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Identity in an Ethnically Bifurcated State: Trinidad and Tobago

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Ethnonational Identities

Abstract

In a multiethnic state, identity formation and its manifestations assume a peculiar shape, simultaneously reflecting and reinforcing contradictory ethnocultural forces. Identities that are formed within a state that is relatively integrated by a body of shared values tend to pass through phases and display a shape different from those that evolve within a multicommunal milieu. Especially where intersectional relations have been inflamed, sustained by distrust and fear, it seems likely that this environment will engender peculiar identity and personality types. The same person is caught up in two or more social structures driven by different motivations. At one level, involving the home and family, a person is secure within a family and community, but at another level extending beyond that intimate group, the same person encounters a wider and more complex national society constituted of two or multiple rival value-systems (see also Mariappan, this volume).

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Authors
  1. Ralph R. Premdas
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bristol, UK

    Steve Fenton (Professor of Sociology) (Professor of Sociology)

  2. University of Waikato, New Zealand

    Stephen May (Foundation Professor and Chair of Language and Literacy Education) (Foundation Professor and Chair of Language and Literacy Education)

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© 2002 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Premdas, R.R. (2002). Identity in an Ethnically Bifurcated State: Trinidad and Tobago. In: Fenton, S., May, S. (eds) Ethnonational Identities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403914125_8

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