“There is no single Caribbean culture.” Do you agree?

Provide arguments and examples to support your

answer.

The term culture can be defined as the full range of learned human behaviour patterns. It includes
beliefs, values, behaviours and physical objects that create people’s way of life. In a sense people create
their culture and this culture in turn shapes their behaviour. Linton (1945) also defines culture as ‘the
way of society’s members; the collection of ideas and habits which they learn, share and transmit from
generation to generation.

The Caribbean to use a cliché is a ‘cultural melting pot’ that has inputs from nearly every continent.
The diasporic spectrum ranges from India, Africa, Europe and China to name the major ones. Therefore
the Caribbean presents a wide range of cultural forms within a small geographic space. The statement,
“there is no single Caribbean culture” is at once true and incorrect at the same time. It is immediately
obvious that no two Caribbean islands bear the same value systems, norms etc according to the
particular historical context. However it is also incorrect because all value systems were informed by the
same original historical models and inputs that are the legacies of colonialism and the plantation. It may
be more accurate to say that the Caribbean illustrates many different hybrids of the original model or
models and in this lies the difference as well as the challenges

Therefore the Caribbean has one culture to the extent that the core cultural determinants of each
Caribbean island remain the same; discovery, colonization, the plantation, slavery/indentureship,
emancipation, independence and globalization. Thus from a historical perspective the shared history is
the indisputable commonality that unifies the Caribbean cultural landscape.

The mere fact that the Caribbean was populated with indigenous people from the same tribe in the
first instance then the same of Africa and to a lesser extent India shows latent retention and
hybridization commonalities rather than differences. The beating of African drums, the music and songs
of resistance, the poetry of reparation all serve as examples of a cultural commonality that transcends
the vacuum of geo-political insularity. Up to this day, the African drum remains a symbol of struggle and
celebration in all Caribbean islands. The country of origin does not matter, the message to the
metropole does and it is a shared iconic intellectual revolt that is based upon a burgeoning sense of
cultural identity.

The peasantry group also attests to the same development paradigm working in each Caribbean
territory. Self-reliance, but also social cooperation was the lesson taught by this group. Today, the same
economic struggle echo across the Caribbean. Clearly from the angle of historical and future
development iniatives such as CARICOM, the CSME and CCJ, reflect regionalism and proves that the
Caribbean shares the same values thus cultural identity.

However on the other hand the statement, ‘there is no single Caribbean culture’ can be true to the
extent that although all Caribbean islands experienced discovery, colonization, the plantation,
slavery/indentureship, emancipation, independence and globalization they all developed differently in
terms of customs, norms and values. This is because the Caribbean is a plural society. M.G Smith the
founder of this thesis explains that a common system of basic institutions is shared in homogeneous
societies. However in plural societies, there are alternative and exclusive institutions that exist and, as a
result, the basic institutions are not shared. In Caribbean societies, he sees the major cultural elements,
the Whites, Africans, East Indians, and Chinese, each practicing different forms of the common
institutions such as marriage, family and religion,

Thus the proportion of a certain cultural element determines the culture and each Caribbean
territory do not have the same mixture of races so the cultures differ. For example if the culture of
Trinidad is compared to that of Jamaica there will be major differences in the cultures. For example in
Trinidad we have a food called ‘doubles’ which comes from the Indians, unlike Jamaica. Also the main
musical art form in Trinidad is Soca and Calypso whereas Reggae is the music Jamaica is famous for.
Similarly Rastafarianism is the main religion in Jamaica however the same cannot be said for the other
islands of the Caribbean.

Thus it is true that the statement, ‘there is no single Caribbean culture’ is both true and incorrect at
the same time.