Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Each institution becomes tangible and concrete through the organisations that
members create to fulfil these ideas and beliefs. Non-adherents are also part of an
institution; they form an opposing or peripheral group.
Socialization is the process through which the cherished ideas and beliefs of one
generation become the cherished ideas of the next. Based on values, norms arise. The
status of a person decides his/her role according to institutional beliefs about how
such a person should act.
The Family
The social institution of the family represents the cherished ideas and beliefs that
people have about rearing children and socializing them into the norms of their
society. African families are mainly matrifocal (the mother is the centre of the family)
while Indian families are historically patriarchal (rule of the father). In patriarchal
families, matrifocal elements may occur.
During colonial rule and today, the nuclear family was and is seen as the ideal to
which the society should aspire. The other types of unions were diagnosed as
disorganized families or unstable unions which are inferior to the nuclear family.
This led to the acceptance of gender stereotypes with the male being breadwinners
and authority figures and the women being homemakers and caregivers.
African retentions
Slavery
Economic thesis
However, they seek several successive relationships, not a burdensome one.
Gender inequality
In the Caribbean, the extensive network of kin constituted the family, not the
household. The practices of ritual godparenthood and fictive kinship show the
importance of kin in different types of Caribbean family, especially Christian families.
Cooperation, support and caring for family members are normal parts of family life,
including the practice of child shifting. Some pieces of land are known as family
land whereby ownership is by all family members and can be used by various
members according to needs. Extended families are common among Indian
households as these previous indentured labourers did not experience strong attempts
to muzzle their cultural traditions and practices as did the African slaves.
The family provides the function of reproduction, socialisation and economics and
financing and love and a sense of belongingness. From the conflict perspective, it can
be seen that labour has tomove to where employment is located, leaving behind the
extended family. The exploitation and oppression of workers leads to the oppression
of their families. It also facilitates the sexual division of labour (men work outside and
women stay home). It is argued that the assigning of roles through institutional values
has led to family oppression, abuse and violence.
Individuals
Groups
African families The kinship network among these are strong. Relatives and close
friends are expected to help each other in times of need, creating a huge support
network. People in the diaspora send money back home or sponsor family members to
become new migrants in the metropole.
Women Women are seen primarily as mothers and caregivers. They also usually
work outside the home. These institutional ideas are responsible for gender
socialization.
Institutions
Family Although the nuclear family has long been privileged as the ideal form of
family, the institutional ideas of family are more accepting of different families. The
idea of the nuclear family has now expanded to include single-parent families, same
sex families and reconstituted families.
Education Educators continually call for parental involvement as it is known that a
childs academic success is based largely on support received at home.
Religion It is from the family that members learn about religious practices. It is the
responsibility of the family, for example, to get a Christian child baptised and to take
him/her to church. The extent to which the family engages in religious activity will
affect the religious perceptions of its members. If the elders of the family are of
different religions, children may either be socialised into one, neither or both.
Education
Education is concerned with socializing members of society into the norms, values,
knowledge and skills that a society deems important (functionalist perspective).
Informal education (primary socialization) refers to the learning about living and
surviving in society into which one was born while formal education (secondary
socialization) refers to the transmission of knowledge and skills in social
organizations such a schools. It is concerned with what the young should know and
how learning should take place.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Under slavery, formal education was largely for the children of the Europeans.
Education for the enslaved was limited to religious education (from the Spanish).
The 1834 Emancipation Act ensured that through the Negro Education Grant that
elementary schools (education was not expected to go further than this) would be built
throughout the British Caribbean.
Only the elements of reading, writing, arithmetic and a little geography were offered.
The curriculum was steeped in English values, songs, poems, stories and customs.
The history and culture of other ethnic groups were not considered as there was the
strong feeling that only deeper understanding of western culture could help us to
develop into a modern nation.
A few secondary schools which charged fees were established. They were based on
English grammar schools and a classical curriculum. The elites sought to block the
former enslaved and their descendants from accessing secondary education.
Some persons (mostly males) who attended these schools were able to attend British
universities and became involved in efforts at decolonization.
The idea was that only children who are bright and show aptitude for academic work
should be educated at the secondary level and beyond, leading to the advent of
Common Entrance exams.
