Education as a form of la perruque at Emancipation on Barbados

Summary

The role educational programs in the post-emancipatory context is an issue that archaeologists tend to categorize as a disciplinary practice in the Foucaultian sense, where instruction, with its material manifestations as archaeological evidence, were a means to impose control over the former slaves in the new labor system. By adapting the ideas of De Certeau, we can complicate our understanding of how practice was used both strategically by those in power and tactically by the former slaves. Specifically, an examination of some preliminary findings from an emancipation era Barbadian plantation village will highlight how the former slaves "rented" time and place within their domestic environment on the periphery of such disciplinary practice to do their own work of meaning making. The resultant interpretation allows for a multivalency of contextual meanings and allows for us to understand how freedmen crossed the boundary between place and space in this nineteenth century context.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• Boundaries, Barriers, and Beliefs: Racism and Communities in African Diaspora Archaeology

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 462