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

Culture on the Edges: Caribbean Creolization in Historical Context

Designations used by colonizers to describe colonized populations emerge through a multi-layered process that is affected by local social relations, by the colonizers' sociocultural outlook, by imperial tensions and by the metropolitan context. This paper describes the emergence of such a designation, the centurylong process by which cultivators in Dominica came to be called “peasants” by British colonists. Proponents and opponents alike saw in the word a metaphor for the acknowledgment of new relations of production that gave cultivators firmer control of the labor process.[Naming, colonialist discourse, British colonialism, peasantry, Dominica, Caribbean]

discourses of rule and the acknowledgment of the peasantry in Dominica, W.I., 1838–1928

This thesis examines the social structure of the Caribbean island of Tobago between 1838, the year of the Emancipation of the slaves, and 1900, the year after Tobago was united to Trinidad to form the Colony of Trinidad and Tobago. One chapter gives the background to this period, by analysing the major social groupings, cleavages and conflicts of the slavery era, particularly of the years just prior to the Emancipation. The study has two main objectives. Firstly, it describes and analyses the changing class/colour configuration of Tobago, and the way in which gender was constitutive of the structuring of access to land, occupations and social mobility. This is done both on the period before the collapse of the sugar economy in the 1880s and on the restructuring of the society after 1884. Secondly, this case study in historical sociology is placed within the framework of the theoretical literature on the sociology of development. It seeks to explain the acute economic crisis which Tobago underwent in the 1880s, which led to the collapse of both its sugar economy and its viability as a separate government. Within the matrix of Tobago's dependence in the global capitalist system, the study shows the critical explanatory factors to be the source and deployment of capital, the social structure of the island, and the outcomes of intra- and inter-class struggles. The analysis is multi-faceted, using a variety of sources to understand the demographic, political, economic and social dimensions of societal structure and change. Since metayage (sharecropping) was the dominant relationship of production after 1848, theories on metayage are examined and related to the Tobago evidence. The Caribbean debate on the 'flight from the estates' after Emancipation is also considered, and new, fruitful lines of analysis are explored. Directions for future research, particularly on Grenada, are given.

The evolution of society in Tobago, 1838 to 1900

Archaeological studies of plantations need to consider the scale of the historical circumstances which shape locally circumscribed Creole processes. These circumstances range from broad generalizations down to factors operating only at the local level of the individual estate. Recent excavations at Estate Lower Bethlehem, St. Croix, Virgin Islands, have recovered an artifact assemblage from a laborer village dating from the mid-eighteenth century to the first quarter of the nineteenth century, which was situated adjacent to a previously unrecorded cemetery and a large tamarind tree. This assemblage illustrates the importance of a multiscalar approach to Creolization in two ways: an analysis of the distribution of vessel forms of European pottery and “Afro-Cruzan” earthenwares; and the identification of fragments of lead-glazed slip-decorated redware pottery produced by Moravians.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Papers

Labour and Emancipation in Dominica: Contribution to a Debate