Miller and Slater 1-4
Dynamics of positioning
Miller and Slater discuss the ways in which the Internet has enabled Trinidadians to develop understandings of their specific identities and agency and the position of Trinidad in relation to ‘others’. The authors approach the dynamics of (re) positioning within the framework of global flows (they refer to Castells’, but conspicuously do not mention Appadurai’s global “scapes “, which I think would have been quite useful to their arguments); within this framework, the positions of Trinidadians as individuals and of Trinidad as their nation and defining/unifying entity are engaged in a dogged fight to be seen, understood, and successful on the international stages created through the Internet. At the level of kinship, the authors describe Trinidadians’ use of email, ICQ, chat, and Trini-oriented websites to reclaim, maintain, and expand connections among diasporic families. Rather than forming Trini enclaves outside of Trinidad, at least in the case of UK Trinis, the Internet was used primarily to keep in touch with family and friends in Trinidad and to allow them to continue socializing in typically “Trini” ways (eg. the online “lime).
What I found most interesting is the repositionings of Trinidad and Trini identity in the context of Internet communication technologies. Trini-centered and Trini-created websites represent and replicated key aspects of Trini history (Carnival, calypso, steeldrum) and social structure (the “lime”), contrary to the predictions of many Internet researchers who foresaw the weakening of national identities in the context of the Internet. While early on, Trinidadians participated in regionalized Carribean online environments, until they reached a critical mass of online Trinidadians to create and sustain uniquely Trini online communities. The authors describe Trinidadians as highly aware that they are meting the rest of the world online as Trinis, anxious that Trinidad lags behind the developed world, surprised by the world’s ignorance of Trinidad, and confidant in their ability to compete in the global Internet and IT sphere and in the Internet as the ideal sphere in which to assert their identity as a developed first-world nation.
As a side note, I’m a little troubled by the authors’ repeated reference to Malinowski’s description of the “kula ring”; without going into too much depth, I believe the comparison between Trobriand Islanders’ exchange of prestige items and Trinidadians’ online presence is somewhat tenuous. Mentioning it once or twice as a show of anthropological knowledge would have been fine with me, but the authors’ repeated comparison of Trinidadians’ online activity to the kula ring gift exchange does little do bolster their argument and much to suggest that they are associate Trinidadians’ with a “primitive” form of exchange. If their point, as I understand it, is one about the exchange of symbolic goods, there are other authors with less historically racist baggage than Malinowski whose work they could rely more heavily upon (Bordieu perhaps?). I think that failing to fully expound upon their use of the kula ring metaphor is irresponsible. At several points the authors admit to having begun their project with false assumptions about the educational level and Internet savvy of the Trinidadians they encountered, and their unexamined reliance on the kula ring metaphor (among other things) suggests that they never fully abandoned some of their preconceptions.