Processes of Culture Change in a Creole Society

社会科学家使用克理奥尔化理论来分析一种特定类型的文化变化，当来自不同社会的个人被带到一个新的环境中（例如，在种植园奴隶制中），并出于迫切需要，在一两代人的时间内创造了新的共享制度（包括新的语言和更广泛的文化复合体）。这个项目将调查20世纪的文化变化，在一个社会是众所周知的克理奥尔化的初始过程，导致其在17和18世纪的形成。民族志方法和档案研究将被用来调查当代Saramaka马龙人在法属圭亚那的后代逃跑的奴隶，以测试是否（以及以何种方式）在社会的形成年发展的具体机制继续发挥作用今天的文化变化机制。研究结果将有助于新的数据和见解正在进行的辩论克理奥尔化的性质和速度之间被奴役的非洲人和他们的后裔在美洲，关于正在进行的机制，在这些社会中的文化变化，并最终在社会科学克理奥尔化理论的持续分析有用性。该项目旨在使人们更好地了解被奴役的非洲人成为非裔美国人的手段，以及相对自治的非裔美国人社会今天继续发展的机制。更广泛的影响包括将研究成果在美国和国外的一本书以及期刊文章中传播，以及利用研究人员代表马龙人与美洲人权委员会正在进行的工作中创造的新知识。

Social scientists use creolization theory to analyze a specific type of culture change that occurred when individuals from diverse societies were brought together in a new environment (for example, in plantation slavery) and created, out of dire necessity and over the course of only a generation or two, new shared institutions (including a new language and broader cultural complexes). This project will investigate 20th-century culture change in a society that is well-known for the initial processes of creolization that led to its formation in the 17th and 18th centuries. Ethnographic methods and archival research will be used to investigate mechanisms of culture change among contemporary Saramaka Maroons in French Guiana-descendants of runaway slaves from Suriname-to test whether (and in what ways) the specific mechanisms developed in the formative years of the society continue to function today. The findings will contribute fresh data and insights to ongoing debates about the nature and rapidity of creolization among enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas, about ongoing mechanisms of culture change in these societies and, ultimately, about the continuing analytic usefulness of creolization theory in the social sciences. The project is intended to provide a better understanding of the means by which enslaved Africans became Afro-Americans, as well as the mechanisms by which relatively autonomous Afro-American societies continue to develop today. The broader impacts include dissemination of the research results will in a book as well as in journal articles in the USA and abroad, and the use of the new knowledge to be created in the researchers' ongoing work on behalf of Maroons with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.