225 p., This dissertation is a cultural history of Barbados since its 1966 independence. As a pivotal point in the Transatlantic Slave Trade of the 17th and 18th centuries, one of Britain's most prized colonies well into the mid 20th century, and, since 1966, one of the most stable postcolonial nation-states in the Western hemisphere, Barbados offers an extremely important and, yet, understudied site of world history. Barbadian identity stands at a crossroads where ideals of British respectability, African cultural retentions, U.S. commodity markets, and global economic flows meet. Focusing on the rise of Barbadian popular music, performance, and visual culture this dissertation demonstrates how the unique history of Barbados has contributed to complex relations of national, gendered, and sexual identities, and how these identities are represented and interpreted on a global stage. This project examines the relation between the global pop culture market, the Barbadian artists within it, and the goals and desires of Barbadian people over the past fifty years, ultimately positing that the popular culture market is a site for postcolonial identity formation.
"The description of Negro family life in Bahia, Brazil, as given by E. F. Frazier is reviewed. The disintegration of African patterns held to have resulted from white contact, when analyzed in terms of aboriginal tribal family organization, particularly with reference to underlying sanctions, is found to exist to a very slight degree. The Afro-Bahian family manifests traits particular to it, but these are the results of accommodation to an acculturative situation, and are not a sign of demoralization." --The Author
