A place or a people? Social and cultural geographies of the Anglophone Caribbean

David Dodman

Published: 02 Oct 2008

[Name of Instructor]

Anglophone Caribbean

Introduction

The author begins the articles by giving a brief overview of the perception of the people about the Caribbean. He talks about the palm trees, sunshine, and mangrove swamp. All these perceptions are valid and actually exist in this area. The Caribbean share a lot commonality with the Americas and its culture is shaped according to it.

He uses citations from articles to discuss the issues that were faced by outsiders who wanted to explore and write about the Anglophone islands. He gives a view of the outsiders who wish to write about this region but are unable to get accurate facts since the only people who know them are the insiders. Despite these issues and years of study, people of the area have managed to study the people of the area.

Discussion

The name Caribbean, which designates this geographic area, comes from the Carib ethnic group, which inhabited the Lesser Antilles before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. The word Carib became corrupted in the Italian language and was pronounced “caniba,” a pronunciation that gave rise to the words cannibal and cannibalism, a phenomenon noted by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage. The Caribbean basin is composed of more than 1,000 islands, islets, and keys and has a population of 40 million inhabitants.

As a region, the Caribbean can be spoken of in a wider sense and in a stricter sense. In the wider sense, the Caribbean includes the coasts of Venezuela, Colombia, Central America, and the Mexican state of Yucatán. In the stricter sense, the Caribbean includes a chain of islands that extend from the Mexican state of Yucatán to the Venezuelan coast.

The author is arguing about the statements that are made on the islands. The Caribbean right now is much different from what it was a few years ago. This requires a critical investigation into the method that was used to collect information about the region. One major reason for the difference in the information available and what actually exists is that tension always exists between the foreigners and locals. The locals do not feel comfortable with the idea of foreigners visiting them in order to extract information about their culture, geography, and way of living. Therefore, those who wished to collect information had to rely on limited data available from experiences and observations. Another issue is that the Caribbean is still developing; therefore, research needs to be continuously conducted in order to give the readers a complete report of the culture and geography of the region.

The recent decolonization of the islands has made it a popular subject area for writers. Another reason for its popularity is its close ties with the United States and United Kingdom. Ties with these two nations means that the culture of the Anglophone Islands has been greatly influenced by two distinct cultures.

The works conducted by social scientists are relevant and a vast amount of information is ...