Course: Caribbean Culture

Course: Caribbean Culture (SY36C)

Assignment: Graded Discussion 3- Analyze the various kinship patterns in your country and say how they affect the overall culture of the people and region.

Kinship patterns in the Caribbean, although showing some consistency, vary from society to society. Jamaica is rich in cultural history and anthropology. The family life of Jamaicans has unique marriage, settlement and kinship patterns. Bauer and Thompson characterize Jamaican family relations as pliable networks of relations "empowered by their pragmatism and informality." This, they suggest, inheres in Jamaican kinship being "based on shared experience," not on "formal blood relationships" The relationship between members of a household and between the household and the wider community construct the kinship patterns that are indigenous to a particular community with some links to the country as a whole. According to Smith (1990) definitions of kinship ties and the strength of the ties will also vary from one part of the region to another. Kinship patterns are influenced by class, race and colour. Although these socially derived concepts bear some similarities and configuration in different parts of the region, the resulting kinship patterns do not conform to this uniformity. Kinship is a fundamental component of human sociality that affects economic, political and reproductive behaviour, especially in small-scale societies, characteristic of our evolutionary history (Brown, 1991). In the Jamaica and by extension the Caribbean "Kinship bonds are not only divided along lines of consanguenal and affinal relations, but also along residency lines. Relatives who share the same ‘yard' or geographic space may have similar meanings of kinship bonds and also share similar kinship patterns".

The Caribbean is exemplified by a variety of cultures, which translates into various kinship patterns. History has structured the course of cultural integration- colonialism, slavery, indentureship- have all contributed to the range of family forms that presently exist in the Caribbean. Smith (1990) posits that Caribbean families are considered to be characterized by loosely held patterns of family relations while maintaining strong kinship ties. In Jamaica, the bond of kinship is very strong and has endured over many generations. Bauer and Thompson characterize Jamaican family relations as pliable networks of relations "empowered by their pragmatism and informality." This, they suggest, inheres in Jamaican kinship being "based on shared experience," not on "formal blood relationships" (p. 4). Regardless of the ethnocentric efforts by European slave owners to dismantle slave families during slavery, kinship ties that ultimately developed among ex-slave families remained strong in the Caribbean. The community of inhabitants that materialized among the ex-slaves contributed to this strength of the bond of kinship. Different ethnic groups have contributed to the various kinship patterns that exist in Jamaica and by extension the Caribbean region. The four main ethnic groups that have been most influential on the kinship patterns found in the region are African, East Indian, European and Chinese.

Approximately 80 - 90 percent of families in the Caribbean are from an African background, and came as slaves to the region. Most of them settled in Jamaica, Barbados, and other Caribbean islands. Almost half of the population in both Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana is of African descent (Barrow 1996). The Afro-Caribbean family has distinctive mating and childrearing patterns and bear the following characteristics: Matrifocality (Clarke 1957, Frazier 1939 & Herskovits, 1964); Common-Law or Visiting Conjugal relations (Clarke 1957); Male Marginality (Herskovits, 1964); and Extended (Frazier 1939 & Herskovits, 1964).

Male marginality is a characteristic of many African Caribbean families. Errol Miller, Professor of Teacher Education at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, coined the terms ‘male marginalization' and ‘men at risk', in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In his book "Men at Risk" he stated: "The description of Caribbean societies points to lower-strata men's marginal positions in the family, role reversal in a small but increasing number of households, boys' declining participation and performance in the educational system, the greater prospect of men inheriting their fathers' position in the social structure, the decline in the proportions of men in the highest-paying and most prestigious occupations and the decrease in men's earning power relative to women's especially in white collar occupations" (Miller, 1991:97). A study conducted with students from the University of the West Indies suggested that Caribbean