Caribbeanist Anthropology and Minerva's Owl: Lessons Forgotten, Lessons Learned

Abstract

This essay presents a sketch of what a critical genealogy of the anthropology of the Caribbean might involve. After looking at the origins of anthropological interest in the region, I will focus on two case studies that, for better or worse, may be said to have had lasting diagnostic value for key epistemological orientations in Caribbeanist anthropology. I do so by examining M. G. Smith's Plural Society model and Julian Stewart's Puerto Rico Project in their Cold War contexts to point out why these truly pathbreaking endeavors resulted in a vision of Caribbeanness that we may well want to rethink. [M. G. Smith, Julian Steward, beyond peasant and plantation studies]

Facing the flames

“…I am not the first to engage in a thought experiment of this sort when it comes to Herskovits. Scott (2014, p. 38), for instance, looks to Herskovits's research in Haiti during the twilight of the US military occupation as a missed opportunity in which “he might well have constructed Haiti as a political problem about sovereignty rather than a cultural problem about Africa in the Americas.” Indeed, for anthropologists of the African Americas, the return to Herskovits has become something of a “customary, if not mandatory” obligation (Apter, 2004, p. 160; see also Mintz, 1964; Palmié, 2002, 2022; Price & Price, 2003; Rocklin, 2012; Scott, 1991; Slocum & Thomas, 2003). Ultimately, my archival reverie did not yield what I had hoped.…”