Homing Modern Freedoms

Cultural Dynamics, 2009

Puncta, 2022

Annual Review of Anthropology, 2006

In the past two decades, analogies drawn from supposedly Caribbean processes of creolization have begun to command increasing interest in anthropology. Examining historical as well as contemporary social uses of this terminology in its region of origin, as well as linguistic, sociocultural, and archaeological extrapolations from such usages, this review argues that although, as an analytical metaphor, “creolization” may appear to remedy certain deficits in long-standing anthropological agendas, the current unreflexive use of it is neither defensible on empirical grounds nor theoretically well advised. Yet while this review argues against further uncritical extensions of such metaphorics, it analyzes their current proliferation as a social phenomenon worthy of anthropological analysis in its own right.

Globalizations, 2007

In this article, I provide a comparative discussion of Creoles and creolization. The core concept centres on the cross-fertilization between different cultures as they interact. When creolization occurs, participants select particular elements from incoming or inherited cultures, endow these with meanings different from those they possessed in the original cultures and then creatively merge these to create new varieties that supersede the prior forms. While discussions of creolization are common in linguistics, studies of popular culture and historical studies of certain plantation societies, I use the notion here as a contemporary and general sociological term. I argue that creolization is a key aspect of cultural globalization and provide more detailed discussion of new understandings of creolization in Brazil, South Africa and the USA. I contrast manifest and strident forms of 'monocultural' power in the reassertion of nationalism, narrow ethnicities and religious affinities with the more subtle but pervasive forms of 'fugitive power' found in the construction and affirmation of creolized identities. Creolization is only one aspect of fugitive power, but it is one with an intriguing past, an increasingly visible present and, I will suggest, a promising future.

American Ethnologist, 2006

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Caribbean Quarterly, 2017