Cultural Power, Brian L. Moore, NWIG, Vol. 72, No 1 & 2, 1998

ISBN: 978-976-640-006-4

Price: US$22 (s)

Cultural Power, Resistance and Pluralism: Colonial Guyana 1838-

1900. BRIAN L. MOORE. Montreal & Kingston: MeGill-Queen's University

Press; Mona, Kingston: The Press-University of the West Indies, 1995. xv

+ 376 pp. (Cloth Can$ 55.00)

MINDIE LAZARUS-BLACK

Department of Criminal Justice

University of Illinois at Chicago

Chicago IL 60607-7140, U.S.A.

Brian L. Moore's Cultural Power, Resistance and Pluralism traces the cultural history of Guyana's people over the century following the abolition of slavery (circa 1838-1900). Art, cuisine, marriage, family and household, formal religions and other spiritual practices, community organizations, labor, leisure, law, and sport are treated in depth and with careful attention to the historical record in order to illuminate persistent patterns, sources and evidence of innovation and change, and people's adaptations and accommodations to the physical and social environment.

Moore's study addresses three compelling questions. First, how does a cultural elite, in this case inspired by British institutions and practices, manage to rule without direct physical coercion a majority population that neither shares the same cultural heritage nor stands any realistic chance of achieving economic wealth or social respectability? Moore's study is thus about the making of hegemony, about the ability of a handful of men to govern thousands of former slaves and indentured servants brought from India, Portugal, and China to work on the plantations after 1838 under appalling working and living conditions. Second, the volume explores how these subordinated peoples responded to the cultural impositions of the 164 New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West Indische Gids vol. 72 no. 1 & 2 ( 1998 elite, adapting some of their ideological, religious, educational, and leisure! practices, but dismissing others as irrelevant, impractical, or simply unattainable.

Finally, Moore tests two competing anthropological paradigms, namely, "plural society" theory, first delineated for the Caribbean by M.G. Smith, and "creolization" theory, expounded by, among others, L. Braithwaite and R.T. Smith. Moore asks whether British Guiana is better understood according to plural society theory as comprised of compartmentalized ethnic enclaves; each with its own institutions, or, following creolization theory, as an integrated society consisting of creolized forms and practices.

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