Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology General Editor: Jack Goody

Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology General Editor: Jack Goody 65 Kinship and class in the West Indies For a list of other titles in this series, see p. 203 Kinship and class in the West Indies A genealogical study of Jamaica and Guyana RAYMOND T. SMITH University of Chicago The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge New York Port Chester Melbourne Sydney CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521345224 © Cambridge University Press 1988 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1988 First paperback edition 1990 Re-issued in this digitally printed version 2007 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Smith, Raymond Thomas, 1925- Kinship and Class in the West Indies. (Cambridge studies in social anthropology; 65) Bibliography. Includes index. 1. Kinship — Jamaica. 2. Kinship — Guyana. 3. Jamaica — Social life and customs. 4. Guyana - Social life and customs. 5. Jamaica - Genealogy. 6. Guyana - Genealogy. I. Title. II. Series: Cambridge studies in social anthropology; no. 65. GN564.J25S53 1988 306.8'3'097292 87-11662 ISBN 978-0-521-34522-4 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-39649-3 paperback For Flora Contents Preface page ix Maps xi-xiii 1 Introduction: assumptions, procedures, methods 1 2 Kinship, culture and theory 21 3 What is kinship in the West Indies? 31 4 The structure of genealogies 47 5 Marriage in the formation of West Indian society 82 6 Modern marriage and other arrangements 110 7 Sex role differentiation 134 8 Household and family 149 9 Conclusion 177 References 185 Index 195 Preface This book is the first of a projected three-part work that examines West Indian kinship, and the studies that have been made of it, over the past thirty or forty years. In this initial volume I present the findings of a number of genealogical studies carried out in Jamaica and Guyana, using them to question certain orthodox assumptions about class differences in West Indian kinship. In order to interpret these data adequately it has been necessary to consider some aspects of the historical development of kinship, and of kinship studies, in the West Indies, and to touch upon a number of theoretical issues that underly the direction taken by this analysis. In the second part of the projected work I shall present material derived from a twenty-five-year longitudinal study of two villages in Guyana - one Afro-Guyanese and one Indo-Guyanese - a study that also leads to a reconsideration of many accepted ideas about lower class kinship in the Caribbean and elsewhere. The final work will review the development of kinship studies in the Caribbean over the period since the ending of World War II and suggest some of its implications for kinship theory generally, and for the study of Afro-American kinship in particular. I am indebted to many people who have contributed to the making of this book. To the National Science Foundation, the John Simon Gug- genheim Foundation and the Lichtstern Memorial Fund Committee who provided funds at various stages that made possible the field research and writing. To the University of the West Indies and the University of Guyana who provided hospitality, practical assistance and intellectual stimulation. To the colleagues who worked with me on the broader study at various stages: Jack Alexander, Patricia Anderson, Diane Austin, Dalton Davis, Christopher Davis, Michael Fischer, Nancy Foner, Derek Gordon, Jac- queline Mayers, Barbara Miller, Allen Roberts, and Don Robotham. Lois Bisek, Kathryn Barnes and Molly Carrington have, over many years, provided the kind of assistance without which research would be impossi- ble, and Joy Pilgrim gave invaluable help in this study as in others. My thanks also to Colin Smith who prepared the maps at short notice. I owe a special debt of gratitude to David Schneider, both for his own work that ix Preface has stimulated so many scholars even when they could not wholly agree with him, and for the always provocative comments he has made on mine. FLORIDA ^v THE WEST INDIES Falmouth Montego Bay Lucea Hanover Westmoreland St. Mary , ^ _ Port Antonio Savanna la Mar Portland st \ Man- Elizabeth \chester Catherine /St. Andrew Clarendon \ Spanish i Own St. Thomas Moront Bay Jamaica Scale in Miles 10 20 30 GUYANA *c VENEZUELA BRAZIL Scale in Miles o 60 Introduction: assumptions, procedures, methods If there is one point I have consistently tried to make throughout this book, it is that psychology, anthropology, and the social sciences in general, have repeatedly falsified their 'observations' by unrecognized epistemological and ideological closures imposed upon the system under study. Anthony Wilden 1972 West Indian