CAPE Caribbean Studies cheat sheet

Culture has three components: material (artefacts, tools, food), social (institutions, family, kinship, law), and ideational/normative (beliefs, values, norms, symbols, language).

Caribbean society is characterised by cultural diversity, creolisation, cultural erasure, hybridity, and social stratification shaped by race, colour, class, gender, and ethnicity.

Plantation system legacies include the plantation economy, colour-class hierarchy, nuclear/ matrifocal family patterns, and hierarchical social relations; plantation society is described as total institution.

Family types: matrifocal (mother-centred, common in lower-income Afro-Caribbean households), nuclear, extended, visiting unions, and common-law unions; mating patterns include visiting, common-law, and legal marriage.

Social stratification indicators: race/colour, class (occupation, income, education), gender, ethnicity; stratification is described as pigmentocracy where colour correlates with class.

Rites of passage (birth, puberty, marriage, death) transmit culture; religions include Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Rastafari, Vodou, Santería, Orisha, and Revival/Zion; syncretism is common.

Cultural forms: Caribbean music (calypso, reggae, soca, steelpan, dancehall, merengue, kompa), festivals (Carnival, Crop Over, Junkanoo, Phagwa, Hosay, Emancipation Day), and folk oral traditions (Anansi, soucouyant, jumbie).

Indigenisation, creolisation, and cultural retention: African retentions (drumming, ancestor veneration), East Indian retentions (Hosay, Phagwa, tassa), and Chinese, Portuguese, and Middle Eastern influences.

Development indicators: GDP/GNP per capita, HDI (life expectancy, education index, GNI per capita), Gini coefficient (income inequality), unemployment, and poverty headcount; HDI ranges 0-1.

Small island developing states (SIDS) face structural constraints: small domestic markets, high import dependence, vulnerability to natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes), and high transport/energy costs.

Economic sectors: agriculture (bananas, sugar, cocoa, nutmeg), mining (bauxite in Jamaica/Guyana, oil and gas in Trinidad), tourism, and services (offshore finance, call centres, remittances).

Trade blocs and integration: CARICOM (1973, Treaty of Chaguaramas), CSME (2006, single market and economy), OECS, and ACP/EU arrangements; trade preferences eroded by WTO rulings and loss of preferential access.

Debt and structural adjustment: high debt-to-GDP ratios, IMF/World Bank conditionalities, and fiscal austerity; brain drain and remittance dependence affect human capital.

Sustainable development: vulnerability to climate change, sea-level rise, coral bleaching, coastal erosion, and adaptation/mitigation responses; Blue Economy and Green Economy concepts.

Social issues: crime and violence, gender-based violence, youth unemployment, HIV/AIDS, obesity/NCDs (non-communicable diseases), and migration (brain drain and diaspora).

Governance and sovereignty: Westminster parliamentary systems, constitutional reform debates, republicanism, and regional institutions (CARICOM, CCJ, UWI, CDB).

Research process: identify problem, formulate research question/hypothesis, literature review, design, data collection, analysis, conclusion, and reporting.

Variables: independent (manipulated), dependent (measured), extraneous/confounding; operational definitions required.

Sampling: random, stratified, systematic, cluster, convenience; representative sample; sampling bias; sample size affects reliability.

Data collection instruments: questionnaires (closed/open items), interviews (structured, semi-structured, unstructured), observation, focus groups, document analysis, and case studies.

Validity (measures what it claims) vs reliability (consistency of results); triangulation (data, method, investigator) improves validity.

Data types: quantitative (numerical, statistics) vs qualitative (descriptive, thematic); primary vs secondary sources; ethics: informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, no harm.

Presentation and analysis: frequency tables, bar charts, pie charts, line graphs, mean/median/mode, percentages, and thematic coding for qualitative data.

Action research and case study designs are common in Caribbean Studies IA; the IA requires a clear research question, methodology, data presentation, analysis, and evaluation of limitations.