Re-engineering indigeneity : cultural brokerage, the political economy of tradition, and the Santa Rosa Carib comunity of Arima, Trinidad & Tobago.
Date
2002
Authors
Forte, Maximilian C.
Editors
Advisors
Roberts, Michael
Murray, David
Gray, John
Murray, David
Gray, John
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Thesis
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Abstract
In the social sciences, conventional depictions of the post-Conquest cultural development of the Caribbean arc founded upon the absence of 'the indigenous'. However, groups such as the Santa Rosa Carib Community (SRCC) in the Borough of Arima, Trinidad, have begun to assert their identity and the 'traditions' that they posit as emblematic of an 'Amerindian heritage'. Furthermore, groups such as the SRCC have also received the recognition and support of the state, the attention of the national media, and they have increasingly acquired a privileged place in nationalist discourses and local historical narratives. The questions that are addressed in this project are thus: (1) Why does 'Carib' still exist as a category and as an available identity in Trinidad? (2) What were, and what are, the conditions that make possible the reproduction of 'Carib' as an identity and as a historical canon? (3) What value does Carib hold, to whom, when, why? Indigeneity in Trinidad and Tobago is treated in this project as both a problem and as a 'presence'. The case of the SRCC is analyzed, not as a group reviving or defining itself as a bounded unit in relative isolation, but as a demonstration of the production of indigeneity in terms of multilaterality, that is, as a multiple vesting of interests and as a joint venture between various cultural brokers and institutions, acting via established social conventions and in dialogue with dominant historical narratives. Moreover, this case manifests the engagement of multiple processes of reinterpreting, reinventing, and articulating 'tradition' and the 'Carib'. I summarise this phenomenon as the re-engineering of indigeneity, standing at the intersection of three analytical axes: structure-agency, past-present, and local-global. I focus on the role of cultural brokers, working within a context constituted by the political economy of tradition, i.e.: (1) the politics and economics of associating certain values with particular cultural representations pertaining to groups of individuals marked as specific 'peoples'; and, (2) legislated recognition and rewards for groups engaged in competitive cultural display. The results of these processes serve as an entry point for critically examining the 'vacuum of indigeneity' perspectives that have neglected the colonial canonisation of the 'Carib', the nationalist reinterpretation of the symbolic archetype of the 'Carib', and current 'Carib revival'.
School/Discipline
Dept. of Anthropology
Dissertation Note
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Anthropology, 2002
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