Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T07:54:28.169Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ethnogenesis: The Case of British Indians in the Caribbean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2013

Ruben Gowricharn
Ruben Gowricharn*
Affiliation:
Tilburg School of Humanities, Tilburg University, the Netherlands
*
rgow@xs4all.nl
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As a concept, ethnogenesis presupposes a category of individuals that are not a group becomes a group. Most accounts of ethnogenesis exhibit two features: they confuse ethnogenesis with the resilience of ethnicity, and they describe the “emergence” of ethnic groups as a response to external circumstances. This paper deviates from these perspectives by adopting a primordial approach, arguing that internal rather than external forces generate group cohesion. I establish three related propositions: First, while the debate between the so-called “circumstantialists” and “primordialists” suggests that these perspectives can be used interchangeably depending on scholarly preference, I argue that a “primacy” holds in favor of the primordial perspective. Second, I assert that this primordial perspective must be redefined, since ethnogenesis always incorporates “external” elements, thus changing and adapting to specific social and physical ecologies. Consequently, an ethnic group is constituted by the content of the ethnicity which functions as “boundaries.” Third, I contend that the emergence of primordial (though adjusted) ethnicity is not a “natural” process but instead requires actors that shape it, and that the initiatives of ethnic leaders are crucial in this regard. These propositions are established through a comparison of British Indians in the three former Caribbean plantation colonies of Suriname, Guyana, and Jamaica.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 388 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adamson, Alan. 1972. Sugar without Slaves: The Political Economy of British Guyana, 1838–1904. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Alba, Richard and Nee, Victor. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Banton, Michael. 2007. Weber on Ethnic Communities. Nations and Nationalism 13, 1: 19–35.Google Scholar
Barrow, Christine and Reddock, Rhoda, eds. 2001. Caribbean Sociology: Introductory Readings. Kingston: Ian Randle.Google Scholar
Barth, Frederik. 1969. Introduction. In Barth, Frederik, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference. Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press, 9–38.Google Scholar
Barth, Frederik. 1994. Enduring and Emerging Issues in the Analysis of Ethnicity. In Vermeulen, Hans and Govers, Cora, eds., The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond ‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries.’ Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 12–32.Google Scholar
Basch, Linda, Glick Schiller, Nina, and Szanton Blanc, Cristina. 1994. Nations Unbound: Transnational Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bayer, Murat. 2009. Reconsidering Primordialism: An Alternative Approach to the Study of Ethnicity. Ethnic and Racial Studies 32, 9: 1639–57.Google Scholar
Bhagwanbali, Rajinder. 1996. Contracten voor Suriname: Arbeidsmigratie vanuit British-Indie onder het indentured-labourstelsel, 1873–1916. PhD diss., Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands.Google Scholar
Bihari, B. 1974. Het jajmani-systeem in India en aspekten hiervan onder Hindustanis in Suriname. Paramaribo, Surinam: Varekamp.Google Scholar
Billington, Ray A. 1967. The American Frontier. In Bohannan, Paul and Plog, Fred, eds., Beyond the Frontier: Social Processes and Cultural Change. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 3–24.Google Scholar
Bisnauth, Dale. 2000. The Settlement of Indians in Guyana 1890–1930. Leeds, UK: Peepal.Google Scholar
Blumer, Herbert. 1954. What Is Wrong with Social Theory? American Sociological Theory 19, 1: 3–10.Google Scholar
Borhek, J. T. 1970. Ethnic-Group Cohesion. American Journal of Sociology 76, 1: 33–46.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, Antonio. 2010. The Latin American Identity and the African Diaspora: Ethnogenesis in Context. Amherst and New York: Cambria Press.Google Scholar
