A lot has been said about whether the Kadooment parade and the accompanying behaviour is indeed part of we culture. I never gave this question much thought but the worldwide furore about the videos showing Rihanna's during Kadooment got me thinking. If a stranger, knowing nothing of the history or traditions of Barbados saw these videos, what would they think? Taken out of context the behaviour can be construed as lewd and lascivious. Similarly, a visitor from another planet witnessing a priest performing the rite of Holy Communion would label us all cannibals for drinking the blood of Christ and eating his body.(In fact, the Europeans at the end of the 15th century witnessed the indigenous people of the Caribbean performing a victory ritual designed to honour the bravery of their captives and were labeled cannibals. 500 years later our children are still being taught that the Caribs, (Kalinago) people were cannibals.)
What is Culture?
The etymology of the modern term "culture" has a classical origin. In English, the word "culture" is based on a term used by Cicero, in his Tusculan Disputations, wrote of a cultivation of the soul or "cultura animi", thereby using an agricultural metaphor to describe the development of a philosophical soul, which was understood as the one natural highest possible ideal for human development.
It is indeed ironic that we are now examining the behaviour during Kadooment, a festival born out of our agricultural heritage as it relates to a word born of a similar heritage.
In short, the term culture has come to refer to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human. The word culture has many different meanings. For some it refers to an appreciation of good literature, music, art, and food. For a biologist, it is likely to be a colony of bacteria or other microorganisms growing in a nutrient medium in a laboratory Petri dish. However, for anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns. The term was first used in this way by the pioneer English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book, Primitive Culture, published in 1871. Tylor said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."
Culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon. It is constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds. Our written languages, governments, buildings, and other man-made things are merely the products of culture. They are not culture in themselves.
In examining the Culture of Barbados one must first understand that there are layers of culture.
Layers of Culture
There are three layers or levels of culture that are part of our learned behavior patterns and perceptions. Most obviously is the body of cultural traditions that distinguish our specific society. When people speak of Italian or Japanese culture, they are referring to the shared language, traditions, and beliefs that set each of these peoples apart from others. In most cases, those who share our culture do so because they acquired it as they were raised by parents and other family members who have it.
The second layer of culture that is part of our identity is a subculture . In complex, diverse societies in which people have come from many different parts of the world, they often retain much of their original cultural traditions. Unlike societies like Trinidad and Guyana, this is not seen to any great extent in Barbados. People of European, Indian, African and Asian decent assimilate so completely into our society that there is no identifiable subculture. The cultural differences between members of a subculture and the dominant national culture has disappeared, the subculture ceases to exist except as a group of people who claim a common ancestry. This is only a personal observation and I may be wrong. I welcome discussion on this matter.
The third layer of culture consists of cultural universals. These are learned behavior patterns that are shared by all of humanity collectively. No matter where people live in the world, they share these universal traits. Examples of such "human cultural" traits include:
Communicating with a verbal language consisting of a limited set of sounds and grammatical rules for constructing sentences
- Using age and gender to classify people (e.g., teenager, senior citizen, woman, man)
- Classifying people based on marriage and descent relationships and having kinship terms to refer to them (e.g., wife, mother, uncle, cousin)
- Rising children in some sort of family setting
- Having sexual division of labor (e.g., men's work versus women's work)
- Having a concept of privacy
- Having rules to regulate sexual behavior
- Distinguishing between good and bad behavior
- Having some sort of body ornamentation
- Making jokes and playing games
- Having art
- Having some sort of leadership roles for the implementation of community decisions
While all cultures have these and possibly many other universal traits, different cultures have developed their own specific ways of carrying out or expressing them. For instance, people in deaf subcultures frequently use their hands to communicate with sign language instead of verbal language. However, sign languages have grammatical rules just as verbal ones do.
I think we can agree that Wukking up is not a universal cultural trait.
So, the question must be asked.
Can Wukking Up be considered, "we culture?"
There is no doubt that it has become part of our learned behavior passed on from generation to generation.
I am sure all of us have laughed at the three year old wukking up to the latest calypso beat. Who taught them that? Some might say it was even hereditary. Is Wukking up in our DNA?
Quote of the Day
" A picture is worth a thousand words." Check the link below.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150344582405401
Coming Soon
Wukking up and the Church.
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