The social psychology group has evolved into what is for now called
the “culture and economy” group largely as a result of
an attempt at defining what group members saw as their role in the
project. Culture, the group argues, provides a broader framework within
which to deal with social psychology as well point the research in
a direction which would more reflect the breadth of the cultural.
The Culture and Economy group believes that the fundamental take off
point for the Taking Responsibility Project should not be the possibly
biased assumption of received knowledge that the Jamaican economy
is underperforming. Taking a more positive stance, it should be the
historical cultural frame within which Jamaica has moved since and
because of slavery.
This basic frame is the continuously creolizing relationship between
the African and the European world views or paradigms. We argue that
the playing out of this relationship, the direction in which it is
moving (as well as the pace of this movement), penetrates every aspect
of life in this country, every value and attitude – speech and
language, religion, gender relations and parenting, art and music,
work and property, education, individual psychology, sense of identity,
sense of community, social status, political behaviour, attitude toward
law and authority, and view of the ‘foreign’. The consistency
and in some cases the sustainability of this tension between the Afro
and the Euro and the emergence of a new Afro-Euro ways of life are
important in understanding what the group has come to be calling the
concept of duality both in culture and economy. How it has affected
and been affected by the economic dimension – in and through
these various factors – ought therefore to be a central issue.
It is the interchange of that (changing) legacy with the economic
that is our main concern and hence the need to explore the dynamics
of both the formal and informal economies as both responses to and
consequences of this cultural duality.
The fact is some persons are extremely successful in both the formal
and informal sectors while some are also extreme failures and this
the group believes ought to be examined and accounted for as part
of economic performance. It could point to some direction in how we
measure economic performance or underperformance. If we see the informal
as imposing a new development model, then there is ground for acknowledging
“inventiveness” on the part of the informal and further
validates the thinking about creolization of the economy. With this
creolization has come a new sense of identity, ownership and independence
among the once considered socially dead and which is being developed
on the economic front and as well on the cultural front as manifested
in, for example, the evolution of the Jamaican music in terms of form
and business approach.
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GROUP
LEADER |
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Mr. Horace Levy, Senior Lecturer,
Social Work, Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social
Work, UWI, Mona Campus
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