Caribbean Diaspora in the USA: Diversity of Caribbean Religions in New York City

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Caribbean Diaspora in the USA
theoretical discourses. I use them as metaphors to clarify the theoretical discussion:
they point to theoretical standpoints and demonstrate the processual dimension of
the debate. I understand the different concepts in the cultural theoretical debate as
being part of an ongoing dispute. They often contradict themselves, dispute on minor
or major points, or they add important aspects to each other. The described situations
illustrate with their multiple readings that no theory is unimpeachable because there
is not only one reading of reality.
The metaphors have another use, namely that they connect the ethnographic part
with the theoretical, preparing the reader for the last chapter where I will present a
new theoretical contribution to the debate. These scenes add a further dimension to
the descriptions, as they contain additional ethnographical data. As Aleida Assmann
writes, culture can be separated into two categories: the everyday life and the festival
life, the fluent and the static. The scenes demonstrate the ‘fluent’, the part which
the day produces and consumes, while the ethnographic descriptions focus on the
‘festival’, that part of life which generations conserve as their common property
(Assmann 1991: 11). Both parts belong to one culture together, hence the fluent adds
to the static which nevertheless is in a dynamic process of change.
To come back to the quote at the beginning of the introduction: Maryse Condé’s
question ‘Where are they born, and where do they live?’ already hints at the central
aspect of this book. Instead of studying Caribbean culture in the Caribbean I will
investigate Caribbean culture among migrants from the Caribbean in New York City.
New York City is still the most preferred migration target and hence meeting point of
various migrant groups. The Caribbean New York I will focus on is located mainly
in Brooklyn, though some part of my fieldwork was conducted in Manhattan. My
research was divided into three parts: a small preparation phase, a main research
period and a smaller follow-up phase. During my main research period I lived in
Brooklyn, where most of the Caribbean migrants live. I was teaching at the Brooklyn
College of the City University of New York and learnt about the cultural diversity
of Brooklyn from various perspectives from my students and colleagues in the
department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies. In Chapter 2 I will present the
background of my fieldwork and explain the methodological framework.
During my investigation I focused on travelling people whose cultural repertoire
changes during the migration movement. In this process religion develops important
functions, integrative as well as demarcating. Religious communities of Caribbean
migrants were at the centre of my research. They demonstrate the flexibility
of cultural phenomena; they are not compasses but sextants that measure the
position of the navigator in every situation and refer every measure to the position
(see Baumann 2000: 163). In New York City the borderline between the various
religious communities seems to diminish and develop new syncretism out of the
contact of religious traditions. In the Chapter 3 I will present these new religious
creations. With reference to Vodou, Santería and the Spiritual Baptists, as well as the
Iglesia Universal (which fights harshly against African spirits), I will demonstrate
the dynamic changes that can be transferred to cultural designs. New York City
seems to be more open to creating new religious systems than the Caribbean, while
Latin America is more open to including new influences in theoretical debate.
Chapter 4 gives an overview of various debates in Latin America and the Caribbean