RISM AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Lambros Comitas

Over the past century, education in the has earned the praise or incurred the wrath of royal commissions, colonial officials, aspiring politicians, ministers of government, parents, and other interest groups. Even now, it continues to attract investigation and stimulate comment. If we follow the ideas of that seminal social theorist S. F. Nadel, education is a basic or core institution of society found wherever human life is found. Like other core institutions, it fulfills its professed purpose-- to educate, within itself; but, in addition, it vitally affects and influences the operation of other institutions. I would argue that it is this rare blend of clearly-focused task and cross-institutional influence that gives education its indisputable power and pivotal importance in society, particularly in developing or rapidly-changing societies.

West Indian educationists, among others, systematically probe this essential institution of modern life, governments issue grandiose plans, and even writers, a surprisingly large number, use education as context or point of departure for creative efforts. Take, for example, George Lamming's very personal novel In the Castle of my Skin in which vivid images of Barbadian schooling and the impact of that schooling abound. "Education was not a continuous process. It was a kind of steeplechase in which the contestants had to take different hurdles. Some went to the left and others to the right, and when they parted they never really met again" (1953:218). Eric Williams in his Education in the British West Indies provides an early example of systematic analysis. "The British West Indian community is today experiencing the labour pains of the new society that is being born," he wrote a full decade before he entered politics. "In the attainment of this goal a great responsibility rests on the educational system. Its role should be that of a midwife to the emerging social order. We shall, therefore, proceed to examine what the educational system did within the framework of the old order and what it must do towards the construction of the new" (1951:10).

Despite the considerable attention that education has received, the convoluted relationship between it and developing West Indian societies has generated problems that continue to defy easy understanding and cause concern. This book, the product of a recent conference on education and society in the Caribbean, is one modest but determined attempt on the part of West Indian educationists and other specialists in Caribbean studies to help fathom and resolve these problems and their implications at the regional level. It was obvious to the planners that such a conference was timely and that the scholarly and practical benefits to be garnered from the focused discussions of specialists on education in societal context were extensive. There was, however, another reason for calling such a meeting. At the time the conference idea was being broached, the Research Institute for the Study of Man, or RISM, was engaged in a three-year anthropological field project designed to study and compare the effects of formal and informal education on post-independence development in , Grenada, and . Professor M. G. Smith, in his contribution to this volume, details the aims and approaches of this project. Since there was close congruence between project aims and the proposed conference goals, RISM assumed the sponsorship of the conference, which was organized by the Faculty of Education of the University of the West Indies.

There is an additional element in this collaboration. RISM, a scholarly foundation located in New York City, has long been associated with Caribbean social science. Privately funded, RISM has never been tied or obligated to government or business and has functioned unencumbered by political or ideolological agendas. Incorporated in 1955 as an educational and scientific, non-profit organization, RISM's raison d'etre is simply to assist in generating basic knowledge. Its geographical focus has always been the Caribbean and its primary regional goal has been to help the development of a viable social science there, even while it carried out important research in , , and the Soviet Union. Over a period of thirty-five years, it has maintained a productive relationship with Caribbeanists and Caribbean- related organizations within or outside the region. The relationship has always been a significant one, an importance enhanced by the fact that the region, more often than not, has been ignored by "mainstream" social scientists in Europe and North America.

From its inception, RISM was active in helping to define those Caribbean issues, those high priority problems amenable to social scientific research. With this perspective, it seeded new thrusts in Caribbean social scientific study, helped train several generations of field researchers, and supported the work of many foreign and Caribbean scholars in the region. Moreover, it has mounted and carried out its own research, generally anthropological in nature, in and on the Caribbean. Finally, it has played a prominent role in disseminating the results of Caribbean scholarly labor through publication subsidies, bibliographic research, library service, and workshops. Through these activities, RISM's contribution to the development of Caribbean scholarship has been continuous and considerable, a contribution due, in large measure, to the dedication and energy of its founder and first director, the late Dr. Vera Rubin.

