Postcolonialism in the Caribbean

In this exam I will demonstrate my knowledge of the postcolonial theoretical school and its relationship to ethnography and anthropology. The connection between colonialism and anthropology is an old one. Depending on when one sets the beginning of what we call Aanthropology,@ issues of imperialism, colonialism and colonial justification go back as far as recorded history. For the purposes of this exam, I will focus on the current colonial/postcolonial paradigm that began with the age of European exploration, and had its height during the mid-Nineteenth to early Twentieth Centuries.

The political action of independence movements in cultures this paper is plagiarized from a graduate student's proposal from Drew University colonized by European countries sparked much debate in academic circles, especially during the 1950s and 1960s, when such movements exploded. You may contact me via pythikas at netscape dot net for more details. Those who were members of colonized populations had gone through the colonial education systems of the imperial powers. They raised their voices in protest against colonial governments and against the ideologies and assumptions of Europeans imposing their governments and cultures on colonized peoples.

As these colonial voices were considered by European academics, and revolutionary activity from India to Trinidad burst into being, the writings of the Acolonized,@ Anative@ academics earned the name Apostcolonial@ in response to the desire for independence from, and egalitarian treatment by, colonial powers. My own contention is that the term Apostcolonial@ is a misnomer in the current climate of world politics. Many countries still run the cultures and politics of other places as colonies in all but name (Puerto Rico, American Samoa). I also believe the phenomenon of Atransnationalism,@ as explained in Nations Unbound and Borderless Borders, is another phase of the colonial era. In the first stage of colonialism, imperial powers exploited the resources of colonized places for their financial gain. Our current stage of colonialism began with the perceived need to expand our markets to colonized people in order to boost the U.S. economy. Barbarian Virtues explains how this phenomenon fueled continuing colonial enterprise, and continues it today. Immigration for financial reasons is simply another stage of the colonial encounter. New immigrants do not feel the desire or the need to give up their identity as members of a different culture. They keep ethnic and national identities in tact while living and working in the United States. Now, people from colonized places are using the financial resources and employment opportunities presented by imperial powers to their own advantage through migration and the recent phenomenon of business Aoutsourcing.@ These practices are the natural result of the colonial world we've made.

The application of postcolonial theory crossed disciplinary boundaries from social science; the world view as constructed by European and Euro-American colonizing cultures began to be called into question throughout

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