Women and Change in the Caribbean A Pan-Caribbean Perspective [Paperback]

Recent discussion of postmodern culture describes a movement from center to periphery, privileging cultures that were formerly marginalized. Women and Change in the Caribbean, a study of women marginalized by both gender and race in a region such as the Caribbeanitself marginalized in global termsattempts to extract insights relevant both within and beyond geographical confines.

This volume offers a feminist interpretation of a multicultural society emerging from colonialism and in the process of change and restructuring. The nineteen chapters include case studies of fifteen different Caribbean territories including Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Grenada, and Guyana. The book is divided into two sections: the first looks at womens status and gender relations in the private and public spheres; the second looks at womens economic activity. Taking a broad pan-Caribbean comparative view contributors discuss territories with American, British, Dutch, Danish, French, and Spanish colonial traditions and current political links.

The contributors come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds including agriculture, anthropology, economics, geography, history, sociology, and womens studies.

Preface by Janet H. Momsen
Contributors
1 Introduction
Janet H. Momsen
Section One
Private & Public Spheres of Womens Lives
Part 1 The Domestic Domain & the Community
2 Reputation & respectability reconsidered: a new perspective on Afro-Caribbean peasant women
Jean Besson
3 Marriage & concubinage amoung the Sephardic merchant elite of Curacao
Eva Abraham-Van der Mark
4 Changing roles in the life cycles of women in traditional West Indian houseyards
Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher
5 Womens place is every place: merging domains and womens roles in Barbuda & Dominica
Riva Berleant-Schiller and William M. Maurer
Part 2 The Intersection of Reproduction & Production
6 Women in Guadeloupe: the paradoxes of reality
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