RISM is probably best known for its conferences and workshops which have dealt with a wide range of subject matter. Designed to encourage scholarly interchange, they often have been presented in association with organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the U. S. National Institute of Mental Health, the Pan American Union, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the University of the West Indies. I should like to cover here, however briefly, the more important RISM conferences which give a sense of the range and the scholarly concerns that engaged, in seriatum, the Caribbean research community.

The RISM inaugural, billed as the first Inter-American conference on Caribbean research, was held in 1956. In fact, that gathering signaled the coming of age of Caribbean study and the task of crafting new approaches for the study of a region just emerging from the shadow of colonialism. In this heady atmosphere, scholars from the Caribbean, North America, and Europe met, many for the first time, to debate the value of earlier paradigms and the appropriateness of new formulations in theory and method. The resulting monograph, Caribbean Studies: A Symposium (Rubin 1957), charts the transition from a pre-World War II to a post-war social science.

A year later, in 1957, RISM organized a second Caribbean conference with plantation societies as its theme. The proceedings, Plantations Systems of the New World (Rubin 1959) remain a valuable, ground-breaking examination of that unique institutional complex, sprung from slavery and strident mercantilism, which conditioned the nature of Caribbean societies. A third regional conference in 1959 focused on theoretical approaches to the study of those contemporary Caribbean societies characterized by rigidly stratified social systems and significant sociocultural diversity. At that meeting, the concept of plural society was introduced to Caribbean research. Drawn from the work of the economist J. S. Furnivall, this concept was tested and considerably refined in West Indian context by the anthropologist M. G. Smith. The ensuing publication, Social and Cultural Pluralism in the Caribbean (Rubin 1960), details the first Caribbean exchange on competing macro-sociological theories used in West Indian research and rivets attention to the necessity for theoretical clarity in the empirical study of Caribbean social structure and organization.

In the years that followed, several conferences dealt with specific applications of social science to real life problems. In 1960, for example, the relationship of culture, society, and health was discussed at a symposium, this time on an international level. Participants emphasized the critical importance of multidisciplinary approaches to the solution of problems of health and illness and encouraged, through illustrations, a more dynamic interrelationship between medical and social science research. The resultant proceedings (Rubin 1961), including contributions from the Caribbean, delineate and examine the multiple sociocultural factors that contextualize and condition human disease. In 1961, the advent of self- government and imminent independence of several British West Indian colonies led to a conference on the political sociology of the region. The proceedings (Singham and Braithwaite 1962) include case studies of individual territories as well as retrospective and prospective papers that detail the process of transformation from dependency to autonomy. In premature anticipation of the fall of the first Duvalier dictatorship, a conference was held in 1967 to assess the human resources of contemporary Haiti and to gauge its potential for development. The Haitian Potential (Rubin and Schaedel 1975) includes discussions of population pressure, community development, the labor force, language problems, literacy, primary education, nutrition, public health, and mental health in that poorest of New World nations.

Another international conference, held in 1973, was a by-product of an anthropological-medical research project carried out by RISM in on the chronic effects of marihuana use (Rubin and Comitas 1975). Its goals were to compare existing knowledge about the traditional use of cannabis, to examine cultural and social class differences in use, attitudes and effects, and to analyze the sociocultural contexts for national and international legislation related to that substance. Cannabis and Culture (Rubin 1976) contains thirty-five articles and is the first systematic, cross-cultural treatment of a subject that continues in social importance.

Returning to an early interest, RISM organized a conference in 1976 to compare plantation slavery in the British, French, Dutch and Spanish spheres of the Caribbean as well as in parts of South America and the American South. Comparative Perspectives on Slavery in New World Plantation Societies (Rubin and Tuden 1977), a massive monograph issued by the New York Academy of Sciences, was the publication of this meeting.

