Caribbean Journeys , livre ebook
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2007
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331
pages
English
Ebooks
2007
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Publié par
Date de parution
12 juin 2007
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9780822389859
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
19 Mo
Caribbean Journeys is an ethnographic analysis of the cultural meaning of migration and home in three families of West Indian background that are now dispersed throughout the Caribbean, North America, and Great Britain. Moving migration studies beyond its current focus on sending and receiving societies, Karen Fog Olwig makes migratory family networks the locus of her analysis. For the people whose lives she traces, being "Caribbean" is not necessarily rooted in ongoing visits to their countries of origin, or in ethnic communities in the receiving countries, but rather in family narratives and the maintenance of family networks across vast geographical expanses.The migratory journeys of the families in this study began more than sixty years ago, when individuals in the three families left home in a British colonial town in Jamaica, a French Creole rural community in Dominica, and an African-Caribbean village of small farmers on Nevis. Olwig follows the three family networks forward in time, interviewing family members living under highly varied social and economic circumstances in locations ranging from California to Barbados, Nova Scotia to Florida, and New Jersey to England. Through her conversations with several generations of these far-flung families, she gives insight into each family's educational, occupational, and socioeconomic trajectories. Olwig contends that terms such as "Caribbean diaspora" wrongly assume a culturally homogeneous homeland. As she demonstrates in Caribbean Journeys, anthropologists who want a nuanced understanding of how migrants and their descendants perceive their origins and identities must focus on interpersonal relations and intimate spheres as well as on collectivities and public expressions of belonging.
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Publié par
Date de parution
12 juin 2007
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9780822389859
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
19 Mo
C A R I B B E A N J O U R N E Y S
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .J O U R N E Y SC A R I B B E A N
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .O F E T H N O G R A P H Y A N H O M EA N D M I G R A T I O N
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .O L W I GK A R E N F O G
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .D u k e P r e s sU n i v e r s i t y
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .a n d L o n d o n 2 0 0 7D u r h a m
∫2007 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Katy Clove Typeset in Bembo by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.
C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
P A R T O N E : A J A M A I C A N F A M I LY
1.Learning to Mix in Society. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.Seeking Improvement beyond Jamaica. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
P A R T T W O : A D O M I N I C A N F A M I LY
3.The Village Origins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.In Pursuit of a Proper Livelihood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
P A R T T H R E E : A N E V I S I A N F A M I LY
5.A Family Home. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.To Better Our Condition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
P A R T F O U R : T H E F A M I LY L E G A C I E S
7.The First Generation:Migrating for Improvement of Self and the Family. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.Generational Perspectives: Negotiating Identities and Origins. . . . . . . . . . .
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9.Relating Regional, Family, and Individual Histories of Migration. . . . . . .
Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
This study owes its greatest debt of thanks to the approximately 150 individ-uals in three family networks of Caribbean origins who made it possible. Their contributions ranged from participating in life-story interviews to extending generous hospitality in their homes, showing me around in their local communities, helping make contacts with other relatives included in the study, and reading and commenting on earlier writings. I am deeply grateful for their help, which not only enabled me to carry out the study, but also made the research process a pleasure. I have tried to safeguard individuals’ anonymity by changing personal names as well as certain place names, just as I have attempted to respect people’s sense of privacy by omitting many details concerning personal relationships. I hope that the family narratives in this book, built up around individuals’ life stories, will resonate with their experi-ences and that my analysis will o√er them an interesting perspective on their lives, even if they probably will not agree with it entirely. Most of all, I hope that they will think that I have done justice to the trust they showed me by sharing their life stories with me. The book grew out of my research project ‘‘Constructing Lives in the Global Ecumene: A Study of West Indian Life Stories,’’ which was part of a larger research project, ‘‘Livelihood, Identity and Organisation in Situations of Instability,’’ funded by the Danish Council for Development Research. The larger project was a collaborative venture between the Center for De-velopment Research (now part of the Danish Institute of International Stud-ies), Roskilde University, and the University of Copenhagen and took place
viii. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Acknowledgments
in 1996–2000. My project was based on life-story interviews with individuals in three extended family networks of Caribbean origins that had become dispersed through migration to North America, Great Britain, and the Ca-ribbean. This research led to a number of articles in international edited volumes and journals that focused on di√erent aspects of the Caribbean background and migration experiences of these dispersed family networks (see Olwig 1999a, 1999b, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2005). This volume is informed by these preliminary and partial works but o√ers a much more comprehensive, ethnographically rich, and complex analysis. I acknowledge the constructive critique o√ered especially in the early stages of the work by members of the research group who formed the core in the larger research project of which this project was part. I also thank the many colleagues who discussed various aspects of the research with me, giving helpful comments and advice at di√erent stages of the work. They include Jean Besson, Mary Chamberlain, Nancy Foner, Carla Freeman, Akhil Gupta, Lennox Honychurch, Antonio Lauria, Peggy Levitt, David and Mary Alice Lowenthal, Karsten Pærregaard, Dwaine Plazza, Connie Sutton, and Mary Waters, as well as the many participants at conferences and semi-nars in Denmark and abroad where I have presented papers on my work. I thank in particular Vered Amit, Kenneth Olwig, Nina Glick Schiller, and the two anonymous readers at Duke University Press, who read the manuscript and gave valuable critique that much improved the final product—though I am, of course, entirely responsible for its shortcomings. I also owe a great debt of thanks to Ken Wissoker at Duke University Press for believing in the book project and making it possible for me to do the necessary revisions. The Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, o√ered an academic home where I was able to present and discuss my research at lec-tures, seminars, and conferences, as well as in more informal discussions where I received many insightful comments. I thank especially Michael Whyte who, as chairperson during the late 1990s, allowed me to take breaks from the ordinary semester work to travel on intermittent fieldwork during the four years in which field research took place, and Vibeke Ste√en who, as chairperson during the early 2000s, gave me a semester’s leave, thus enabling me to write a good part of the monograph. I also thank the Norwegian Center of Child Research for giving me a friendly and helpful academic base in Trondheim, Norway, from 1998 to 2001.
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Finally, I thank Kenneth and Mette for bearing with my many periods of absence from home and for accompanying me enthusiastically on trips to United States, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Dominica, and Great Britain. They helped make this a fun project and were living proof that family rela-tions can be resilient and supportive, and can serve as an important source of belonging in a globalized world.
