Sidney Mintz

1064 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Caribbean society and culture

Sidney Wilfred Mintz born November 16th, 1922 in Dover, New Jersey. Sidney W. Mintz is a renowned Cultural Anthropologist with an extensive history of socially relevant ethnographic research and literature. He received his Bachelors degree of Psychology in 1943 at the Brooklyn College, and his Doctorate of Anthropology at Columbia University in 1951; both prestigious institutions are located in New York. Mintz started teaching as an undergraduate student and has since been a professional faculty member of several highly esteemed Universities and Institutions in the United States, France, Germany, China, Puerto Rico, and Australia. He is currently a Professor of Anthropological Research at The John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The research of Sidney Mintz is focalized to the history of the diverse region of the Caribbean. He has had a multitude of articles, editorials, and books published regarding the culturally relevant effects the sugar industry had on social populations of the Caribbean island nations. Mintz has been the recipient of several awards throughout his career including but not limited to: The Caribbean Review Medalist, 1983; Smithsonian Council, 1985-91; Huxley Memorial Lecturer and Medalist, 1994; and Distinguished Lecturer, The American Anthropological Associated, 1996 (Mintz).

The first fieldwork experience of Sidney Mintz was of Puerto Rico in 1948, while he was studying at Columbia University. Two of his mentors are acclaimed Anthropologists, Ruth Benedict and Julian Steward. This experience must have influenced Mintz greatly, as he has since focused his academic career around Caribbean and South American cultures (Kuever). Mintz quotes on his personal website, “The world area of major interest...

... middle of paper ...

...ey Mintz tries to discern in his works, is the existence of a peasantry class within Caribbean society in a historical context. His socio-cultural ethnographies have contributed a great deal to Anthropology and the history of Caribbean populations and cultures.

Works Cited

Kuever, Erika. “Sidney Mintz.” Indiana University, 2006. Web. 1 Mar. 2011.

Mintz, Sidney. Caribbean Transformations. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1974. Print.

Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness And Power. New York: Viking, 1985. Print.

Mintz, Sidney. The Birth Of African-American Culture. Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1992. Print.

Mintz, Sidney. Three Ancient Colonies. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2010. Print.

Mintz, Sidney. Worker In The Cane. New York: Yale University Press, 1960. Print.

Mintz, Sidney. “Sidney Mintz.” Sidney Mintz, 2010. Web. 22 Feb. 2010.

Show More
Related

  • Empire's Crossroads Chapter Summary

    933 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fluorescent turquoise waters, a vibrant city culture, as well as an unending supply of mimosas and sunburns within a resort, benefits the common wealthy couple looking for a swell time. When people imagine the Caribbean, they probably visualize the soft sands of the Spice Island Beach Resort. Many people see the Caribbean as relaxing paradise. What people don’t understand, are the years of history hidden behind the mask of many resorts. In the book entitled “Empire’s Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day”, Author Carrie Gibson differentiates how people view the Caribbean nowadays, by altering their visualization with four-hundred pages of rich history and culture, that argues the ideology about the Caribbean

    Read More

  • Rigoberta Menchu's Book

    1621 Words  | 4 Pages

    As far back as Rigoberta Manchu can remember, her life has been divided between the highlands of Guatemala and the low country plantations called the fincas. Routinely, Rigoberta and her family spent eight months working here under extremely poor conditions, for rich Guatemalans of Spanish descent. Starvation malnutrition and child death were common occurrence here; rape and murder were not unfamiliar too. Rigoberta and her family worked just as hard when they resided in their own village for a few months every year. However, when residing here, Rigoberta’s life was centered on the rituals and traditions of her community, many of which gave thanks to the natural world. When working in the fincas, she and her people struggled to survive, living at the mercy of wealthy landowners in an overcrowded, miserable environment. By the time Rigoberta was eight years old she was hard working and ...

    Read More

  • Review of The Devil Behind The Mirror

    2359 Words  | 5 Pages

    During Gregory’s ethnographic research in the Dominican Republic, he encounters many individuals, some tourists, others expatriates, as well as citizens native to the island. One individual by the name of Minaya, discusses changes in the sugar cane industry. In 1988 he became a worker at a sugar mill that his uncle owned, but claimed that the industry became “Capitalized” (Gregory 2007: 15). He explains this capitalization as the industry being leased out to private corporations, which incurred poor working conditions and minimal wages upon the laborers. Minaya also expresses the fact he has no formal education, a big factor...

    Read More

  • The Farming Of Bones Analysis

    743 Words  | 2 Pages

    After reading The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat for summer reading, I have decided that there is one, broad, underlying theme of the novel: the exploration of racial prejudice, the impact of nationality and race on human life, and a closer look into the inequality and discrimination against people of color. Specifically, in this story, the discrimination against Haitian people in the 1930’s Dominican Republic. The story is presented by a Haitian girl named Amabelle, who shares firsthand the acts of cruelty she witnesses, making it impossible for anyone reading to ignore the wrongful actions of the Dominican soldiers surrounding her. Besides the violence, she shares the unfairness in the daily life of a Haitian worker in the 1930’s Dominican

    Read More

  • The Impact Of The Louisiana Purchase

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2003.

