Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: Indigenous Miskitu men have worked as deep-water divers in the international lobster economy for the last forty years. Because of the long-term boom in the lobster economy, Miskitu society has become increasingly involved with monetized economies, agriculture has declined, and families now purchase their subsistence foods from stores. This article's main research question asks how the global lobster economyhas helped shape Miskiru masculinities on the Honduran Caribbean coast. Ethnographic fieldwork draws from the author's doctoral research (I 997-1998, supported by a Fulbright grant) in the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve (RPBR), Honduras. The research combines participant observation with the collection of oral texts. The research is unique because it highlights indigenous men's sexuality, a topic for which there is relatively little anthropological information (Gilmore 1990; Gregor 1985; Jamieson 2000a; Lancaster 1988, 1992). The research also uses oral texts as primary data to examine male sexual identity (see also Basso 1990; Howe 1986; Jamieson 2000b; Sammons and Sherzer 2000; Sherzer 1983, 1990). The oral texts collected are songs that Miskiru men sing about themselves and their livelihoods, as participants in various coastal economies. The songs include Miskiru standards from the old days (a Caribbean English phrase now used widely along the coast) and-the newer hits that focus mainly on men's lives as lobster divers today. Analysis and comparison of the older and newer songs reveals that Miskitu manhood is defined consistently throughout the texts. Despite the economy in which men have participated, masculinity is defined as the ability to provide resources and money to women. Therefore, this article argues that local constructions of Miskitu manhood have not changed dramatically as a result of the lobster-diving industry. However, song texts and ethnographic data recorded reveal that relations between women and men have become highly commodified. Conclusions suggest that the commodification ofMiskiru identities and gender relations has intensified during the latest boom in the coastal economy, but that this commodification has developed alongside the globalization ofwestern values and monetized economies that have influenced the Caribbean coast since colonial times (see also Connell 1995; Gmmann 2003; Jackson 2001; Kimmel, Hearn and Connell 2004).1
Source: Southern Anthropologist
Author: Laura Hobson Herlihy
Institution: University of Kansas
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2555147456