and culture have formed out of waves of migrations and the cultural practices these different peoples.
  • Racial mixing or miscegenation is a part of this process.
  • Development of an Arawak-based language among the Caribs, points to the mixing of indigenous ethnic groups; result in the capture of Tiano women.
• Role of Racial Admixture and Colour in the Formation of Caribbean Society and Culture Cont....

  • Racial mixing between Amerindians and Europeans and the mixing of Europeans and Africans this continued for over 300 years through the period of slavery and beyond.
  • East Indians, Chinese, Indonesians and others brought more to the potential mix - new forms of cultural hybridization.
  • Not only brought about cultural change and the emergence of new cultures but also resulted in a distinctive feature of Caribbean society.
• Role of Racial Admixture and Colour in the Formation of Caribbean Society and Culture Cont...

  • Color carried social significance not only for the free population, where people of mixed race filled the space below the whites, but also among the slaves themselves as a result of the ‘better’ jobs being given to those with lighter skin color - Increased social mobility.
• Racial Intermixing - Terms That Emerged

  • Mulatoo - Caribbean people of mixed-race background.
  • Mestizo - Latin America to describe people of mixed European (originally Spanish) and Amerindian ancestry.
  • Garifuna/ Black Caribs - African and Amerindian descent also refer to mixed people in St. Vincent.
  • Dougla - historically used by people in Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. Offspring on an East Indian indentured laborer and an African enslaved or freed.
• Erasure, Retention and Renewal of Cultural Practices

  • Cultural change is tied to 3 main practices - cultural retention, cultural renewal and cultural erasure.
  • Hybridizations and creolization need to be understood in the context of these processes.
  • Social institutions determine the aspects of our culture to be renewed, erased of merged.
  • For a hybridized mix, or retained to ensure the continuation and growth of the cultural and physical space we call society.
• Cultural Retention

  The preservation of an aspect of culture does not need to survive in its original or intact form. Example: indigenous culture, such as elements of language, survive in various parts of the Caribbean. Recipes and methods used by the Tainos have been eroded and altered over time and replaced by newer versions (BBQ and utilization of herbs and spices)  
• Cultural Renewal

  The return to, or rediscovery, and refreshing of elements of cultures that have been forgotten, suppressed or ignored. Example: the resurgence on African culture and African legacy as well as Africa itself. A visual element that was had repolarization was an African dress and the learning of the  language.
• Cultural Erasure 


  Dying out of cultural practices. argued that a culture in its entirety can never be completely erased because of the process of hybridization that naturally occurs to varying degrees when cultures coexist. Thus, unidentifiable vestiges of a culture may survive unbeknownst to those who practice them.