Breton, Raymond. 1964. Institutional Completeness of Ethnic Communities and the Personal Relations of Immigrants. American Journal of Sociology 70, 2: 193–205.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Census. 1972. The Fourth General Population Census: A Preliminary Report. Paramaribo: Central Bureau of Statistics.Google Scholar
Clarke, Colin, Peach, Ceri, and Vertovec, Steven. 1990. Introduction: Themes in the Study of South Asian Diaspora. In Clarke, C., Peach, C., and Vertovec, S., eds., South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–32.Google Scholar
Conzen, Kathleen, Grabber, David, Morawska, Ewa, Pozetta, George, and Vecoli, Rudolph. 1992. The Invention of Ethnicity: A Perspective from the USA. Journal of American Ethnic History 12: 3–42.Google Scholar
Cornell, Stephen and Hartmann, Douglas. 2007. Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World. London: Sage.Google Scholar
De Klerk, Cornelis J. M. 1953. De immigratie van Hindostanen in Suriname. Amsterdam: Urbi et Orbi.Google Scholar
De Kruijf, Johannes. 2006. Guyana Junction: Globalisation, Localisation, and the Production of East Indianness. PhD diss., Faculty of Social Science, University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.Google Scholar
Dew, Edward. 1978. The Difficult Flowering of Surinam: Ethnicity and Politics in a Plural Society. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Encyclopedia Britannica. n.d. Suriname. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/575240/Suriname/29833/Relief?anchor=ref403641 (accessed 19 Jan. 2012).Google Scholar
Eriksen, Thomas H. 2002. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Erlich, Allen. 1971. History, Ecology, and Demography in the British Caribbean: An Analysis of East Indian Ethnicity. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 27, 1: 166–80.Google Scholar
Erlich, Allen. 1976. Race and Ethnic Identity in Rural Jamaica: The East Indian Case. Caribbean Quarterly 22, 1: 19–26.Google Scholar
Erlich, Allen. 1989. The Cultural Ecology of Two East Indian Populations in Jamaica. In Birbalsingh, Frank, ed., Indenture & Exile: The Indo-Caribbean Experience. Toronto: Tsar Press, 79–90.Google Scholar
Fenton, Steve. 2003. Ethnicity: Key Concepts. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Furnivall, John. 1939. Netherlands India: A Study of a Plural Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gans, Herbert. 1994. Symbolic Ethnicity and Symbolic Religiosity: Towards a Comparison of Ethnic and Religious Acculturation. Ethnic and Racial Studies 17, 4: 577–92.Google Scholar
Garner, Steve. 2008. Guyana 1838–1985: Ethnicity, Class and Gender. Kingston: Ian Randle.Google Scholar
Gautam, Mohan. 1999. The Construction of the Indian Image in Surinam: Deconstructing Colonial Derogatory Notions and Reconstructing Indian Identity. In Gosine, Mahin and Narine, Dhanpaul, eds., Sojourners to Settlers: Indian Migrants in the Caribbean and the Americas. New York: Windsor Press, 125–81.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1967. The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States. In Welch, Claude, ed., Political Modernization: A Reader in Comparative Politics. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 198–218.Google Scholar
Gellner, Ernst. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Gonzalez, Nancie. 1988. Sojourners of the Caribbean: Ethnogenesis and Ethnohistory of the Garifuna. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Milton. 1964. Assimilation in American Life. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gowricharn, Ruben. 1991. Economische transformatie en de staat: Over agrarische modernisering en economische ontwikkeling in Suriname, 1930–1960. PhD diss., Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.Google Scholar
Hale, Henry. 2004. Explaining Ethnicity. Comparative Political Studies 37, 4: 458–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Stuart. 1992. New Ethnicities. In Donald, James and Rattansi, Ali, eds., ‘Race,’ Culture and Difference. London: Sage, 252–59.Google Scholar
Handlin, Oscar. 1951. The Uprooted. Boston: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Hansen, Kjell. 1999. Emerging Ethnification in Marginal Areas of Sweden. Sociologica Ruralis 39, 3: 294–310.Google Scholar
