The encounter between anthropological theory and any region of the globe says as much about anthropology as it does about that region. Caribbean anthropology is a case in point. This region where boundaries are notoriously fuzzy has long been the open frontier of cultural anthropology: neither center nor periphery, but a sort of no man's land where pioneers get lost, where some stop overnight on their way to greater opportunities, and where yet others manage to create their own "new" world amidst First-World indifference. Accordingly, the object of this essay is dual: I write here about the Caribbean as viewed by anthropologists, but also about anthropology as viewed from the Caribbean. The review dwells on the coincidence between some zones of weakness in anthropological theory and areas of concern for Caribbeanists. I claim neither exhaustiveness nor statistical representativeness in dealing with the literature, and my boundaries are both arbitrary and fuzzy. I emphasize a present that encompasses most of the last 20 years, but my framework-not to mention the absence of any Caribbean focus in previous issues of this seriesjustifies forays into more distant pasts. I concentrate on works available in English, which happens to be the predominant language of Caribbean ethnology; but this emphasis here is no less arbitrary. More importantly, since I am addressing outsiders and insiders alike, I flatten some rough edges and over-

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2155979

The Caribbean Region: An Open Frontier in Anthropological Theory

(1991). Une petite guinee: Provision ground and plantation in martinique, 1830–1848. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 12, The Slaves' Economy: Independent Production by Slaves in the Americas, pp. 68-91.

Une petite guinée: Provision ground and plantation in martinique, 1830–1848

Ce travail propose une analyse comparee portant sur la construction d’Haiti en tant queprobleme public en Jamaique et en Guadeloupe au cours des annees 2000. Un premierfacteur de politisation observe dans ces deux territoires repose sur l’alterisation desHaitiens par le biais de normes heritees de l’ideologie raciale coloniale et se traduit pard’importantes mobilisations contre les immigres haitiens. Un deuxieme typed’intervention dans le champ politique releve au contraire de pratiques d’opposition audiscours colonial et tend a presenter la premiere Republique noire comme le symboled’une appartenance commune forgee dans la lutte contre l’hegemonie occidentale. Cetteconflictualite identitaire est resituee a l’aune du fond imaginaire racialise herite de lasociete de plantation et au croisement des modeles institutionnels mis en oeuvre apres ladecolonisation en Jamaique et en Guadeloupe. En retracant la trajectoire du « problemehaitien », l’enquete engage une reflexion sur la production du politique dans l’espacecaribeen. Elle s’attache a montrer en quoi les antagonismes socio-raciaux exprimes dansles societes a fondement esclavagiste informent et travaillent l’action pol itique qui yprend place. La premiere partie revient sur l’invention de la figure racisee du « barbarehaitien » dans l’espace Atlantique et son usage par les puissances occidentales en tantqu’outil de legitimation de l’ordre colonial en Jamaique et en Guadeloupe. La deuxiemepartie s’interesse a la maniere dont ces stereotypes raciaux sont reactives dans les deuxterritoires durant les annees 2000 a travers la politisation de l’immigration haitienne etsa mise a l’agenda aupres des pouvoirs publics. En troisieme lieu, les interactions quifaconnent les enonces officiels du « probleme haitien » sont saisies au prisme desinstruments de l’action publique mis en place afin de reguler, controler et mettre al’ecart les corps haitiens. Cette recherche invite a aborder, par le biais de l’exemplecaribeen, les fondements de l’articulation entre identites raciales, production dupolitique, pratiques du pouvoir et modes de gouvernementalite. Elle met en evidence lalongevite des schemes de pensee issus de la domination coloniale, tout en soulignant lacapacite des acteurs a en renegocier le contenu a travers le conflit politique.

Identités raciales et production du politique : la construction d'Haïti en tant que problème public dans l'imaginaire social caribéen : études comparées sur la Jamaique et la Guadeloupe

The “slave village” occupies an important place in New World plantation archaeology, though one in which the variation of experience and the internal social organization have yet to be thoroughly addressed. Through archaeological investigation, this dissertation explores the social dynamics and institutions created by enslaved people to negotiate their domestic circumstances. In many plantation settings, enslaved people lived in dedicated villages or the rear-yards of plantation houses. Their domestic boundaries were prescribed, but the life they created within those boundaries was by and large a product of their own sense of sociability, domesticity, and ingenuity. The ways in which people created, divided, and decided on the everyday tasks of life, and positioned themselves in relation to others, reveals much about the domestic strategies they created to navigate and negotiate the conditions of enslavement. I develop this research through an archaeological investigation of three related sites in northern Jamaica. Each site represents domestic spaces of enslaved people tied to Good Hope estate, a 2000-acre sugar plantation that operated from the mid 18th through the early 19th century. Upwards of 500 enslaved people labored at Good Hope at any one time, living between these three separate sites. While most of the enslaved labor force lived in a central primary village, the second smaller village and the urban quarters housed the plantation’s enslaved domestic servants. Archaeological investigation of these three sites provided the data necessary to understand enslaved domestic life as it concerns household organization, consumer choices, the implications of labor roles, physical and social mobility, and the degree to which the plantation’s laboring population organized itself into a distinct enslaved community. This pursuit of community, as a social process, developed and maintained through everyday dwelling, guides this research. By revealing the “enslaved community” as constrained from the outside, though socially constituted from within, this dissertation develops methods, measures, and socio-cultural insight into how forcefully aggregated populations develop social institutions to navigate the often horrific conditions imposed from the outside. Together, this study demonstrates how slavery was an attempt to dehumanize, but failed in that project. Innovative and strategic measures allowed a systematically exploited group of people to reclaim humanity through a social world carved out by and for enslaved people in the dwelling space of the plantation regime.

The Archaeology of Enslavement in Plantation Jamaica: A Study of Community Dynamics among The Enslaved People of Good Hope Estate, 1775-1838

This article is concerned with the construction of ancestry in Jamaica. Based upon a comparison of burial tombs in inalienable, ‘ancestral’ family land as well as in churchyards and cemeteries, I explore how the painted, polished or embellished cement structures mediate the relationship between people and land, a primary locus of identity in the Caribbean. Examining the ways in which the tombs are decorated and augmented, I argue that the creation, design and redesign of the tomb and its facade are important for the declaration of personhood as well as the positioning of the individual within the family. However, ancestral status is ultimately realized through the neglect and disintegration of these surfaces, the exposed grey concrete materially reuniting the deceased with the land.

A Pilgrimage Home: Tombs, Burial and Belonging in Jamaica

(1984). Land tenure in the free villages of Trelawny, Jamaica: A case study in the Caribbean peasant response to emancipation. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 3-23.

Jean Besson

Papers

Land tenure in the free villages of Trelawny, Jamaica: A case study in the Caribbean peasant response to emancipation