Article is concerned with the relations of Afro-Latin Americans to modes of production (slavery, capitalism, socialism), economic institutions (the plantation, transnational corporations), economic development models, transnational relations, political systems, institutions, behavior, group and class relations (including class struggle), social mobility, and political mobilization.
"The contributions of a number of First and Third World scholars to the development of the anthropology of the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean have been elided from the core of the discipline as practiced in North America and Europe. As such, the anthropology of the African diaspora in the Americas can be traced to the paradigmatic debate on the origins of New World black cultures between Euro-American anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits and African American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier." (AR Journals Annual Reviews)
"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