Heilbron, Waldo. 1982. Kleine boeren in de schaduw of the plantation: De politieke ekonomie van de na-slavernijperiode in Suriname. PhD diss., Faculty of Social Science, University of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.Google Scholar
Herskovits, Melville. 1930. The Negro in the New World: The Statement of a New Problem. American Anthropologist 32: 145–55.Google Scholar
Hill, Jonathan, ed. 1996. History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492–1992. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, eds. 1992. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hoefte, Rosemarijn. 1998. In Place of Slavery: A Social History of British Indian and Javanese Labor in Surinam. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
Hoetink, Harry. 1967. The Two Variants of Caribbean Race Relations: A Contribution to the Sociology of Segmented Societies. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Donald. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Isaacs, Harold. 1975. Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Richard. 2008. Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations. Los Angeles and London: Sage.Google Scholar
Ketwaru, Effendi. 1998. De development van Sarnami muziek vanaf 1873. In Hassenkhan, Maurits and Hira, Sandew, eds., Grepen uit 125 jaar Maatschappelijke ontwikkeling van Hindustanen. The Hague: Amrit, 204–17.Google Scholar
Kurien, Prema. 1994. Colonialism and Ethnogenesis: A Study of Kerala, India. Theory and Society 23, 3: 385–417.Google Scholar
Lamur, Humphrey. 1973. The Demographic Evolution of Surinam 1920–1970: A Socio-Demographic Analysis. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Leman, Johan, ed. 2000. The Dynamics of Emerging Ethnicities: Immigrant and Indigenous Ethnogenesis in Confrontation. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Lowenthal, David. 1972. West Indian Societies. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mandle, Jay. 1973. The Plantation Economy: Population and Economic Change in Guyana, 1838–1960. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Mayer, Adrian. 1966. Quasi-Groups in the Study of Complex Societies. In Banton, Michael, ed., The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies. London: Tavistock Publications, 97–122.Google Scholar
Mohapatra, Prabhu. 1995. Restoring the Family: Wife Murders and the Making of a Sexual Contract of Indian Immigrant Labour in British Caribbean Colonies 1860–1920. Studies in History 11: 227–60.Google Scholar
Nagata, Judith. 1981. In Defense of Ethnic Boundaries: The Changing Myths and Charters of Malaya Identity. In Keyes, Charles F., ed., Ethnic Change. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 88–116.Google Scholar
Nagel, Joane. 1994. Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture. Social Problems 41, 1: 152–76.Google Scholar
Naipaul, Vidiadhar S. 1962. The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies—British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America. London: Deutch.Google Scholar
Nath, Dwarka. 1950. A History of British Indians in Guyana. Frome and London: Butler & Tanner Ltd.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Francois. 1985. Toward a Theory of Ethnic Solidarity in Modern Societies. American Sociological Review 50: 133–40.Google Scholar
Olzak, Susan. 1983. Contemporary Ethnic Mobilization. Annual Review of Sociology 9: 355–74.Google Scholar
Premdas, Ralph. 1996. Race and Ethnic Relations in Burnhamite Guyana. In Dabydeen, David and Samaroo, Brinsely, eds., Across the Dark Waters: Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Caribbean. London and Basingstole: MacMillan, 39–64.Google Scholar
Ramdin, Ron. 2000. Arising from Bondage: A History of Indo-Caribbean People. London and New York: Tauris Publishers.Google Scholar
Ramsoedh, Hans. 1990. Suriname 1933–1944: Koloniale politiek en beleid onder Gouverneur Kielstra. PhD diss., University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.Google Scholar
Roosens, Eugeen. 1998. Eigen grond eerst? Primordiale autochtonie. Leuven, Belgium: Acco.Google Scholar
