Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Series Preface
- Contents
- The Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Introduction: Ethnicity, as Ever?
- Chapter 2 Race, Culture and Identity in the New World: Five National Versions
- Chapter 3 Ethnic Difference, Plantation Sameness
- Chapter 4 Haiti and the Terrified Consciousness Of The Caribbean
- Chapter 5 Museums, Ethnicity and Nation-Building: Reflections from the French Caribbean
- Chapter 6 Ethnicity and Social Structure in Contemporary Cuba
- Chapter 7 'Constitutionally White': the Forging of a National Identity in the Dominican Republic
- Chapter 8 The Somatology of Manners: Class, Race and Gender in the History of Dance Etiquette in the Hispanic Caribbean
- Chapter 9 JAmaican Dccolonizatioll and the Development of National Culture
- Chapter 10 Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Exodus: the Dutch Caribbean Predicament
- Index
- Titles Published in the AAA Series
Chapter 5 - Museums, Ethnicity and Nation-Building: Reflections from the French Caribbean
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Series Preface
- Contents
- The Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Introduction: Ethnicity, as Ever?
- Chapter 2 Race, Culture and Identity in the New World: Five National Versions
- Chapter 3 Ethnic Difference, Plantation Sameness
- Chapter 4 Haiti and the Terrified Consciousness Of The Caribbean
- Chapter 5 Museums, Ethnicity and Nation-Building: Reflections from the French Caribbean
- Chapter 6 Ethnicity and Social Structure in Contemporary Cuba
- Chapter 7 'Constitutionally White': the Forging of a National Identity in the Dominican Republic
- Chapter 8 The Somatology of Manners: Class, Race and Gender in the History of Dance Etiquette in the Hispanic Caribbean
- Chapter 9 JAmaican Dccolonizatioll and the Development of National Culture
- Chapter 10 Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Exodus: the Dutch Caribbean Predicament
- Index
- Titles Published in the AAA Series
Summary
Just off the north-south road that skirts the Atlantic coast of Martinique, ‘a mini-village made up of rural huts from the 19505 … pennits the new generation to discover the scenes their ancestors knew, the way of life of their parents and grandparents…. Four years in the making, this open-air museum is a gem of tradition. On Sunday afternoons … members of the folkloric troupe Madinina install themselves there to recreate a living portrait of that bygone era’ (Staszewski, 1993:48-50). A few kilometers to the south, in the cove of Anse Figuier, another privately-run museum, the island's first ‘éco musée', also targets the 19505 - ‘the traditional society we have forgotten in our rush to modernity. . fa Martinique pro[onde’ (E. H-H., 1992:44-5).
Nostalgia for the ‘ancestral’ way of life is big in 1990s Martinique. Celebration of the ‘patrimoine’ permeates the local press, radio, and T.V., animated by artists, musicians, dancers, tale-tellers, writers, theater groups, and cultural associations. Commercialized folklore is available at every village fete and large hotel, and it floods the airwaves. One might well ask, why this surge of interest in the everyday life of only a generation ago?
The early 1960s marked a watershed in Martinique and its sister department of Guadeloupe. France began an aggressive program of development and integration that transformed these island neo-colonies into modern consumer societies with the highest standards of living in the region. Infrastructure boomed: roads, electricity, telephones, and piped water arrived in the most remote communities, and airports and hotels were dramatically expanded. Social programs (a panoply of welfare benefits, pensions, unemployment insurance) pumped cash into family budgets. The standard size of houses tripled even as family size began to plummet. Agriculture was encouraged to atrophy as service industries (and the civil service) burgeoned. The number of cars per family quickly came to rival that in the US. Supermarkets, as well as megastores for building products, appliances, and other consumer goods, sprang up across the landscape; in the context of both France and the wider world, Guadeloupe and Martinique became the largest per capita consumers of champagne anywhere. The media were modernized and contributed to making the French language a part of everyone's daily life.
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- Ethnicity in the CaribbeanEssays in Honor of Harry Hoetink, pp. 81 - 105Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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