*CARIBBEAN STUDIES*
HYBRIDIZATION
Presented By: Group Four
Group Four Members:
 Shonika McKain
Kellen George
Sherrika Maynard
Sadé Melville-Peters
Hybridization
This refers to processes of cultural and ethnic
mixing to produce new or ‘creole’ forms. Meeting and
mixing in the Caribbean region have been going on for more
than five hundred years. The term is borrowed from biology
and is used in Caribbean life to describe many levels of
meeting and mixing and creating something new, especially
fusion between different races to produce hybrid peoples
and cultures.
Racial and Ethnic Hybridization
o Amerindian, African, and to a lesser extent Indian women, were
forced to cohabit with and have children for the European
conquistadors, slave masters and overseers. Sexual unions
between persons of different races, resulting in children of mixed
race, is called Miscegenation.
o Europeans first encountered the Amerindians in the fifteenth
century, and in that violent impact between the powerful and the
powerless, the mixed race of Mestizos was born. (Euro-Amerinidian Mestizo,
Afro-Amerindian Mestizo, Afro-European Mestizo, and so on.)
o In the terminology of British historians, enslaved Africans and
their white European overlords produced the ethnic group,
known as Mulattoes.
o From the very beginning of the Conquest, the Spaniards regarded
the aboriginal inhabitants as subhuman. This notion of racial
superiority was extended to encompass the enslaved and, later,
indentured populations who were of a different race. Racial and
ethnic hybridization, then, underscored and emphasized the
prevailing ideologies in the society, equating skin colour with
social constructions of superiority/inferiority.
o Eventually, these lighter-skinned children were somehow ‘better’
than their maternal ancestors, they were dealt with more
leniently, all because they had biological/physical traits
publicizing their European connection. As a result of this, a
Pigmentocracy evolved, in which persons of fairer complexion
wielded more prestige and power in the society than others.
o The Polyglot (knowing or using several languages) peoples of the Caribbean
showcase the rich racial and ethnic diversity of the region,
resulting in hybridization.
Cultural Hybridization
This term is defined as the development of new cultural
forms out of existing ones through a period of contact and
interaction. It also includes cultural traditions, language and
different mass communications from a society and mixing it into
another society creating a new culture from its current one.
Religion
o A social institution which embodies the valued ideas and beliefs
that society has about our relationship to a divine or sacred entity
and the afterlife. When religions of the world met in the
Caribbean region, they underwent considerable hybridization or
syncretism into creolized forms.
o African religions came with the enslaved people and lived in their
imagination and memories. They created many syncretic
religious forms that were adopted to their conditions of life and
often differed in significant ways from European Cosmology (beliefs about
the nature of the universe and reality).
o Myal - an early Caribbean religion that developed in Jamaica,
where Christian elements were blended with African views.
Baptists, after fleeing the American War of Independence, settled
in Jamaica and carried that religion with them, where they
incorporated, transferred and transformed Christian doctrines
and concepts into a Myal world view.
o Hybridization and Religion is about how Christianity has changed
and adapted to different cultures in society. In other words, when
the enslaved people came to the Caribbean, the Europeans tried
to enforce their culture and religion onto them and instead of
them enforcing Christianity on themselves, the enslaved
individuals then adapted Christianity to their religious beliefs.
Language
In most Caribbean Countries, it is fair to say that the
‘creole’ exists as a Continuum. However, the African languages that
enslaved the population were not usually written languages, so
that the ‘creole’ forms which mixed, emerged and evolved would
differ greatly from the European 'master' language. These hybrid
forms were usually referred to as ‘creole’ or ‘patois’. The basilect
includes the raw form or the least socially prestige (Tobago,
Guyana, Jamaica), mesolect refers to the languages used by most
creole persons (Trinidad), while acrolect is the Standard English
(Highly Prestigious – Barbados).
Creoles were developed when different cultural groups,
such as, the Amerindians and Europeans, were brought into the
Caribbean where they spoke different languages.
Processes of Cultural Hybridization
o Cultural Erasure – this refers to practices that have died out or are
dying out. Thus, a culture can survive based on the artefacts it has
left behind.
o Cultural Retention – this refers to practices that have survived even
when most other forms and symbols of culture are no longer
evident.
o Cultural Renewal – this occurs when a group goes through a
conscious rejuvenation process and returns to some elements of
its culture, which it believes have been ignored or suppressed.
Cultural Change
o Enculturation – this is a process of socialization whereby a person
becomes part of another’s culture. A person can become
enculturated through processes of ‘acculturation’ and
‘assimilation’, which have been policies tried by the various
Eurpoean colonizers in the Caribbean.
o Assimilation – this occurs when a dominant group makes a bid to
enculturate another by attempting to supplant all aspects of its
culture and make it over into the image of the dominant group.
The French intended to convert the British people into French
people, culturally speaking. Thus local and indigenous customs,
beliefs and yearnings were ignored.
o Transculturation – this describes the process whereby a culture
changes drastically, actually overcoming itself and translating into
something new. Cuba, before and after the revolution,
exemplifies this process.
o Interculturation – this refers to the mixing of cultures that goes on
between groups who share a space. The groups do not necessarily
give up their own culture, but participate in various ways in each
other’s lives.
Bibliography
o Mohammed, J. (2007). ‘Caribbean Studies For CAPE Examinations:
An Interdisciplinary Approach’ . Macmillan Caribbean.
o Stockhammer, P. W. (2012). ‘Conceptualizing Cultural
Hybridization: A Transdisciplinary Approach’ . Heidelberg: Springer.
*The End*