“The Caribbean subbin nice” “The American subbin nice-ah”

The term society is considered to be a collection of people living in the same geographical area, while culture is the aspects of lifestyle that may be peculiar to a particular society. Extra-regional societies, countries outside the Caribbean region, impact the Caribbean’s consumption patterns in various ways.

Globalization is the tendency of businesses to transcend to other markets around the globe, thereby increasing the interconnectedness of different markets. Modes of transportation are modernizing and the ways of communication are developing. This increases a country’s ability to globalize. In effect, this means that the Caribbean market is becoming strikingly similar to the markets of extra-regional nations.

International Preferential Trading Agreements  The main agreement between the African Caribbean Pacific islands (ACP) and the European Union (EU) which is the Sugar protocol.  ACP -African Caribbean Pacific consists of 79 members and began in  The EU consist of 27 members and was founded in  The Sugar protocol is basically a logical binding which controls the price and the trading of goods between both markets.  The Economy Partnership Agreement (EPA) is an agreement made with the Caribbean in order to stimulate growth and eradicate poverty in the Caribbean.  With these agreements the EU basically provides a cushion market price so that countries in the Caribbean countries could trade with European countries and have certain tax exemption. This in itself makes it easy for the European influence to infiltrate the Caribbean in aspect such as goods and services.

GOODS AND SERVICES In history, persons in the Caribbean made a significant effort to produce their own goods. As time progressed along with the migration of persons from America, Europe, or more developed countries, the mixing of the different cultures have changed our thoughts of the goods we produce compared to the goods made abroad. The Caribbean people are of the opinion that their region is too underdeveloped for producing goods that can compete in quality to extra-regional societies. The Caribbean’s total imports is likely to be more than it’s exports – A dangerous side of the status quo. The Caribbean people now gravitate to foreign diapers ( Huggies, etc) instead of purchasing regional diapers. And that is only one product! Globalization has instigated the introduction of some foreign services such as social security, life insurance, and the credit card culture into the Caribbean society.

V.S

Sources of Entertainment Forms of entertainment would include music, karaoke, and some other sporting activities. The traditional music genres of Calypso and Soca are not listened to by Caribbean people, especially the younger generation, on a regular basis. Thus this culture is being replaced by other music genres foreign to us such as Hip-Hip, R&B, Rock and Pop just to name a few. This influences Caribbean culture negatively since adapting someone else’s style of music can lead to cultural erasure. The genre of Jazz has impacted our culture significantly and This can be seen by certain Caribbean music festivals, mainly St. Lucia Jazz Festival. The regionally held Digicel Rising Star was influenced by the popular TV show, American Idol, which is held in the United States.

V. S

What do Caribbean people eat? Local vs. Imported. As shown in the table above, Caribbean countries generally spend three times as much money importing food from the United States as they do importing food among themselves. This says a lot about our dependence as a developing region. It shows that extra-regional countries impact Caribbean Society by making Caribbean people feel dependent on outside region. The Caribbean culture now accepts sardine and salt fish as everyday conventional breakfast meals, and they are somewhat boycotting the idea of fungi, chana, ackee, fly-fish, and other Caribbean dishes. The information in the table shows the critical dependence that the Caribbean people have on these extra-regional and this is NOTWITHSTANDING our cuisine adaptations. What good is this doing for our economy? In the present Caribbean culture, pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, ice –cream, lasagna are prepared food products that are rapidly consumed and accepted by Caribbean Culture and society. Year Food and livestock from the USA:US $ 770, 541US $ 734, 813US $ Food and Livestock from other CARICOM countries: US $ 270, 376US $ 268, 060US $ 296, 018

V.S

Leisure Activities  Caribbean society and culture possess characteristics, passed on from our ancestral heritage, thus traditional leisure activities would include games such as Worri.  Globalization has consequentially caused traditional games to be replaced by other games such as checkers and chest which are of European origin.  Tourism in the Caribbean accounts for a very high percentage of revenue for many territories. In Countries such as Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados and Bahamas just to name a few, vacation activities have changed significantly thus becoming more modernized to compete on an international scale.  The introduction of international sports such as golf and base ball, although still evolving, have not yet really dominated over the traditional sports such as Cricket and Football.  The presence of opportunities to play Baseball in the United States has created an incentive for the young minds to aspire for.

V.Sc