"In this article, I revisit debates about so-called matrifocal societies as a way to critique the centrality of heteronormative marriage and family in anthropology. Using gender as a tool of analysis, I argue that anthropologists have relied on the trope of the dominant heterosexual man, what I call the "Patriarchal Man," to create and sustain concepts of "marriage" and "family." By examining the discourse on matrifocality in studies of Afro-Caribbean and Minangkabau households, I show how it is the "missing man," the dominant heterosexual man, who is the key to the construction and perpetuation of the matrifocal concept and, by extension, the motor of marriage, family, and kinship. This fixity on the dominant heterosexual man has led anthropologists to misrecognize other forms of relatedness as less than or weaker than heteronormative marriage. I suggest that, rather than positing a foundational model for human sociality, intimacy, or relatedness, researchers look for webs of meaningful relationships in their historical and social specificity." (author)
Borneman praises Evelyn Blackwood for using ethnographic evidence from Indonesia and the Caribbean to enter into debates on matrifocality and marriage. Borenman is less convinced, however, about the significance or her general advocacy claim about gender
"After an introduction providing biographical details and some historical context for the Caribbean in the period 1811–1830, the article looks in detail at what have been seen to be [MacGregor's] successes and failures in the Caribbean region. It asks to what extent questions of ethnicity or masculinity have affected the way contemporaries and historians viewed MacGregor and his actions." (IngentaConnect Blog)
The aim of this research article is to investigate how pupils from Black Caribbean backgrounds are helped to achieve high standards in British schools and to identify a number of significant common themes for success in raising the achievement
"Focuses on certain calypsos in the decades leading up to Trinidad’s independence in 1962 in which the calypsonian’s sense of his own freedom is manifested in calypsos that focus on the larger struggle for freedom and autonomy for his society. In these calypsos, there is a subversion of the status quo, a move from a respectful deference to colonial rule to a new postcolonial consciousness. These calypsos focus on changing attitudes toward the British Royal Family, a growing allegiance to a homeland other than Mother England and the major events during the Fifties as plans for a West Indian Federation develop and collapse." (author)