    Read More

  • dominican republic

    605 Words  | 2 Pages

    "Dominicans (Dominican Republic)." Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life. Ed. Timothy L. Gall and Jeneen Hobby. 2nd ed. Vol. 2: Americas. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 195-199. Student Resources in Context. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.

    Read More

  • Sweetness And Power

    1970 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...resented in the book. He does a good job of supporting all of his arguments with the proper source, however, he does not explain these sources to the fullest extent. The assumption is made that the reader clearly knows how the sources relates to the argument at hand, but sometimes the passages that Mintz cites are unclear. Also, Mintz understands that a field such as anthropology requires fieldwork to be strong. However, in that same line on page 213, Mintz states, "Those strengths continue to lie in fieldwork (there is little in this book I confess)." By this, Mintz himself has identified another one of the few flaws present in his book.

    Read More

  • Interpersonal Conflicts Controlled by Power and Privilege

    1328 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imperialism in the Caribbean region produced institutions and movements that deeply affected and continue to affect the Caribbean region. Interpersonal conflicts related to gender, sex and sexuality in a character represent the colonization and its ongoing effects in the Caribbean region. Throughout the semester we have read many novels that have emphasized Caribbean women’s subjectivities and how they have been obliterated through race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. Elizabeth Nunez’s novel, Bruised Hibiscus, is a Caribbean novel filled with the complexities of colonization and patterns of power in the lives of individual men and women. Colonization is definitely represented as part of the problem in this novel; however, Nunez’s readers realize the domination of men over women in European colonialism as well as the differences between passion and power, black and white, and male and female. Bruised Hibiscus is a dark exploration of power and sexuality due to the finding of a murdered woman’s body that causes consciousness of both women. The empowerment created through interpersonal conflicts often results in the life one lives based on the power exhibited through gender, sex and sexuality.

    Read More

  • Retention and Preservation of African Roots in Jamaican Folk Music

    4205 Words  | 9 Pages

    This study will focus on cultural themes in Jamaica’s colonial history which contributed to the retention of distinctively African forms of musical expression. The goal of such an approach is to learn something about the process of change itself, an indomitable fact of life which stands in contradiction to all efforts at preservation. The grandeur of such knowledge is appropriately called out by Romanian scholar Constantin Brailoiu who writes, "each time our studies have as an aim a human fact or one tied to human reality, we are bound to conclude that the understanding of any particular aspect of life is only possible if we understand life itself in its entirety." This statement represents a comment on the then emerging field of sociology as a response to what Brailoiu interprets as a "powerful wish f...

    Read More

  • Colonialism In The Lonely Londoners

    1895 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Caribbean region is known for its very unique history which is as a direct result of colonization by the Europeans. Within the domains of these islands, lies a shared colonial and post-colonial experience amongst its peoples which has inescapably left them with a fractured psyche. Postcolonial literary writers, through their works, have addressed, criticized and highlighted many issues faced by Caribbean people. This ‘quarrel with history’ is centered on issues of race, social class structure, gender, culture and identity. Writers such as Sam Selvon in his novel ‘The Lonely Londoners’ and V.S. Naipaul in ‘The Mystic Masseur’, through their writing, have disempowered various factors that affects the colonized. The literary techniques used

    Read More

  • Expansion of the Caribbean

    1089 Words  | 3 Pages

    It has been argued that the sugar revolution has affected the Caribbean drastically as a result of the sugar revolution; economically there was a labour problem which was caused by the change from Tobacco to Sugar. “The manufacturing of Sugar cultivation was much needed for some workers to practice manual labour.” (Galen son, 1989: 112). There were people who tried to get workers like the Spaniards who tried to get the Arawak to w...

    Read More

  • Jamaican Patois and the Power of Language in Reggae Music

    4982 Words  | 10 Pages

    Pryce, Jean T. "Similarities Between the Debates on Ebonics and Jamaican." Journal of Black Psychology, 23 (August 1997): 238-241.

    Read More

  • Cultural Issues In The Caribbean Essay

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    As the Hispanic Caribbean has evolved it has managed to grow and thrive beyond belief, whether one is discussing art, music or just the culture alone the Hispanic Caribbean is truly reaping the benefits of allowing themselves to be influenced by many other cultures. While the Hispanic Caribbean is thriving they are still facing the many new found struggles that come along with the territory of becoming more affluent as well as more accepting to other cultures and their beliefs. Often with the growth of large proportions comes many problems, problems also can come about when incorporating of different cultures as a whole as well as just bringing in their beliefs and mannerisms. None the less it can be argued that the struggles being faced in

    Read More

  • The Cultural Experience Of Cordley Summary

    262 Words  | 1 Pages

    After watching video of Chimamanda Adichie: “The danger of a single story” and reading “The Cultural Experience” of Spardley, I have learned more ways to observe different cultures.

    Read More

  • Impact of Tourism in the Caribbean

    1790 Words  | 4 Pages

    The. Caribbean Quarterly 51.1 (2005): 15-24. JSTOR.com - "The New York Times" Web. The Web. The Web.

    Read More

More about Sidney Mintz

Open Document