By Raisa S.N. Charles
The Big Picture: As a Small-Island State Antigua & Barbuda must think of culture as more than sun, sea, and sand. We must make conscious decisions about our values, rooted in the context of our history.
Culture. When we hear the word many of us think of costumes glittering their way down Redcliffe Street in the afternoon sun. Or we might think of Burning Flames. Or, perhaps a Sunday morning feast of saltfish, pear, and fresh wood-oven bread. None of this is inherently incorrect. These are elements of our culture, but there is more to who we are than performance.
We are not simply taste and sound and smell. We are also habit, routine, and ritual. We are what (and who) we revere and what we despise, and why we feel the way we do about each. All of these things shape our lives in hundreds of tiny, often unseen ways. Not because they are difficult to see. On the contrary, they are quite obvious if you know what to look for. No, our collective lack of self-awareness comes instead from an unwillingness to look.
In all fairness, as a people, we are quite busy. Busy building lives our ancestors could scarcely conceive of, and managing our personal crises, all while navigating a world that seems constantly on the brink of economic (and quite frankly, general) collapse. Indeed, a people can be forgiven for not taking much time to self-reflect when recessions and world wars loom, but perhaps the ever-present threat of the end is what makes self-reflection all the more necessary.
At its simplest, culture can be defined as the beliefs, customs, and arts of a particular social group, place, or time. Interconnected and, in many ways overlapping, the facets of a given culture interact with each other at the individual, familial, institutional and national levels. Societies that prize community will cultivate citizens who are more empathetic and conscious of the world around them, but may be self-sacrificing to a fault. At the opposite end of the spectrum, highly individualized cultures tend to consist of citizens who think independently and are highly motivated to succeed, but may be more cutthroat and competitive. What does this say then of little Antigua? An island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, less than 50 years removed from colonial rule, constantly buffeted by powers far bigger than itself. Simply put, it presents us with an opportunity.
Culture, while somewhat influenced by external forces, fundamentally exists as a matter of clear self-determination. It is ultimately the people of a given country, or institution who determine the values they will live by. Notably, the values we live by are the ones that shape us, not the ones we profess. For example, a culture that values cooperation and interdependence finds this reflected in a people who prioritise spending time together strengthening their relationships. It follows then, that our values cannot be mere lip service. They must be grounded in daily action and reflected in our lived realities.
As we continue to define and live out our collective value system, our cultural identity will come into clearer focus. The idea functions somewhat like a room full of dominoes lined up in an intricate pattern.
Our values determine our perceptions of good and evil. We pass these ideas onto our children. Thus falls the first domino. We build institutions that further reflect our perceptions and ensure that they are mainstreamed into the community. The dominoes keep falling, faster now. These mainstreamed values, now extolled by us and our children, and our children’s children determine how we dress, what we eat, what our music sounds like, who we vote for, and what we teach in our schools. A mosaic of fallen pieces so intricate we can hardly tell which one started it all. Yet finding the root is essential, so we must self-reflect.
All self reflection involves asking questions and finding honest answers. Questions like, are we who we say we are? How did we come to be the way we are? What has being this way won us? What has it cost? Is this how we wish to continue into the future? To answer these questions we must have a firm grasp of our historical context.
Antigua & Barbuda’s past as an enslaved state under British colonial rule still shapes much of who we purport to be today. Whether this is a net positive or not is debatable. Regardless, understanding the factors that shape our current cultural context highlights where we continue to build the masters house with the masters tools, and where we exist in open rebellion. Such an exercise reveals the benefits and drawbacks of our chosen lifestyles, and whether those lifestyles were freely chosen at all.
What comes next is understanding the world as it exists today and our place in it, resulting in a deep sense of self-awareness. From this cognizance emerges the backdrop against which all conscious decision-making can occur. Here we develop the skills to actively shape our culture; as is the responsibility of every sovereign people, and our culture begins to exist as more than merely as a passive product of our colonial heritage. Instead, it becomes the living embodiment of our collective consciousness. Culture functions as a ritual of remembering, honouring, creating, and passing knowledge along. We are, and always have been, creating the culture, but our true power lies in creating consciously.
