Content area
Full Text
M.G. Smith: Social Theory and Anthropology in the Caribbean and Beyond. Bryan Meeks (ed.). Kingston: Ian Randle, 2011. xiii + 341 pp. (Paper US$ 26.95)
This collection of fourteen essays, with an introduction by Brian Meeks and a postscript by Mary F. Smith, provides an ample deliberation on the Caribbean and African research of Jamaican anthropologist, Michael Garfield (M.G.) Smith (1921-1993). It also offers some reflections on Smith's theoretical position, an important contribution of the volume overall. Save for one, the essays were presented first at a conference in 2008 convened by the Centre for Caribbean Thought at UWI, Mona.
The volume is divided into three sections. The first, "Critical Contestations," canvasses the strengths and weaknesses of Smith's "plural society" approach. Essays by Jean Besson, Mervyn Alleyne, and Don Robotham also juxtapose Smith's plural society theory with one or another version of creole or creolization theory.
The second section concentrates on the empirical scope of Smith's work. Two essays concern his historical research into Western African emirates: one by Mohammed Bashir Salau on Smith's comparative study of slaveries in Jamaica and West Africa and the other, by Murray Last, on Smith's accounts of Hausa emirates. Both are critical but constructively so. They address Smith's research methods and interpretations. In the final essay of this section, Christine Barrow re-reads Smith's Kinship and Community in Carriacou (1962) as a precursor to Caribbean feminist thought on female sexuality.
The final section contains six essays which, their section title...