Afro-Creole - by Richard D E Burton (Paperback)

About the Book

This wide-ranging book explores the origins, development, and character of Afro-Caribbean cultures from the slave period to the present day. Richard D. E. Burton focuses on ways in which African traditions--including those in religion, music, food...

Book Synopsis

This wide-ranging book explores the origins, development, and character of Afro-Caribbean cultures from the slave period to the present day. Richard D. E. Burton focuses on ways in which African traditions--including those in religion, music, food, dress, and family structure--were transformed by interaction with European and indigenous forces to create the particular cultures of Jamaica, Trinidad, and Haiti. He demonstrates how the resulting Afro-Creole cultures have both challenged and reinforced the social, political, and economic status quo in these countries.Jamaican slaves opposed slavery in many ways and one of the most important, Burton suggests, was the development of Afro-Christianity. He pays particular attention to the African-derived Christmas celebration of Jonkonnu as an expression of opposition and then documents religion in the post-slavery period, with an emphasis on Rastafarianism in Jamaica and Vodou in Haiti. The element of play has always figured importantly in Afro-Caribbean life. Burton examines the evolution of carnival and calypso in Trinidad and describes the significance of cricket in defining Caribbean national identity. Based on ten years of research, Afro-Creole draws on historical, anthropological, sociological, and literary sources. Burton characterizes the emergence of Caribbean identity with three different national flavors and demonstrates how culture both reflects and impacts people's changing sense of their own political power.

Review Quotes

Afro-Creole admirably captures the essence of what it means to be Caribbean. By daring to 'run against orthodox thinking' on the matter of the culture of resistance, the author has provided a provocative and thoroughly enjoyable reexamination of the entire question of African survival in the Caribbean. He will not end debate on the matter, but he has certainly greatly enriched it.

A bold and cogent study.

A fine and comprehensive history.... It is perhaps the most useful survey yet on the formation of distinctively Afro-Creole forms of public expression in the Anglophonic West Indies.

Burton's work is perhaps the best researched, most thoughtful, intellectually provocative study of the complex relationship between history, religion, poetics, culture, and social change especially, but not exclusively, in the English-speaking Caribbean. It is powerfully written, humorous, and meticulously examines the psychology and paradoxically religious anthropology of Jamaican and Trinidadian politics.... The essence of the argument is that popular protests, regardless of the practical forms like cricket, dance, or carnival in Trinidad and revivalist religions like Myal and Rastafari in Jamaica, simultaneously challenge and reinforce the status quo and are accepted substitutes for overt power confrontations.... Burton's conclusion suggests that the order and conservatism of most Caribbean societies may be explained by the important role of cultural activities as a historical medium for diffusing and controlling the masses.

This is a stimulating, wide-ranging and theoretically well-informed anthropological and historical exploration of Afro-Caribbean popular culture.

About the Author

Richard D. E. Burton is Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the School of African and Asian Studies at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Blood in the City: Violence and Revelation in Paris, 1789-1945 (a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, 2002), also from Cornell, and of two books on Baudelaire.