Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Now it is ob­vi­ous to say that who­ev­er we are, and what­ev­er we write or think, our world­view is al­ways a re­flec­tion of where each of us has per­son­al­ly come from and the ex­pe­ri­ences we've been through.In an­thro­pol­o­gy, to counter this uni­ver­sal hu­man ten­den­cy to­ward eth­no­cen­trism (be­ing bi­ased to­ward your own cul­ture) we use "re­flex­iv­i­ty." Ide­al­ly, re­flex­iv­i­ty coun­ters the sway of each per­son's own bi­as­es. Yet even when trained for such self-aware­ness, bias is im­pos­si­ble to com­plete­ly over­come.

When an­thro­pol­o­gists go to a for­eign cul­ture or com­mu­ni­ty to de­scribe and doc­u­ment groups and their cul­ture, they try to ap­ply re­flex­iv­i­ty to what they record. This is be­cause a re­flex­ive-turn can catch and cau­tion the ap­pli­ca­tion of for­eign cul­tur­al ideals to lo­cal cul­tures.A good ex­am­ple of what I mean hap­pened re­cent­ly in Char­lot­teville where I'm doc­u­ment­ing lo­cal re­ac­tions to the THA's de­vel­op­ment plans for the beach­front, which in­cludes build­ing a mall (with­out the re­quired EMA ap­provals) across it.

Dri­ving along the north coast of To­ba­go from Ply­mouth to Char­lot­teville, hug­ging the Wind­ward Road as it curves reg­u­lar­ly to re­veal idyl­lic, trop­i­cal views of Cas­tara, Par­latu­vi­er, Bloody Bay, Man of War Bay, and then down in­to Char­lot­teville from L'Anse Four­mi, I couldn't se­ri­ous­ly imag­ine many peo­ple want­i­ng to trans­form such eco­log­i­cal tran­quil­li­ty with a beach­front mall.

A rude awak­en­ing await­ed me on the ground in Char­lot­teville. Yes of course there are many voic­es against the de­vel­op­ment, but the many voic­es in favour of it caught me off guard.

Now as much as pos­si­ble, peo­ple and their world­views should be un­der­stood with­in the cul­tur­al con­text from which they emerge. My own re­sis­tance to putting malls on beach­es is maybe quite un­der­stand­able to many. Yet the views of many in Char­lot­teville in favour of a mall on the beach al­so have to be un­der­stood too–with­out a re­searcher's own moral­i­ty af­fect­ing their nar­ra­tive.

Of course when the dust set­tles there is a wide spec­trum of dif­fer­ent rea­sons for and against ur­ban de­vel­op­ment in the eco­log­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive area and tra­di­tion­al­ly qui­et fish­ing vil­lage that is Char­lot­teville.

Two of the nar­ra­tives some lo­cals mo­bilise to sup­port their own points of view are that those in favour of the mall have tak­en gov­ern­ment bribes and those against the mall are drug deal­ers. Both nar­ra­tives might make sense in in­di­vid­ual cas­es, but it's hard to be­lieve these ru­mours make sense when ap­plied to a whole com­mu­ni­ty. Rather, they ob­scure ra­tio­nal de­bate, po­larise the is­sue, and di­vide the com­mu­ni­ty. One won­ders who ben­e­fits from such di­vi­sion?

When record­ing ac­counts of groups and their cul­ture(s), re­flex­iv­i­ty can en­hance ob­jec­tiv­i­ty. And while it's cer­tain­ly true with­in an­thro­pol­o­gy to­tal ob­jec­tiv­i­ty is im­pos­si­ble; how can it ever be when the da­ta in­stru­ment is a hu­man be­ing? Re­flex­iv­i­ty can func­tion as a fair­ly use­ful check and bal­ance to the sub­tleties of cul­tur­al im­pe­ri­al­ism and/or eth­no­cen­trism.

This brings us back to last's week's col­umn on pover­ty, where in the finest tra­di­tions of eth­no­cen­trism, a small part of my pa­tri­ar­chal, Eu­ro­pean up-bring­ing, made a blas� as­sump­tion about ide­al fam­i­ly types in the Caribbean.In list­ing some of the re­al­i­ties of pover­ty I in­clud­ed the no­tion of the "bro­ken home." My in­ten­tion was to lament the lack of male fig­ures and sup­port. Yet the point came over to some as an im­pli­ca­tion the nu­clear fam­i­ly–that stal­wart of Eu­ro­pean so­ci­ety–is the on­ly suc­cess­ful fam­i­ly type.

Clear­ly, re­search in the Caribbean has shown in de­tail how as­sump­tions about an ide­al fam­i­ly type are mis­lead­ing. There are many ex­am­ples of suc­cess­ful non-nu­clear mod­els–the ex­tend­ed and the ma­tri­fo­cal fam­i­ly are two ob­vi­ous ones.

And as one com­ment re­mind­ed me: "What is a bro­ken home... It is tak­en to mean a fam­i­ly that is not the nu­clear mod­el ex­cept the non-nu­clear mod­el has been the Caribbean cul­tur­al norm. We im­pose the nu­clear mod­el on our so­ci­eties and then mea­sure how far we are from it and talk of bro­ken homes.

See nu­mer­ous ar­ti­cles on Caribbean fam­i­ly forms by Mer­le Hodge and re­search that says more than 40 per cent of Caribbean fam­i­lies are and have been fe­male-head­ed. This is OUR norm and we should mea­sure our­selves by our re­al­i­ty."

In sum re­flex­iv­i­ty might not sound too ex­cit­ing. Yet it's the sub­tle, al­most missed state­ments about norms, such as one type of fam­i­ly is the best type of fam­i­ly or malls are a sign of de­vel­op­ment, which when tal­lied up with all the for­eign con­tent we con­sume every­day, con­tribute to the den­i­gra­tion of lo­cal cul­ture on our terms for the ven­er­a­tion of for­eign cul­tur­al norms.

�2 Dr Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine