عنوان

Caymanianness, history, culture, tradition, and globalisation :

Number

TLets541165

Title Proper

Caymanianness, history, culture, tradition, and globalisation :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Williams, Christopher A.

Title Proper by Another Author

assessing the dynamic interplay between modern and traditional(ist) thought in the Cayman Islands

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Warwick

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2010

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

University of Warwick

Text preceding or following the note

2010

Text of Note

The research undertaken for this largely qualitative dissertation draws on newspaper articles, oral histories, historical documentation, open-ended interviews, and to a lesser extent, questionnaires, in the effort to ultimately confirm the extent to which the benefitting forces of globalization have fractured any existing traditional-historical cultural body of knowledge and expression among the Caymanian people. Indeed, by 2009 some Caymanians had long been verbally denouncing the social and cultural ills of globalization - inclusive of multiculturalism - on their so-called traditional, unassuming way of life, some of them clamoring for an extensive purge of the many foreign nationals in "their" Cayman Islands. Yet, other Caymanians have become somewhat invested in the idea of multicultural "oneness" ostensibly for the sake of peaceful coexistence, harmony and prosperity as these work towards the promotion of a global, borderless cultural awareness. This dissertation relies on theoretical frames centred both on the discrete natures of, and the dualistic struggle between, these two opposing ideological-cultural forces. That this struggle is taking place in the present age, I anticipate the ways in which more modern understandings, which are potentially open to liberating subjectivities, must clash with "historical", xenophobic and nationalistic viewpoints, viewpoints which have constantly proven contradictory given their adherents' complacent acceptance of, and participation in, a localised economic prosperity substantively dependent on foreign input. Thus in aggregate terms, this dissertation pinpoints the various effects of an evolving scheme of values and counter-values on an ideologically torn Caymanianness whose contradictory traditional half is especially fighting for its "cultural purity" in an era where its 'reinvented' logic is being more and more regarded as anachronistic and somewhat irrational.

F1201 Latin America (General)

HM Sociology

Williams, Christopher A.

University of Warwick

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y