The Use of Cultural Anthropology and Sociology to Explain Work in Caribbean Societies

Today people are linked together economically and socially by trade, investments and governance. These links are spurred by market liberalization and information communication and transportation technologies. Cyberspace communication and coordination are cheap, fast and global. What-ever their origins, electronic communications do not today represent a simple democratic project, but rather a corporate capitalist one. The very uneven World Wide Web might make us hesitant to embrace enthusiastically for it is a vanguard of global governance and democracy (Kollack 1999). We are in the Age of Electronic colonialization. Electronic colonialization is the dependency relationship established by the importation of communication hardware, foreign-produced software, along with related information protocols, that vicariously establish a set of foreign norms, values and expectations, which is intended to alter the regions societies culture and socialization processes. The electronic colonialism that we are experiencing is just as dreaded as mercantile colonialism of the nineteenth century. Mercantile colonialism economic focus was cheap labour. Electronic colonialism focused on how to cognitively manipulate the mind of the individual; it is aimed at influencing attitudes, beliefs and lifestyles geared at the consumerization of society.