Sample of Stuart Hall Book Report
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The book, Stuart Hall, is a biographical review of the man’s life, work and legacy. It is
compiled by one, Annie Paul, a stalwart gleaner columnist, educator and Head of the Sir
Arthur Lewis Insti
...
tute for Social and Economic Studies at the University of the West Indies,
Mona campus. The Caribbean is peopled by descendants of Africans, Indians, Chinese and
other Asiatic races, who were brought to labour on plantations and provide human capital for
its (the Caribbean) colonizers – the Europeans. Centuries of chattel slavery and colonialism
has made the majority of the region’s inhabitants doubtful as to their cultural and ethnic
identity, as well as to perpetuate a culture of economic, social and political depression for
these peoples. Stuart Hall was born to a middle class colonial Jamaican society, not too far
from the abolition of slavery, with all the trappings of color and class, as was afforded such
an individual of this colonial era; Hall’s early childhood saw his exposure to indigenous
cultural practices – primarily African – and would also highlight the barriers which separated
interaction and appreciation for non-European cultures (Paul, p2-7). These unfortunate
circumstances prompted Hall’s migratory patterns, and his eventual development as an
ethnographic researcher, inasmuch that it also informed his outlook on the Caribbean, and the
notion of identity which existed therein. It is in understanding the global effect of Hall’s
contributions, one is able to analyse the ethnocentric norms which permeated Caribbean
society, and the extent to which class constraints inform a Caribbean identity.
Millennium before the arrival of European entry into the Caribbean region, the indigenous peoples of
Amerindian tribes populated the area with their various cultures and civilizations: they practised
political organization and developed complex systems of agriculture and animal rearing. The ensuing
genocide and total destruction of the Neolithic peoples and their cultural practices and values would
be justified through sentiments of cultural superiority (Leglise, p2). Furthering European
mercantilism saw the advent of Africans being forcibly brought to the region to provide labour for
the growing sugar addiction within Europe; the Indian, Chinese and other races who were also
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