Composite Culture in a Multicultural Society

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Composite Culture in Trinidad

Marion O’Callaghan

The Caribbean, with a large part of its population being of African descent, has held a particular interest for American anthropologists. It is in Jamaica that American physical anthropologists set out to prove that so-called ‘miscegenation’ produced a ‘hybrid’ which was physically disproportionate. These anthropological works did not always elicit much interest within the Caribbean. For the purpose of this essay, I will briefly examine the impact of certain theories in anthropology and sociology on the acute ‘racial’ mobilization within Trinidad which began during the last part of the 1960s. I will then examine the concept of composite culture as it relates to homogeneity in settlement, its ...