Everyday life in the early English Caribbean: Irish, Africans, and the construction of difference

Reviewed by: Everyday Life in the Early English Caribbean: Irish, Africans, and the Construction of Difference by Jenny Shaw David M. Stark (bio) Everyday Life in the Early English Caribbean: Irish, Africans, and the Construction of Difference JENNY SHAW Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013 259pp. Try to imagine what life was like on a sugar plantation in the seventeenth-century English Caribbean, where African slaves and Irish servants lived and worked together under the watchful eye of English planters. How did they view each other? What were their interactions like? How did they negotiate status and hierarchy? These are important questions because they speak to broader debates about the origins of racism and slavery: the “origins debate” in the English colonies. The long-standing assumption is that difference was based solely on race. With the rise of the sugar plantation economy in the mid-seventeenth century, the need for [End Page 825] labor increased and greater numbers of Africans were brought to English colonies. As this process unfolded, society became racially bifurcated, and labor was used to separate individuals into distinct categories consisting of those who were free (whites) and those who were unfree (blacks). Jenny Shaw challenges this view in her well-written and convincing book Everyday Life in the Early English Caribbean. She notes that Africans were not the only (or the first) unfree laborers in the early modern English Atlantic world. Europeans, more specifically Irish Catholic indentured servants, were sometimes used like slaves. In addition, she explores how race was not the only factor that shaped prejudice; religion also played a prominent albeit overlooked role in the construction of difference. Shaw is part of a growing number of scholars who argue that the racial bifurcation model needs to be revised, and she provides a much-needed, more nuanced account of how difference was constructed in the early English Caribbean. The everyday experiences and interactions among Irish servants, African slaves, and English planters contributed to the construction of difference. However, the lack of surviving source material from this period has complicated our understanding of this process. To recover the everyday life of ordinary colonial subjects, Shaw (re)reads traditional sources (plantation records and inventories, wills, deeds, and travelers’ accounts) as much for what they omit as for what they include. Her methodology of focusing on the “presence of absence” allows readers to learn more about marginalized populations who left little (if any) paper trail and who are largely invisible in the historical record. English ideas about difference were initially worked out in Ireland, the site of England’s first imperial project. Through the lens of their own ideas about what constituted civilized behavior, the English perceived Irish cultural practices related to land use, sexual mores, clothing, and religion as barbaric. This became the basis of the perceived inferiority of the Irish. The English would later draw attention to similar cultural practices among Native Americans and Africans as markers of uncivilized peoples. They believed that cultural differences among inferior peoples, such as the Irish, could be overcome if they adopted Protestantism. However, the 1641 Ulster uprising, which devolved into an ethnic conflict between Irish Catholics on one side and English and Scottish Protestants on the other, hardened attitudes toward the Irish. Following the Cromwellian war in England [End Page 826] (1649–53), the English deported about fifty thousand Irish Catholics as indentured laborers, many to the West Indies, and their persecution of Irish Catholics intensified both at home and abroad. By then the English no longer believed the Irish capable of redemption, and religion became the most important cultural marker of difference. This influx of Irish in Barbados and the Leeward Islands coincided with the rise of the sugar plantation economy across the English Caribbean. To meet the increased need for labor, English plantation owners imported large numbers of African slaves. Before long Irish servants and African slaves outnumbered English colonists, prompting concerns about the destabilizing potential of subjugated populations. Colonial authorities found it necessary to identify and count disruptive populations, as the English had done in Ireland with the Down Survey in 1652. English authorities attempted to minimize—in their minds, at least—the threat holding people...

Brands are a critical part of the ongoing experimentation that underpins the development of mobile social media platforms like Instagram. Instagram had no dedicated advertising or analytics tools until 2014 so, in the absence of such devices, brands have developed uses of the platform that engage with the productive ability of cultural intermediaries and consumers to create and circulate images of their bodies, everyday lives, and cultural practices. This article examines the Instagram activities of the global vodka brand Smirnoff and the fashion retailer General Pants. Each brand engages with cultural intermediaries and builds themed activations at cultural events to orchestrate the production of images. Following Wissinger’s (2007a) study of fashion models, we conceptualize Instagram as an image machine that captures and calibrates attention. Instagram expands the terrain upon which brands operate by dispersing the work of creating and engaging with images into consumers’ everyday lives. The efforts made by brands to experiment with mobile media demonstrate the need to critically examine how participatory, discursive, and algorithmic modes of control are interrelated.