In 1984, just months before her death, Vera Rubin organized and presided over her last conference. A truly major effort which brought together over a hundred participants, it was entitled New Perspectives on Caribbean Studies: Toward the 21st Century. Designed to identify directions of future research, it was also, in a real sense, a reappraisal of research commitments made at the first Inter-American meeting held more than three decades before. Separate panels were devoted to some familiar and some new themes: plantation society, social stratification, applied issues in social organization, ethnicity, nationalism and creativity, political economy and sociocultural change, public health, agriculture and new technologies, migration, and the Caribbean Basin initiative. The first publication from this conference Health Care in the Caribbean and Central America (McGlynn 1984) is in circulation and other volumes are in preparation. In retrospect, this last Rubin conference not only helped usher in a new era but celebrated, unknowingly, the life of a devoted friend of the Caribbean and its people.

The most recent RISM conference, and the theme of this book, was that on Caribbean education and society. It provided the opportunity for bringing together members of the Faculty of Education of the University of the West Indies and the entire RISM educational research team in order to consider cases and issues of direct interest to both groups. Of obvious heuristic value to the RISM team and its on-going research in the eastern Caribbean were the comprehensive reviews and evaluations of published educational research already carried out in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and Grenada prepared respectively by Anthony Layne, Patricia Mohammed, and George Brizan. Marlene Hamilton's thorough analysis of Jamaican educational research added valuable comparison and counterpoint to the eastern Caribbean material as did Derek Gordon's article on access to high school education in postwar Jamaica and Joseph Halliday's discussion of education in St. Kitts and Nevis. Finally, Professor Rex Nettleford in his informed essay on key issues and problems in West Indian education and Professor Errol Miller in his detailed prospectus for research provided the RISM team and others in attendance with invaluable perspective and background. In turn, the RISM anthropologists, with theoretical and methodological insight gained from professional experience in Africa and Europe as well as the Caribbean, provided commentary on the presentations of their West Indian colleagues and presented new data and fresh perspectives from their field sites in the eastern Caribbean. In my opinion, the expectations that this conference raised were fully realized.

I have already noted some reasons why RISM took an active part in this conference and in the preparation of this book. There are two others. The first is both symbolic and sentimental. Vera Rubin's first major field research in the Caribbean, carried out in 1957, focused on education and secondary school students in Trinidad and resulted in the monograph We Wish To Be Looked Upon: A Study of the Aspirations of Youth in a Developing Society (Rubin and Zavalloni 1969). Her interests were always involved with education, and she would have been pleased that with this conference RISM maintains those interests. The second is also symbolic but not necessarily sentimental. Participation in this conference was meant to indicate that in the post-Rubin period, RISM remains as firmly committed to the search for basic knowledge and to the Caribbean as it has been in the past. It looks forward to the future.

References

Lamming, George 1953 In the Castle of My Skin. London, Michael Joseph Ltd.

McGlynn, Frank, ed. 1984 Health Care in the Caribbean and Central America. Williamsburg, Va., Studies in Third World Societies (Publication Number Thirty).

Nadel, S. F. 1951 The Foundations of Social . Glencoe, Ill., The Free Press.

Rubin, Vera, ed. 1957 Caribbean Studies: A Symposium. Mona, Jamaica, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University College of the West Indies. 1959 Plantation Systems of the New World. Washington,D.C., Pan American Union (Social Science Monographs,7). 1960 Social and Cultural Pluralism in the Caribbean. New York, Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences vol.83, art. 5. 1961 Culture, Society, and Health. New York, Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, vol.84, art.17. 1976 Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton.

Rubin, Vera and Comitas, Lambros 1975 Ganja in Jamaica: A Medical Anthropological Study of Chronic Marihuana Use. The Hague, Mouton.

Rubin, Vera and Schaedel, Richard P., eds. 1975 The Haitian Potential: Research and Resources of Haiti. New York, Teachers College Press.

Rubin, Vera and Tuden, Arthur, eds. 1977 Comparative Perspectives on Slavery in New World Plantation Societies. New York, Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences.

Rubin, Vera and Zavalloni, Marisa 1969 We Wish To Be Looked Upon: A Study of the Aspirations of Youth in a Developing Society. New York, Teachers College Press.

Singham, A. and Braithwaite, L.E., eds. 1962 The Conference on Political Sociology in the British Caribbean. Social and Economic Studies, Vol.11, No.4.

Williams, Eric 1951 Education in the British West Indies. New York, University Place Book Shop.