Hymie Rubenstein - Coping With Poverty: Adaptive Strategies in a Caribbean Village

This ethnography of Leeward Village, a large coastal community on the little-known Caribbean island of St. Vincent, illustrates how people in one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere pull together in positive and creative ways to adjust to the many adversities they face. Like their Black counterparts elsewhere in the Americas, Leeward Villagers are the rural members of a stratified, state-level society; they have been inculcated with society-wide norms and ideals but not given the skills and opportunities to achieve them. Dr. Rubenstein's contribution to the Afro-American anthropological literature is in going beyond the standard account of the manner in which poverty is reflected in family organization, lifestyle, or religious expression. He offers a more encompassing analysis that includes a serious effort to examine the multiple ways poor Black Vincentians cope with the economic difficulties they face.

Hymie Rubenstein is associate professor of anthropology at The University of Manitoba.

Adaptive Strategies in a Caribbean Village

Hymie Rubenstein

First published 1987 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published 2018 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rubenstein, Hymie.
Coping with poverty.
(Westview special studies in social, political, and economic development)
Includes index.
1. BlacksSaint Vincent and the GrenadinesSocial life and customs. 2. BlacksSaint Vincent and the GrenadinesEconomic conditions. 3. Saint Vincent and the GrenadinesSocial conditions. 4. Saint Vincent and the GrenadinesEconomic conditions. I. Title. II. Title: Coping with poverty. III. Series.
F2106.R83 1987 972.98'4400496 86-32530
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01375-2 (hbk)

Hairoun! home of the wretched,
A Sceptred isle set in a western sea,
An Antillean gem of poverty and greed,
Where few men thrive and many suffer,
Where women bear children by the hour.
A land with no industries so ever
A land of small farmers without farms
A land of huge farms without any farmers.

You may think there will be trouble soon;
I can almost hear Cuba! Zanzibar! now Hairoun!
But let me hasten to reassure
That politicians debate the budget still,
And all this talk about the people's will
Is sacrificed, of course, at the right price.

Hairoun, AWAKE! and earn once more your Carib name.
Cast out all grudge and hate
And if you try to lay the blame
Remember none is guiltless in this state.
Rid yourself once and forever
Of all traces of colour and favour
Which still persist despite your clamour,
And bend your back to the task ahead,
To cleanse your shores of poverty and greed.

.. Coombs, Flambeau, volume 1,1965.

The aboriginal Carib name for St. Vincent

Black poverty has been a much studied phenomenon. As a social problem it has been the subject of countless investigations by welfare agencies, government departments, and research institutes. As a scholarly concern it has attracted the attention of scores of social scientists, including many anthropologists. The manner in which economic deprivation is reflected in family organization, style of life, and religious and ceremonial expression have all been reported upon. Still the picture is far from complete and several substantive areas, including the basic one of how poor Black people manage to make a living, have received less attention than they deserve. Many theoretical and empirical controversies, such as the role of African survivals and the applicability of the culture and poverty model, keep resurfacing. Most accounts also suffer from a piecemeal approach, as if to suggest an aversion to holistic description where the topic of poverty is concerned. As a result, the tendency has been to look at several features of poverty in a given institutional setting-the family has been a favorite arena for this or to concentrate on a single process such as the formation of social networks in several different spheres. Little effort has been made to deal with the multiple responses to poverty in diverse areas of life.

This book addresses these two limitations in Afro-American anthropology by describing how the members of a large coastal village on the little-known southeastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent deal with economic adversity and social stratification. Most Leeward Villagers are the poor, lower-class descendants of slaves and my aim is to describe how they manage to cope with the many historically-rooted environmental, economic, and social constraints they face. The study concentrates on three areas of adaptation to material deprivation and status inequality. These are the economic sphere where the problem of gaming a livelihood is the central concern for most people; the arena of family and household where kin and affines are enlisted for survival; and the realm of nonfamilial social life where friends, neighbors, and patrons are tapped or appealed to for social and economic aid. Like their Black counterparts elsewhere in the Americas, Leeward Villagers are the rural members of a class-stratified state. This means that they have been inculcated with many society-wide Vincentian norms and ideals. But their social and economic position in the society also means that they have not been granted the skills and opportunities for acting out many of these norms and ideals. Villagers have reacted to this blockage in many ways. In the economic arena a myriad of occupations are pursued and combined in an intricate manner. Dyadic and polyadic exchange relationships are struck with peers, and patrons are sought out in times of need. Those who cannot make a living in the community leave for shorter or longer periods of time to search for work, sending money home to support their families. Prevented from acting out the social forms associated with mainstream norms of kinship and household organization, villagers have also responded by arranging their conjugal behavior, domestic personnel, and household activities in such a way as to ensure their economic wellbeing.

This is not to say that an optimal solution to the problem of surviving in one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere has been worked out. Villagers recognize that they are poor and frequently state that life is hard in the community. Still, they exhibit a remarkable capacity to adjust in positive and creative ways to the many adversities they face. Coping with poverty is the basis of their survival.