Responsible and controlled use: Older cannabis users and harm reduction

Given the basically non-industrial background of African societies, the nature of everyday life on that continent is such that it binds an individual into the network of his social relations, so that these pre dominate over other possible sources of felt responsibility. Generalizations about an entire continent are extremely difficult; yet study and research experience in West Africa, as well as frequent contacts with African students in the United States and Canada over the past four to five years, has brought me to this conclusion. Indeed, in most cases with which I am familiar, the other possible sources, such as the traditional values, or the personality of the individual tend to buttress this basic quality the responsibility that each person feels to other persons. We in Western culture, with its individualism and highly industrialized production, are also bound by ties of felt obligation and responsibility to others such as kinsfolk, friends, and our membership in various occupational and voluntary organizations. However, we also have age-old traditions that tend to bind us as individuals to ideals which often contradict our social responsibilities to such an extent that it is considered a noble thing to reject social pressures for the sake of moral principles. Although it has been widely reported by anthropologists in all parts of Africa, it is still difficult for the inexperienced Westerner to appreciate the central place of group membership in the lives of Africans. Villagers with whom I lived for two years in Africa were admittedly disturbed if they saw me sitting alone, and someone was invariably dispatched to sit with me on such occasions. Never once in Nigeria, except among Europeans, did I ever see people eating alone. African friends commented that only social pariahs, lepers, or mentally ill persons would be seen taking food by themselves. On the farm, in housebuilding, or when compound walls are repaired, African peoples use groups, or work bees. Such groups are found all over East, Central, and West Africa. In everyday life this means that a man carries on his usual activities in the constant company of relatives and friends. Even children are not left alone to play. Some watchful adult or elder sister or brother is constantly near, and the child soon learns that to be with others is good, to be alone is bad.

The first Jews to permanently settle in the Caribbean arrived in the mid-seventeenth century and traced their origins to the Iberian peninsula, where many had lived for centuries as New Christians before reverting to Judaism in centers such as Amsterdam, Bayonne, and London. The place of Jews in colonial Caribbean societies is of particular interest since they were often among the first white settlers. Perhaps nowhere in the region has their impact been more pronounced than in Suriname and Curaçao, the longest-lived and historically largest Jewish communities in the early modern Caribbean.1 KeywordsEighteenth CenturyJewish CommunityJewish PopulationAfrican DescentLate Eighteenth CenturyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This chapter examines and compares three genocidal events in the early modern Caribbean and Mesoamerica: the massacres of Xaragua (Hispaniola, 1503), Cholula (Mexico, 1519), and Toxcatl (Mexico, 1520; also known as the Massacre of Templo Mayor). Each of the three mass killings marked a political and military turning point in the history of Spanish military expansion in the Americas. They share other important characteristics, too. These massacres were entirely or partially planned and executed by European actors, namely Spanish officials and military entrepreneurs (conquistadores) under the leadership of fray Nicolás de Ovando, Hernán Cortés and Pedro de Alvarado respectively. Each event can be described as a genocidal massacre targeting a specific community because of its membership of a larger group: the primary objective of the European perpetrators was to provide an object lesson for the surviving members of that group (Leo Kuper). In each case, European perpetrators sought to avoid scrutiny and censure from within their own group by explaining and justifying their actions as a pre-emptive strike against indigenous plots. The tangible involvement of indigenous actors — altogether crucial in the case of the Massacre of Cholula ax— further complicates the historical analysis of a complex sources.

The Millennium Dome, Braveheart and Rolls Royce cars. How do cultural icons reproduce and transform a sense of national identity? How does national identity vary across time and space, how is it contested, and what has been the impact of globalization upon national identity and culture?This book examines how national identity is represented, performed, spatialized and materialized through popular culture and in everyday life. National identity is revealed to be inherent in the things we often take for granted – from landscapes and eating habits, to tourism, cinema and music. Our specific experience of car ownership and motoring can enhance a sense of belonging, whilst Hollywood blockbusters and national exhibitions provide contexts for the ongoing, and often contested, process of national identity formation. These and a wealth of other cultural forms and practices are explored, with examples drawn from Scotland, the UK as a whole, India and Mauritius. This book