Samaroo, Brinsly. 1987. The Indian Connection: The Influence of Indian Thought and Ideas on East Indians in the Caribbean. In Dabydeen, David and Samaroo, Brinsely, eds., India in the Caribbean. London: Hansib and University of Warwick Center for Caribbean Studies, 43–59.Google Scholar
Sarna, Jonathan. 1978. From Immigrants to Ethnics: Toward a New Theory of ‘Ethnizication.’ Ethnicity 5: 370–78.Google Scholar
Scott, George. 1990. A Resynthesis of the Primordial and Circumstantial Approaches to Ethnic Group Solidarity: Towards an Explanatory Model. Ethnic and Racial Studies 13, 2: 147–71.Google Scholar
Sedney, Jules. 2010. De toekomst van ons verleden: Democratie, etniciteit en politieke machtsvorming in Suriname. Paramaribo: Vaco.Google Scholar
Seecharan, Clem. 2006. Guyana. In Lal, Brij, Reeves, Peter, and Rai, Rajesh, eds., The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora. Singapore: Didier Millet, 287–96.Google Scholar
Seecharan, Clem. 2011. Mother India's Shadow over El Dorado: Indo-Guyanese Politics and Identity 1890s–1930s. Kingston and Miami: Ian Randle Publishers.Google Scholar
Shepherd, Verene. 1993. Transients to Settlers: The Experience of Indians in Jamaica 1845–1950. Leeds, UK: Peepal Tree Books.Google Scholar
Shepherd, Verene. 2004. Belonging and Unbelonging: The Impact of Migration on Discourses of Identity in Jamaican History. Journal of Caribbean History 39: 1–18.Google Scholar
Shepherd, Verene. 2006. Jamaica. In Lal, Brij, Reeves, Peter, and Rai, Rajesh, eds., The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora. Singapore: Didier Millet, 306–11.Google Scholar
Shils, Edward. 1957. Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties. British Journal of Sociology 8, 2: 130–45.Google Scholar
Singaravélou, Pierre. 1990. Indians in the French Overseas Departments: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion. In Clarke, Colin, Peach, Ceri, and Vertovec, Steven, eds., South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 75–88.Google Scholar
Smith, M. G. 1965. The Plural Society in the British West Indies. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Snajder, Edward. 2007. Ethnicizing the Subject: Domestic Violence and the Politics of Primordialism in Kazakhstan. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13: 603–20.Google Scholar
Speckmann, Johannes. 1963. Marriage and Kinship among the Indians in Surinam. Assen: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
Sukul, Kaulesar. 1947. De Hindustanen in Suriname. In Verslag van de Commissie tot bestudering of the staatkundige hervormingen (Government report compiled by a commission). Paramaribo, Suriname, 74–85.Google Scholar
Suny, Ronald. 2001. Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations. Journal of Modern History 73: 862–96.Google Scholar
Thakur, Andra. 1989. British and Dutch Colonial Policies in Guyana and Surinam. In Birbalsingh, Frank, ed., Indenture and Exile: The Indo-Caribbean Experience. Toronto: Tsar Press, 115–25.Google Scholar
Van der Burg, Corstiaan and van der Veer, Peter. 1986. Pundits, Power and Profits: Religious Organization and the Construction of Identity among the Surinamese Hindus. Ethnic and Racial Studies 9, 4: 514–28.Google Scholar
Van Lier, Rudolf. 1949. Samenleving in een grensgebied: Een sociaal-historische studie van de maatschappij in Suriname. 's-Gravenhage: Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Vertovec, Steven. 1996. ‘Official’ and ‘Popular’ Hinduism in the Caribbean: Historical and Contemporary Trends in Surinam, Trinidad and Guyana. In Dabydeen, David and Samaroo, Brinsely, eds., Across the Dark Waters: Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Caribbean. London and Basingstole: MacMillan, 108–30.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology. Vol. 2. Roth, Günther and Wittich, Claus, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas. 2008. The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A Multilevel Process Theory. American Journal of Sociology 113, 4: 970–1022.Google Scholar
Wimmer, Andreas. 2009. Herder's Heritage and Boundary Making Approach: Studying Ethnicity in Immigrant Societies. Sociological Theory 27, 3: 244–70.Google Scholar
Yancey, William, Ericksen, Eugene, and Juliani, Richard. 1976. Emergent Ethnicity: A Review and Reformulation. American Sociological Review 41, 3: 391–403.Google Scholar