Forum: Gender, Race, and Class in Caribbean Family Relations
Heidi Härkönen Introduction
n October 2018, the Hodder Education As a result, multiple women are involved publisher in the United Kingdom decided in childhood socialisation. (Cited in BBC Ito retract an Assessment and Qualifications 2018). Alliance (AQA) General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE, 9-1) Sociology The history of racism and hypersexualisation of textbook that discussed family relations in Afro-Caribbean persons and the contemporary diverse parts of the world because the book increases in racism, sexism, and xenophobia was seen to contain racist stereotypes about make it understandable that people are quick Caribbean families (BBC 2018; Badshah 2018). to react to such portrayals. At the same time, There was a public outcry and critiques stated we should give careful thought to why there that the book’s decontextualized portrayal of is a need to justify and contextualize exactly Caribbean families is ‘dangerous’ (BBC 2018) these kinds of relationships that resonate with and full of ‘sweeping generalisations’ (Badshah long-term anthropological discussions on 2018). The text in the book reads as follows: Caribbean matrifocality (Clarke [1957] 1974; R. T. Smith 1960; 1988; 1996; M. G. Smith In Caribbean families, the fathers and 1962; 1965; Solien de Gonzalez 1965; Barrow husbands are largely absent and women 1996). In 2018, when people live in all kinds assume the most responsibility in of different family relationships all around childrearing. When men and women live the world, why is it a problem if people in the together, it is usually in cohabiting or Caribbean are portrayed as living in relationships common law relationships that reproduce that differ from the legally married nuclear the traditional patriarchal division family? Why is there an outcry to represent of labour. The family system is also Caribbean family relations as contextualised characterised by child-shifting, that is, and not to contextualise also all the other family the passing of children to other relatives relations in the book? or acquaintances if the parents find It is indeed this selective use of calls for themselves unable to take care of them. contextualisation that I find disturbing in this
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discussion on Caribbean families. Contextual Amongst my Habanero interlocutors, the isation is always important, not just when matrifocal orientation did not concern only the discussing Caribbean kinship: all family family relations of Afro-Cuban or racially mixed relations are the result of particular historical people, but also of low-income, white people. trajectories. Legal marriages and nuclear families I have also met middle class, white Cubans, are equally the product of specific historical and whose relationships are matrifocal, although cultural circumstances (Collier 1997; Hirsch family relations do vary amongst Cubans and in & Wardlow 2006). It is problematic to portray different parts of the country. Caribbean matrifocality as if it were some Matrifocality also varies over time. In kind of social deviation created by colonialism, my research, I have focused not on explaining plantation slavery, and poverty, and not ‘why’ my Cuban interlocutors’ relationships a valuable way to organise social relationships in are matrifocal, but rather in exploring how the itself. Such requests to ‘contextualise’ Caribbean matrifocal emphasis organizes people’s family matrifocality may reveal the background and love relations differently at diverse points of assumption that something must have gone the life course (Härkönen 2016). This variation wrong at some point in history if people do becomes particularly relevant when discussing not live in nuclear families and engage in legal the issue of ‘missing’ men in matrifocal families. marriages. But the problem here arises from Numerous researchers have pointed the bourgeois notion of respectability that fails out the important role that mothers play in to create space for people to live in all kinds Caribbean families in various parts of the region of relationships. If school books only start to (e.g. Clarke 1974; Smith 1994; Andaya 2014; show people as living in stable nuclear families Härkönen 2016). At the same time, scholars based on legal marriages, our understanding of have shown that while men may be ‘marginal’ as humanity becomes greatly diminished. fathers and husbands, they are strongly present On the basis of my long-term ethnographic as brothers and uncles (Barrow 1998). Amongst research on gender and kinship amongst low- my Cuban interlocutors, as people’s relationships income, racially mixed Cubans, the book’s change over their life course and they circulate portrayal of Caribbean family relations does not from one household to another, these shifts in sound totally erroneous, although it is true that kin relations are importantly gendered: women there is more variation in family relationships and children usually circulate together whilst than what the text states. There are regional, men circulate by themselves (Härkönen 2014; racial, class-related, and generational differences 2016). In such circulation, men sometimes lose and variation amongst the diverse Caribbean contact with their children or their relations may islands and the Caribbean diaspora elsewhere. become greatly diminished when they no longer In Cuba, despite of matrifocality’s historical share a household with the child’s mother. roots as an Afro-Caribbean social formation I have met many Cuban men who have little or (Martinez-Alier 1974), the racial distribution no contact with their children, but I have also of matrifocal relationships seems to be more met Cuban men of all ages who are committed, complex. Helen Safa (2005) has argued that the loving fathers. Due to this variation, amongst Cuban revolution has increased the prevalence my Cuban friends, most men, some of whom of matrifocality throughout the country. had little or no relationship with their biogenetic