Maori and other indigenous peoples experience a high prevalence of type 2 diabetes. A pivotal question is how primary and secondary preventative initiatives might be more effectively targeted to embrace those who are at highest risk of developing diabetes and its complications. This paper proposes that, in the case of Maori, as a high-risk population, conventional approaches are insufficient, and that increased consideration needs to be given to how the settings in which health education and services are offered may influence diabetes prevention and earlier diagnosis. Traditionally, the hub of Maori culture and everyday life is the marae, a place where Maori identity, values and cultural practices are affirmed within an over-arching spiritual dimension. We have investigated the potential utility of an urban marae and its member network as a setting for a lifestyle programme focused around diabetes prevention. The research included a cross sectional survey of behavioural and metabolic risk factors for type 2 diabetes and qualitative data collection as part of a formative and process evaluation of a lifestyle programme established at the marae and connected venues. The programme attracted 436 participants. The majority knew little about diabetes, had low levels of vigorous activity and high intakes of fatty foods. A family history of diabetes was present in >40% of participants. Undiagnosed diabetes, high blood pressure, hypercholesterolaemia, obesity, smoking and self-reported excessive alcohol consumption were common. The advent of diabetes education, a healthy lifestyle support programme, and exercise sessions at the marae and connected venues served as the impetus for the marae community to take over the running of their own health promotion programme, including a declaration of their marae as a 'smoke-free' venue. It is proposed that marae can be useful settings for lifestyle programmes aimed at controlling the diabetes and obesity epidemic in New Zealand.

This chapter considers the work of Michel de Certeau in relation to cultural approaches to policy studies. The chapter explores concepts of culture as everyday practice, and policy as cultural practice, and argues that policy and culture are reciprocal and coconstitutive. The chapter examines the importance of understanding the everyday activities and meaning-making practices of policy makers and stakeholders, as well as (meta)methodology and the ethical and political implications of Certeau’s work for approaches to policy research.

Music in Cyprus. Edited by Jim Samson and Nicoletta Demetriou. Farnham, Surrey, Eng.: Ashgate, 2015. [xiv, 196 p. ISBN 9781409465737 (hardcover), $109.95; (e-book), various.] Illustrations, bibliography, index.Music in Cyprus is a pioneering book, bringing together work of scholars covering all aspects of island's musical history (with one notable exception, to which I shall return below) in a series of chapters that interconnect in many ways. further one reads, more one understands way complex threads of Cyprus's history have affected and enabled a unique musical legacy of remarkable richness.The book's first chapter, by Yiannis Papadakis and Mete Hatay, gives a very valuable, indeed essential, background to The Cultures of Partition and Partition of Cultures, ranging through language, folklore, music (folk, art, and ecclesiastical), and of course (underlying all these) politics of nationalism. acts of cultural cleansing attendant on partition of Cyprus are neatly summarized in general terms by authors thus: was a dialectical process of construction and deconstruction; construction of a supposedly pure and homogeneous national Self entailed destruction, cleansing and expulsion of those (people or cultural practices) who, within logic of ethnonationalism, were defined as Others (p. 19). But it is when particular is used to exemplify general that things are brought into sharper focus, as in authors' observations on question of folklore, which was employed as a political tool: Like individuals, nations are thought to own various cultural attributes, which are regarded as solely and authentically theirs. It is this logic that gives rise to questions like: 'To whom does belong?' (Is it Greek/Byzantine, Turkish/Ottoman or really Arabic?) problem here lies with way question is phrased . . . (p. 25). Indeed, and authors' perception of and ability to transmit this problem provides a fundamental tool for understanding of wider context of music in Cyprus.Effie Tsangaridou continues discussion of coffee question, as it were, in second chapter, One Music, Two Labels, which demonstrates a profound understanding of intertwining of Greek and Turkish identities in Cyprus and way repertories of traditional music and dance were employed by both communities until partition of country. She guides us through myriad associations between Greek and Turkish Cypriot folk music and dance; symbiosis between two is likely to be surprising to many. Chapters 3 and 4, by Nicoletta Demetriou and Bekir Azgin respectively, continue discussion, dealing with subsequent ideas of what Cypriot tradition(s) could be, or have been considered to be, under politicocultural pressure, bringing story right up to date. Azgin's analysis of traditional Turkish Cypriot music as an agent of cultural policy after 1974 (p. 77) leads to inevitable but sad conclusion that the truth is that folk music and folk dance have ceased to play an integral role in everyday life. Even shepherds have largely given up playing kava . . . and are more likely to be seen carrying transistor radios (p. 86). His final paragraph is even bleaker: a word, he says, Turkish-Cypriot folk music and folk dances have come to look like artefacts in a museum (ibid.). A similar fate might be thought to have awaited island's Ottoman legacy, but in his fascinating survey (chapter 5), Eralp Adanir, in spite of his documentation of erosion of tradition, gives, at end, some grounds for hope. In some ways most interesting parts of chapter are his coverage of Mevlevi tradition and Darul-Elhan music society's transmission, until its dissolution in 1936, of postOttoman canon. references provide a useful bibliography, and more of it is in languages other than Turkish than one might suppose. …