family life has always interested social scientists, but few have understood it. Like other aspects of Caribbean ethnography, it is difficult to grasp in terms of accepted social theory, and because of this the study of West Indian kinship assumes a wider significance. Even in the eighteenth century West Indians discussed the peculiarities of their kinship arrangements. One Jamaican-born writer published, in 1793, in German, an essay on The Nair system of gallantry and inheritance,' subsequently expanded into a romantic novel preoccupied with love and marriage (or the absence of it), entitled Das Paradies der Liebe. The author, James Henry Law- rence, used the Nayar of Malabar as the model on which to construct a Utopian system of perfect equality of the sexes, in which children would be affiliated only to their mothers (Lawrence 1976 [1811]). Eighteenth- century West Indians were prolific writers, and they rightly felt themselves to be an integral part of the modern world in which egalitarian ideas were increasingly common, but one wonders how much of Lawrence's inspira- tion came from his Jamaican background. The Caribbean has its own history, with social and cultural systems that must be studied in their own right. For all their appeal to advocates of free love, and other social reforms, the kinship systems of the Nayar and the West Indian slave societies were rooted in the soil of hierarchy - not egalitarianism.1 This book looks at the effect of hierarchy in West Indian societies before and after the abolition of slavery, attempting to show the interaction of various ideologies with a persistent system of social practice, and the particular manifestations of that interaction in the domains of family and kinship. The broad outlines of West Indian kinship are well known, and 1 See Dumont 1980 for a discussion of hierarchy. 1 Kinship and class in the West Indies have been for several hundred years, but the social science literature on this topic has developed a peculiar myopia that is, it will be argued, a by-product of theory. Hence the statement by Wilden at the head of this chapter. Contrary to commonsense ways of thinking there is no reason for the Caribbean as a whole, or any of its constituent territories, to possess the bounded system of social relations and integrated culture that social scientists have generally assumed to be 'the unit of study,' or, even more erroneously, the unit of empirical existence. On the contrary, this has always been a region of open frontiers, shifting populations, vast cultural heterogeneity, complex economic relations and unstable political author- ity. Caribbean history has been turbulent, bringing together peoples from every part of the globe in a swirling vortex of greed, lust, and striving reminiscent of the destructive hurricanes that sweep through the region every year. It is remarkable that Caribbean peoples have constructed for themselves a social and cultural existence that defies the contingent aspects of history, defining, delimiting and giving meaning to experience, even determining what that experience shall be. The social and cultural systems so created are far less closed than some social scientists would have us believe. Stable enough so that cultural assumptions outlive novel experi- ences, they are neither completely consistent nor well-integrated, 'logico- meaningful' wholes. To study the West Indian family one has to understand the relation between what people say is correct behaviour and what they actually do. This requires reexamination of accepted ideas about the boundaries between classes, races, cultures and societies. It is comparable in many ways to the study of Creole languages. A great deal has been known about the form and content of such languages but new theoretical perspectives, relating language to the context of its use, have led to new insights and understandings - but not to agreement (Hymes 1971; Labov 1972; Silver- stein 1972; Bickerton 1975; Sankoff 1980). So, in the study of Caribbean kinship the issues are theoretical and not factual. There is general agreement that illegitimacy rates are high, marriage unstable and that women play an unusually prominent role in the domestic and kinship domains. There is much disagreement as to why this should be so. The most general aim of this work is to recognize the coexistent opposition between open and changing social processes and the relative stability of the cultural conceptions through which those processes are mediated and, to a considerable extent, constituted. Some kind of picture, or model, of the culture of kinship has to be made for purposes of analysis, but the primary aim is to remain sensitive to the complexities of the historical process itself.

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