Trinidadians and Tobagonians



ETHNONYM: Trinidadians


Settlements

Approximately 50 percent of the population lives in the east-west corridor that includes both Port-of-Spain and Arima. As much as 20 percent of the population lives in a second densely populated area around San Fernando, in the southeast. Oil refineries are located in the south of the island, oil rigs off the southern coast. Sugar fields are concentrated in low-lying areas on the western coast.


Kinship

Although Trinidadians follow the Euro-American pattern of reckoning genealogical relatedness, such relatedness is not, in social practice, a distinct principle of association or group formation: kinship and friendship merge in daily life. Descent is bilateral. Trinidadians use basically the same kin terms as the English and Americans.


See also East Indians in Trinidad

Bibliography

Brereton, Bridget (1981). A History of Modern Trinidad. London: Heinemann.


James, C. L. R. ([1963] 1983). Beyond a Boundary. New York: Pantheon.


Naipaul, V. S. (1962). The Middle Passage. New York: Vintage.


Segal, Daniel (1989). "Nationalism in a Colonial State." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago.


Singh, Kelvin (1994). Race and Class Struggles in a Colonial State: Trinidad, 1917-1945. Calgary: University of Calgary Press.


Yelvington, Kevin, ed. (1992). Trinidad Ethnicity. London: Macmillan.

DANIEL A. SEGAL

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