- Is there such a thing as an Australian national identity? Or is Australia just a melting pot of different peoples and cultures without a common culture? - What is distinctive and what is universal about everyday life in Australia? In a post-colonial age of globalizing economies, the political quest for national 'identity' is increasingly urgent. This topical book traces the ways in which the Australian state and its people struggle to represent the social and cultural practices of everyday life in an attempt to draw meaning from diverse understandings of pasts, presents and futures. Class, gender and ethnicity are shown to underpin this popular debate, fuelled by shifting interpretations of egalitarianism and individualism. The author -- a prominent Australian sociologist -- investigates how a nation's identity is created through its folk heroes and folk festivals, civic and domestic architecture, education, politics and art. Ned Kelly, Parliament House, the Melbourne Cup and the Adelaide Grand Prix are all interrogated for the light they shed on Australian ideologies and institutions.This book will be fascinating reading for those who seek a deeper understanding of how a national identity can be moulded and redefined.

There are many ancient cultural sites in Bulgaria that not only attract tourists but are also believed to facilitate a person’s connection with deities and natural forces. Today, cultural practices performed at these sacred places from the period of antiquity and the early Middle Ages are often associated with neopaganism and the New Age movement, while also incorporating elements of Bulgarian traditional culture. Through ‘mysterious’ rituals, the participants seek to connect with a higher spirituality, which they feel is missing in their everyday lives. Interest in ancient paganism is also one of the manifestations of contemporary nationalism. The feasts, reenactments and rituals presented serve to ‘re-establish’ man’s relationship with nature, with the aim of achieving health, well-being, and spiritual growth in an uncertain world. These practices often interweave esoteric and environmentalist ideas with strategies for the development of cultural tourism.

During the Wilhelmine period, leaders of the German Social Democratic Party began to redefine socialism as a 'cultural movement' which was concerned as much with the educational, artistic and leisure-time needs of workers as it was with trade union struggles and the future prospect of revolutionary social transformation. This drew them into a debate about the relationship between politics and 'culture', understood in terms of both 'high' and 'mass' culture, and the role of the latter in mobilizing German workers to the cause of socialism. Drawing on the methods of cultural studies, this article offers a close reading of Adolf Levenstein's important survey of the attitudes, 'hopes and wishes' of male rank-and-file Social Democrats and trade unionists from 1912, and his other related publications, in order to examine the ways in which German workers assigned meanings to cultural texts. In this way, it identifies the utopian political investments revealed in workers' leisure-time practices, ranging from poetry writing to novel reading, and their challenges to the structuring binarisms - oppositions between culture and politics, high culture and mass culture, art and everyday life, the masculine and the feminine, and reality and fantasy - of Social Democratic cultural politics in pre-war Germany.

Indeed, according to the statistics of the German Army Medical Service’s official report for the years 1914–1918, some 613,047 members of the field and reserve armies were treated in military hospitals for ‘diseases of the nervous system’. These ‘war hysterics’, ‘tremblers’, ‘traumatic or shellshock neurotics’, known to contemporary medical parlance largely as ‘war neurotics’, have only recently attracted the attention of cultural history. The topic forms part of current historical research into everyday life and mentalites during the first world war, and raises questions about the connection between social and psychic change. The problem of destructive transformation of the personality of first world war combatants and its effects on the history of the interwar period was first investigated by Klaus Theweleit in Journal of Contemporary History Copyright © 1999 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol 34(1), 125–144. [0022-0094(199901)34:1;125–144;006897]

Regions have been regarded as processes, artefacts and discourses, and recently as ‘brands’ that various stakeholders use in marketing. Discourses on institutional regions are typically promoted by media, governmental bodies and planning organizations that draw on reputed collective regional identities—the expressions of past and current social discourses and cultural practices. However, such institutional regional discourses are often incongruous to spatial imaginaries of everyday life. This article scrutinizes the meanings of spatial attachment to citizens and explores to what extent regional identities are meaningful in everyday life. To avoid biased assumptions, focus-group interviews were carried out within four Finnish provinces among the members of four social movements. The results show that provincial spaces are not actively thought-and-practiced. Spatial identities are rather structured around personal experiences that typically accumulate in several locales, since personal histories are increasingly characterized by mobility. This article also recognizes that the everyday meanings of a socially constructed region are often generationally read and combine different historical narratives.