Cosmopolitan traditions: Caribbean perspectives

Abstract

On the basis of historical and ethnographic research, this article examines three ‘cosmopolitan’ traditions in the Caribbean. It shows that, while the first tradition derives from the universalist intellectual tradition of the European Enlightenment, the other two are linked to vernacular, local Caribbean traditions. These cosmopolitan traditions, however, should not be seen to involve mutually exclusive understandings and practices. Rather, they offer mutually constitutive sources of (self)knowledge and frameworks of social interaction that can be evoked for various pragmatic and intellectual purposes as individuals and communities reflect on, and engage with, inequality in social life.

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