Review of Peter J. Wilson's Crab Antics: The Social Anthropology of English-Speaking Negro Societies of the Caribbean (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1973)
Using theories of performance geography, the author considers how black music and dance, especially the slave ship dance Limbo, create an urban counter-culture that evokes historic transcultural experiences of the Middle Passage, space, and modernity. Social theories of scholars including Michel Foucault, Paul Gilroy, and Catherine Nash are considered. Other topics include cultural geography, the Maroons of Jamaica, and dance customs of Trinidad. Interrelationships between performances at the Dancehall in Kingston, Jamaica, Blues music, and South African Kwaito music are explored.
Examines the lifestyles and entrepreneurial skills of Karen Theresa Curtis as a businesswoman managing her own huskers. While the free colored men were protesting their lack of civil rights, the women engaged in commerce were protected by no rights and were experiencing their own problems in defending their property.
A qualitative study was conducted to characterize gay men in Barbados, their HIV risk, and the impact of stigma on their lives. The 2 main groups of gay men (“bougies” and “ghetto”) reflect social class and level of “outness” in broader society. Homophobia, stigma, and buggery (sodomy) laws increase their HIV vulnerability. The need for anti-discrimination legislation and tools for self-development were identified for gay men to realize their strengths, develop their self-worth, and protect themselves from HIV.
Examines racial politics in Brazil by analyzing the city of Salvador da Bahia's cultural policies over time and their relationship to national ideology and racial identity in Brazil more generally. It argues that the re-Africanization of Salvador's Carnival and its historical center, the Pelourinho, although initially products of the mobilization of Afro-Bahians themselves, have become institutionalized and ironically serve today as testaments to Brazil's diversity, tolerance, and integration.
Special journal issue: Communicating Pan-Africanism: Caribbean leadership and global impact, While kinship and political structures could not be transferred from Africa to the Caribbean under the conditions of forced migration, kinetic expressiveness, artistic skills and mental epistemologies were retained. These retentions covered domains such as religious ideas, musical instrumentation and morphology, dance choreography, culinary forms, hair and dress aesthetics, language syntax, economic activity and cooperation.
