Small Islands, Large Questions: Society, Culture and Resistance in the Post-Emancipation Caribbean by Karen Fog Olwig

Author:Karen Fog Olwig [Olwig, Karen Fog]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Caribbean & West Indies, General
ISBN: 9780714642253
Google: 0fQcGIelwqgC
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 174563
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1995-01-15T13:48:51+00:00

Cultural Complexity after Freedom: Nevis and Beyond

KAREN FOG OLWIG

Much of the research on the post-emancipation Caribbean has been concerned with the strategies adopted by the freed as they sought to carve out a life of their own after the abolition of slavery. Two main avenues toward freedom are often delineated; both avenues involve a withdrawal from the plantations, but each applies radically different means toward this end. One route led to the establishment of free villages on the home island but outside the plantation sphere, whereas the other was oriented toward emigration to areas of greater economic and social opportunities, usually outside the island society. These two approaches have led some scholars to view African-Caribbean culture as rooted in peasant-like communities developing at the margins of the plantations, and others to emphasize the strong tradition for mobility and migration in African-Caribbean culture.

Inspired by some of the recent theories of cultural complexity, I shall suggest that the quest for freedom in post-emancipation Nevis was not unidirectional, in the sense that the emancipated put into social practice a specific set of shared cultural values developed during slavery. By the time of emancipation West Indian societies had long been characterized by several different ‘cultural traditions’, which influenced the way in which freedom was perceived and enacted in social life. Aspects of Caribbean cultural discourse and social practice which appear contradictory and hence difficult to interpret, if they are viewed within a conceptual framework of a single integrated, coherent cultural entity, can be subjected to analysis and interpretation, if they are examined in the light of the complex cultural processes that have characterized the island society through time. The patterns of rooting and mobility, which have been documented to be strategies of great significance during the post-emancipation period, reflect attempts to come to terms with the cultural complexity that has characterized Caribbean societies before and after emancipation.

In this article I shall analyse the cultural processes that characterized Nevis during the post-emancipation era. I shall thereby demonstrate that cultural complexity is not a recent phenomenon associated with the modern world of transnational relations but is part of the global systems of European expansion which have characterized the world for many centuries. The cultural complexity that is often thought to be the modern antithesis of tradition is a traditional, fundamental, dimension of life in the Caribbean.

APPROACHES TO THE POST-EMANCIPATION CARIBBEAN

The emancipated found it difficult to harvest the fruits of freedom within the plantocratic and patriarchal plantation systems (Hall 1971; Frucht 1975–76; Bolland 1981; Rodney 1981a; Olwig 1985, 1993), and many therefore opted to leave the plantations where they had been slaves. They adopted essentially two routes in pursuit of freedom. The first involved acquiring land and settling as small farmers in free villages outside the plantations (Marshall 1968; Mintz 1974, 1985; Besson 1984; Olwig 1985; Carnegie 1987; Trouillot 1989). The second concerned migration in order to take advantage of opportunities outside the sphere of influence of the plantation system, either by moving to urban areas or by leaving the local colonial society entirely (Patterson 1978; Thomas-Hope 1978; Richardson 1983).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.