Description
Connie R. Sutton was a pioneer of Caribbeanist anthropology and a political and social activist who advocated for racial and gender justice internationally. Her scholarship raised broad questions about positionality in colonial studies and challenged male-centric authorial voice in “writing culture” more generally. She was committed to collaboration and collectivity, and to highlighting the scholarship of working-class people, women, people of colour, Caribbean and Latin American scholars, and early students of transnational migration – perspectives that have often been ignored and erased within mainstream anthropology.
In Changing Continuities, 14 of Sutton’s essays are reproduced across the broad themes of Caribbeanist Anthropology, Feminism and Black Women’s Power, and Transnationalism, which also include some 12 reflections by scholars who highlight the essays’ significance to their own work and to the field as a whole.
About Author
DAVID SUTTON is a professor of anthropology at Southern Illinois University. While his ‘research’ began at age five with his mother in Barbados, it has since focused on the Greek island of Kalymnos, on topics of memory, food, and cooking.
DEBORAH THOMAS is the R. Jean Brownlee professor of anthropology, and the director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a prize-winning author and filmmaker and publishes on violence and the afterlives of imperialism in Jamaica.
Contents
Preface: Constance Sutton’s Anthropology: From Social Movements to
Transnationalism – A Life in Scholarship and Activism – Deborah A. Thomas and David Sutton
Acknowledgements
Praisesongs for Constance Sutton: An Introduction – Antonio Lauria
Section One: Caribbeanist Anthropology, Labour, and Kinship
- From Area Studies to Localized Transnationalism: Notes on Connie Sutton’s Caribbean Journey
Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres
- The Scene of the Action: Envisioning Political Futures
Deborah A. Thomas
- Revisiting Caribbean Labour: The Challenges of Connie’s Legacy
Jean Stubbs
- Field Notes on a Visit to Barbados: An Approach to Constance Sutton’s Afro-Caribbean Family Theory
Ana Vera Estrada
- Connie Sutton’s Final Reflections on the Cultural Life of Barbados
Linden F. Lewis
Sutton Essays:
- Continuing the Fight for Economic Justice: The Barbados Sugar Workers’ 1958 Wildcat Strike
- Public Monuments in Post-Colonial Barbados: Sites of Memory, Sites of Contestation
- African-Caribbean Family and Kinship: Changing Themes and Perspectives
Section Two: Feminism and Black Women’s Power
- Women, Knowledge, and Power: Revisiting Connie Sutton’s Early Feminist Work
Susan Makiesky-Barrow
- Crab Antics: Challenging the Reputation-Respectability Matrix in Caribbean Anthropology
Rhoda Reddock
- From NYWAC to IWAC to Nairobi and Beyond: A Personal Reflection on Connie Sutton and the International Women’s Movement
Linda Basch
- Changing Continuities: Reflections on the Powers of Motherhood and Sonhood
David Sutton
Sutton Essays:
- Women, Knowledge, and Power
Constance Sutton, Susan Makiesky, Daisy Dwyer, and Laura Klein
- Social Inequality and Sexual Status in Barbados
Constance Sutton and Susan Makiesky-Barrow
- Cultural Duality in the Caribbean
- The Power to Define: Women, Culture, and Consciousness
- From City-States to Post-Colonial Nation-State: Yoruba Women’s Changing Military Roles
- Motherhood Is Powerful: Embodied Knowledge from Evolving Field-Based Experiences
Section Three: Transnationalism
- Bi-Directions and New Directions in Migration Research: Theorizing Dispossession and Power from Connie Sutton’s Work on Transnational Migration
Nina Glick Schiller
- Transforming Migration: An Andean Perspective on the Work of Constance Sutton
William P. Mitchell
- Centring Connection: Intra-Caribbean Migration and Beyond
Andrea Queeley
Sutton Essays:
- Migration and West Indian Racial and Ethnic Consciousness
Constance Sutton and Susan Makiesky-Barrow
- The Caribbeanization of New York City and the Emergence of a Transnational Sociocultural System
- Some Thoughts on Gendering and Internationalizing Our Thinking about Transnational Migrations
- Circum-Caribbean Migrations: Spinning New Webs of Connection Between Barbados and Cuba
- Celebrating Ourselves: The Family Reunion Rituals of African-Caribbean Transnational Families
Afterword
Donald Robotham
Testimonials
Contributors