Schools are dangerous places for children and foster a hatred for learning among
students and a disability to think critically. Those with this idea home-school their
children.
PURPOSES OF EDUCATION
Aftermath of slavery
To the British to inculcate British values and customs to make governance easier
In contemporary society
Social cohesion and harmony enabling the people of a society, especially a plural
society, to come together as they would have all experienced a common curriculum
As the means and end of human development people could be given the
opportunities, via education, to develop themselves; this belief includes the inclusion
of all, a Caribbean focus of the curriculum and the learning via interaction with
students
Individuals
However, for underachievers (for various reasons), the institution of education has
engendered feelings of low self esteem and very little is put in place to re-orient the
student who has left school without credentials.
Groups
Institutions
Religion
The common idea and belief across most religions is that there are sacred elements
which should govern our lives, as opposed to the profane things of this world.
Religion includes:
The prescription of ideal behaviours
Collective worship involving rituals and ceremonies which impact on the afterlife
Religion often has to contend with secular values practices and behaviours which
seek to promote non-religious ideas.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Religion is seen as having the function of preserving order and social cohesion by
engendering unity and social solidarity (especially if part of a mainstream religion). It
helps members to feel a sense of belonging, to provide support and guidance, and to
create a community of believers of certain values
Caribbean people accepted membership into one of the major religions of Europe or
one of the Protestant religions, whose leaders came later as missionaries. Countries
where the Spanish and French were dominant have a dominant Roman Catholic
Church.
In the aftermath of emancipation, there was a full flowering of syncretic religions that
had their first genesis under slavery. Grassroot religions were strong but their practice
made the colonial authorities uneasy.
In slavery days, obeah was outlawed because of its association with the slave
resistance.
The institution of religion (especially in the form of syncretic religions) has always
held strong resistant elements that were opposed to colonialism.
Rastafarianism was formed in the 1930s in Jamaica with roots which lay in Myal and
Revivalism traditions and the philosophy of Marcus Garvey. It is a millenarian
movement which has belief that Jah will personally reign on Earth, in Ethiopia in the
end times and save his chosen people. Rastafarianism calls for introspection about
our absorption into mainstream capitalist values.
The influx of indentured labour brought Hindus to Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname. In
Trinidad, the different Hindu sects (e.g. Sanatan Dharma) own schools today. Many
Hindus converted to Presbyterianism owing to the efforts of the Canadian Mission
who went as missionaries into the sugar estates in the nineteenth century. They also
founded schools and a teachers college.
One dominant idea of religion in the past was that Christianity could be an asset in
bettering yourself.
Muslims were also imported as indentured labourers and relatively few were
converted by the Canadian Mission. The Indian Muslim community is being widened
to include African converts. In Trinidad, the different Muslim organizations (e.g.
Trinidad Muslim League) own and manage schools. The Jamaat-al-Muslimeen, a
black Muslim group, was responsible for the 1990 uprising.
Religion helps members to feel a sense of belonging, to provide support and guidance,
and to create a community of believers of certain values
Individuals
Groups
Institutions
Bahais find it extremely complicated to function in a nation state as they believe in
one global society.
Religions may keep families together where the members are of religions which ban
divorce.
As discussed earlier, many elite schools are denominational schools where the
institution of education meets the institution of religion.
Religion has the potential to generate conflict. This is possible based on those ideas
that do not tolerate or recognise other religions or privilege the religions of dominant
groups. There is also within-group diversity whereby groups have different beliefs
such as the Charismatic Movement in the Roman Catholic Church.
Justice System
The justice system refers to the ideas and beliefs in a society about protecting and
preserving the rights and obligations of citizens. The social organization of justice
consists of the:
Political framework
Legal framework
Judicial framework
The notion of basic rights of humans by virtue of being human is only a recent idea.
Europeans did not regard others as having the same rights as they did and other
groups did not regard each other as equals. The protection of human rights was
brought to the fore after the Second World War and is done to promote justice,
fairness and social stability. The United Nations was also created and the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has guided the constitutions of
many Caribbean countries.
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Caribbean justice systems are inherited from that of the English but the administration
of these differs from the rhetoric. Practices are fraught with self-interest,
discriminatory features and fraud.
Individuals
Groups
Institutions