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Plantation society. Plantation society/economy:
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1. Theories of Caribbean society SY26B
Week 4-5
3. Plantation society Caribbean society is a macrocosm of the plantation
Plantation and legacy of slavery are the most important features of Caribbean life
Plantation as “total institution”
4. Plantation society Legacy:
Internal characteristics
Mono-crop culture
Rigid stratification
Poor cohesion
Peasant marginality
External characteristics
Dependence on external economic systems
Poverty, underdevelopment, powerlessness are result of internal characteristics of system and external element of dependence on metropolis and external financial/economic systems
5. Plantation society Legacy of plantation system (Thomas):
Link between Caribbean economic system and metropole economic system and consumption habits, plus links between local and metropole bourgeoisie created roots of modern dependency
No other cultivation allowed in sugar economies i.e. dependence on one crop for survival
Very stratified workforce, whites controlling blacks
Ideology and culture used to justify system: “white supremacy”
6. Plantation society Thomas (cont.)
Speculative approach to sugar: interested in windfalls, not improving efficiency
Production of primary exports using domestic resources; consumption of imports
No local technological advancement
7. Plantation society Beckford:
Unit of authority controlling every aspect of people’s lives
Caste system: people under system and relations between them dictated by plantation needs
Plantation’s internal dimension - social system
Plantation’s external dimension - economic system
8. Plantation society Social and political organisation in plantation economies in Third World resemble that of colonial period
Lack of real development post-colonialism
Peasant development constrained by legacy of plantation system
9. Plantation society Foregrounds legacy of slavery, racism, inequality and links that to present conditions:
Blame / responsibility assigned to the colonial powers
Not enough focus on individual agency
Too much focus on institution
Individuals can carve out niches of autonomy
People within system had own social organisation, values, beliefs
10. Pluralism (MG Smith) Based on Furnivall’s study of Far East:
people of different ethnic groups come together but
“do not combine. Each group holds its own religion, its own culture and language, its own ideas and ways…different sections of the community living side by side, but separately within the same political unit. Even in the economic sphere there is a division of labour along racial lines.”
11. Pluralism Furnivall (cont.):
plural society seems calm because under pressure of force
independence would lead to anarchy and interethnic strife in struggle for hegemony
12. Pluralism Plural society:
heterogeneity to the point of incompatibility between various sections/segments
no cultural unity; political only
societies depend on regulation of inter-section relations by one of the cultural sections in order to operate as a single unit
13. Pluralism WI “structurally peculiar”:
society dominated by a small section with European (British) culture and allegiance, in cooperation with…
an intermediate local section of ambivalent culture over…
the majority of alien African culture
14. Pluralism Example of plurality: religion
Agnosticism of British society + faith and skill in modern science; dominant value is materialism
Christianity
African-type ritual forms (spirit possession, sacrifice, obeah, witchcraft, divination…)
15. Pluralism
Emphasis on culture welcome – importance of individuals in society
Debunks myth of cultural unity, racial harmony
16. Pluralism Criticisms:
Discuss race and class as well as / instead of culture in differentiating groups in society
Society also held together by domination in various aspects of social life (customs, language…)
“Cross-sectional snapshot”: no allowance for change
17. Creole society (Kamau Brathwaite)
“In Jamaica, fixed within the dehumanising institution of slavery, were two cultures of people, having to adapt themselves to a new environment and to each other. The friction created by this confrontation was cruel, but it was also creative.”
18. Creole society
Europeans and Africans both contributed to the development of a distinctive society and culture that was neither European or African, but Creole
19. Creole society
black/brown/white, but “infinite possibilities within these distinctions, and many ways of asserting identity”
representation of creolisation: coloured as bridge between black and white, helping to integrate society
20. Creole society Creolisation is the result of:
Acculturation: absorption of one culture by another
socialisation, imitation, language, sex etc
Interculturation: more reciprocal, spontaneous process of mixture
21. Creolisation
Tendency to imitate European, but African influence still important
Uneven process, variation in degree of Euro-Creole vs Afro-Creole dominance
22. Creolisation Seen as defining feature of Caribbean society despite diversity
Allows treatment of Caribbean as a unit
Used to explain impact of globalisation/global flows
23. Creole society No attention to interaction of subordinate ethnic groups among each other
Not enough attention to conflictual relations among groups
Overemphasises unity?
24. Creolisation Jean Besson:
Creolisation as indigenisation/localisation (Mintz)
Several creole identities in West-Central Jamaica
Cultures of:
Afro-Creoles: slaves (black & coloured)
Euro-Creoles: white colonists
Meso-Creoles: free coloureds/peasants/middle class
Rooted in plantations, maroon settlements, farms, towns, transnational networks
25. Creolisation Euro-Creoles: (land, architecture)
Planters (English, Scottish)
Links established through
Marriage, kinship, friendship
Alliances against slave resistance
Slave, land sales
“Managerial elite” (plantation managers)
Sports, social clubs
Migration between UK and Jamaica
Corporate plantations
Diasporic care/renovation of heritage sites; social events
26. Underdevelopment/Dependency theory (Walter Rodney, Andre Gunder Frank)
“Europe did not ‘discover’ the underdeveloped countries…she created them.”
“Modern underdevelopment expresses a particular relationship of exploitation….All of the countries named as ‘underdeveloped’ in the world are exploited by others; and the underdevelopment with which the world is now pre-occupied is a product of capitalist, imperialist and colonialist exploitation.”
27. Underdevelopment/Dependency theory History of underdeveloped countries in the last 5 centuries = history of consequences of European expansion
International economy created underdevelopment and then hindered efforts to escape it
Metropoles develop and satellites underdevelop
Developed countries blocked or distorted the development of poor countries
28. Underdevelopment/Dependency theory Underdevelopment is caused by:
Capture of wealth
Restrictions on capacity to maximise economic potential
Structural dependence:
Dependent on economies of Euro-American countries
Dependency perpetuated/exacerbated through policies/incentives
Attempts to resist dependence result in actions by developed countries
29. Underdevelopment/Dependency theory Underdeveloped countries’ features:
Export of surplus
Low national income
Stagnation/slow rates of growth
Low levels of industrialisation
Savings exported/wasted
Poor health indicators
Low levels of basic food consumption
…etc
30. Underdevelopment/Dependency theory Assumptions of stage theories of development:
Past and present resemble earlier histories of developed countries
Development through assuming metropoles’ capital, institutions, values
“Dual society” thesis:
one affected by economic relations with outside world
the other isolated, pre-capitalist, thus underdeveloped
31. Underdevelopment/Dependency theory In fact…
Underdeveloped countries’ past and present don’t look like any stage of the developed countries’ past
Developed countries were never underdeveloped – possibly undeveloped
Underdevelopment is product of past and continuing economic and other relations between underdeveloped countries and the metropole
Economic development can only happen independently of diffusion of capital etc
Capitalist system has penetrated all of society, even the underdeveloped part
32. Underdevelopment/Dependency theory Satellites develop most when ties to metropole are weakest:
e.g. during the WW and the Depression
Most underdeveloped countries now had strongest ties to metropolis in past and were eventually abandoned by metropolis
greatest exporters of primary products, biggest sources of capital
e.g. Caribbean: had typical capitalist export economy
when market for sugar declined, abandoned by metropolis
no autonomous generation of economic development
33. Underdevelopment/Dependency theory Solutions:
Import substitution
Promotion of national industry and manufacturing for domestic consumption
Nationalisation
Prohibition of foreign investment
34. Underdevelopment/Dependency theory Criticisms
Some of poorest countries have not been subject to European influence (economic contacts/colonisation)
Solutions would lead to corruption and lack of competition