The African Diaspora and the Disciplines

6. Caribbean Sociology, Africa, and the African Diaspora

6 Caribbean Sociology, Africa, and the African Diaspora Paget Henry If I were writing about sociology’s representation of Africa and its diaspora in the 1960s or 1970s, I probably would write it from the perspective of American sociology in spite of being a person from and a sociologist of the Caribbean. This approach, which now sounds so peculiar, would probably have been the case because of my sociological training at Cornell University and also because of the very dependent relationship that existed between Caribbean and American sociology during those decades. However , with the turn to neo-­Smithian models of market-­ oriented growth in the 1980s and the ending of the Cold War, the period of convergence between these two sociologies around Keynesian state-­ oriented models of development came to a rather abrupt end.1 In the 1980s and 1990s, Caribbean and American sociology experienced very different patterns of adjustment and reorganization. This divergence has made it possible and even necessary for me to address this problem of African representation from an emerging Africana point within the terrain of Caribbean sociology . As the events of the current economic crisis—which has so far resulted in a trillion dollar bailout of the financial sector—continues to unfold , we can only wonder at the implications for the future of development theory and my emerging Africana point of view. Nevertheless, from this perspective I will argue that even though the representation of Africa and its diaspora has improved in the second phase, it is still a major problem for Caribbean sociology. I will substantiate this claim in three basic steps: First, I will describe the two major phases in the history of Caribbean sociology. Second, I will point out some of the difficult cleavages and contradictions of this second phase that continue to compromise its ability to adequately represent Africa and its diaspora . Third, I will suggest an Africana solution to this representational problem. 145 146 Paget Henry T h e F i r s t P h a s e o f C a r i bb e a n S o c i o l o g y In its early years, the practice of Caribbean sociology was primarily located at universities in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, as well as at the University of Puerto Rico and branches of the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and Trinidad. Beginning in the early 1960s, sociology in the English-­ speaking Caribbean experienced a period of dynamic growth and prominence that lasted until the early 1980s. This short but golden period was made possible by the coming together of a number of outstanding Caribbean, American, and British sociologists and anthropologists, including M. G. Smith, Lloyd Brathwaite, Vera Rubin, R. T. Smith, Fernando Ortiz, Leo Depres, Edith Clarke, George Roberts, and ­Orlando Patterson. This period gave us such classic works as M. G. Smith’s The Plural Society in the British West Indies, Edith Clarke’s My Mother Who Fathered Me, R. T. Smith’s Negro Family in British Guiana, and Orlando Patterson’s Sociology of Slavery as well as his novels The Children of Sisyphus and An Absence of Ruins. However, the flowering of this golden period depended in large part on a close collaboration with American sociology. All of these Caribbean sociologists and anthropologists did their graduate training in American or British universities, and as a result they drew heavily on the intellectual traditions and resources of American and British sociology and anthropology . Among some of the more prominent American sociologists who were involved in these collaborations were E. Franklin Frazier, Leonard Broom, Edward Shills, Arthur Stinchcombe, Lewis Coser, and the anthropologists George Simpson and Sidney Mintz. At the intellectual center of this collaboration was the tradition/­ modernity issue. The interests of both groups of sociologists and anthropologists converged around the Caribbean as an instance of a moderniz­ ing society. The centrality of this issue for the coming together of these two groups emerges very clearly from M. G. Smith’s account of the field of Caribbean sociology. In his classic essay, “A Plural Framework for Caribbean Studies,” Smith situates Caribbean sociology/anthropology within the larger context of the Caribbean and the American South (1974). As a result, the field of Caribbean sociology/anthropology is portrayed as the joint construction of primarily Caribbean and American sociologists and anthropologists. Smith dates the origin of the field to 1924 with the publication of Martha Beckwith’s Black Roadways. From Beckwith, Smith moves...