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children, usually played significant roles as and other material items to their partners and step-fathers to their new partner’s children, as children, I still would not call their relationships people moved on in their relationships after ‘patriarchal’. Even though many women separating from their previous partner. At an complained about machismo and men had older age, some men who had lost contact with significant gendered power in multiple areas, their children earlier in life, got a new chance women also had considerable agency in many to recuperate their relationships. While some ways. For example, my Cuban female friends of my interlocutors lived in stable nuclear all had some money, work, and a source of families, most of my friends were engaged in income of their own, even though many of them wide networks of ‘blood’ (sangre) kin and in simultaneously depended on their partner’s varying family arrangements as step-parents and material contributions to make ends meet. Some partners that changed considerably over time. women were the main breadwinners of their The issue of child circulation, for which families. Many of my Cuban female friends the book’s portrayal was criticised, is a part of owned their homes and even those who did not, this dynamic character of Caribbean family had considerable power over their households relations. Although most Cuban women that and were usually able to negotiate with their I know have raised their own children, they have male partners. My Cuban female interlocutors simultaneously received significant help from also had a considerable amount of sexual agency their mothers, sisters, aunts, and their partner’s and they could both initiate and terminate female kin in caring for their children. I also relationships. They had important reproductive know some Cubans, both young and elderly, agency; while women complained about male who have been raised by someone else than their machismo when it came to contraception, if birth mother. While individual situations vary, they became pregnant, they were the ones to we should be careful with automatically seeing decide whether to keep the child or not, and had such arrangements as problematic, as they show primary rights over their children as mothers. the inclusive, flexible character of Caribbean All of these forms of agency deviate from kin relations, whereby caring responsibilities ‘traditional’ ideas of patriarchy. are shared beyond biogenetic connections and In addition to enabling various forms where not just biogenetic connections, but also of female agency, matrifocal family relations on-going caring practices, create and reproduce differ from traditional patriarchal ideas also by kinship (Stack 1974; Härkönen 2016). their low degree of legal marriage. The absence Possibly due to the close connection of legal marriage in the book’s portrayal of between women and children, the GSCE Caribbean families was another issue that book represents Caribbean family relations as generated public criticism. However, this based on a ‘traditionally patriarchal division of portrayal resonates with my ethnographic labour’ (BBC 2018). Nevertheless, this aspect data; few of my Habanero friends were legally seems have received less attention amongst the married. Some had dating relationships, others book’s critics. While it is true that amongst my lived together in a consensual union for varying Habanero interlocutors, women were mainly time periods, some were legally married but responsible for children and nurturing care more often for pragmatic reasons (such as whilst men were expected to contribute money securing a state pension to the widow at the
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event of the partner’s death) than for the social References significance of legal marriage as such. Since the Andaya, Elise 2014. Conceiving Cuba: Reproduction, early 1960s, the Cuban government has tried to Women, and the State in the Post-Soviet Era. New promote legal marriage and more stable family Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. relations in the country, but many people still Badhsah, Nadeem 2018. GCSE Textbook prefer to avoid formalities in their relationships. Condemned for Racist Caribbean Stereotypes. The However, in contemporary Cuba, amongst Guardian 8 October, 2018. https://www.theguardian. large-scale political and economic changes, com/world/2018/oct/08/gcse-textbook-condemned- legal marriage seems to be gaining new social for-racist-caribbean-stereotypes
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Härkönen, Heidi 2017. Havana’s New Wedding Smith, Raymond T. 1960 [1957]. The Family in the Planners. Cuba Counterpoints. Caribbean. In Vera Robin (ed.). Caribbean Studies: A https://cubacounterpoints.com. Symposium. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Pp. 67–79. Martinez-Alier, Verena 1974. Marriage, Class and Colour in 19th Century Cuba: A Study of Racial Smith, Raymond T. 1988. Kinship and Class in Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society. Oxford: the West Indies: A Genealogical Study of Jamaica and Cambridge University Press. Guyana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511563140. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558153.
ONE 2017. Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas Smith, Raymond T. 1996. The Matrifocal Family: e Información, Republica de Cuba: Anuario Power, Pluralism and Politics. New York: Routledge. Demográfico de Cuba 2017: Capitulo IV: Matrimonios. Solien de González, Nancie L. 1965. The Con- http://www.one.cu/anuariodemografico2017.htm sanguineal Household and Matrifocality. American
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