Mixing--whether referred to as mestizaje, callaloo, hybridity,
creolization, or multiculturalism--is a foundational cultural trope
in Caribbean and Latin American societies. Historically entwined
with colonial, anticolonial, and democratic ideologies, ideas about
mixing are powerful forces in the ways identities are interpreted
and evaluated. As Aisha Khan shows in this ethnography, they reveal
the tension that exists between identity as a source of equality
and identity as an instrument through which social and cultural
hierarchies are reinforced. Focusing on the Indian diaspora in the
Caribbean, Khan examines this paradox as it is expressed in key
dimensions of Hindu and Muslim cultural history and social
relationships in southern Trinidad. In vivid detail, she describes
how disempowered communities create livable conditions for
themselves while participating in a broader culture that both
celebrates and denies difference.
Khan combines ethnographic research she conducted in Trinidad
over the course of a decade with extensive archival research to
explore how Hindu and Muslim Indo-Trinidadians interpret authority,
generational tensions, and the transformations of Indian culture in
the Caribbean through metaphors of mixing. She demonstrates how
ambivalence about the desirability of a callaloo nation--a
multicultural society--is manifest around practices and issues,
including rituals, labor, intermarriage, and class mobility. Khan
maintains that metaphors of mixing are pervasive and worth paying
attention to: the assumptions and concerns they communicate are key
to unraveling who Indo-Trinidadians imagine themselves to be and
how identities such as race and religion shape and are shaped by
the politics of multiculturalism.
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