Enduring substances, trying theories: The Caribbean region as oikoumene

The Caribbean region was only laggardly assimilated into cultural anthropological research, since its cultures differed so markedly from regnant conceptions of the proper anthropological subject. As the first part of the non-Western world to endure an era of intensive Westernizing activity, the Caribbean oikoumene became 'modern' in some ways even before Europe itself; while the history of the region has lent to it a coherence not so much cultural as sociological. Today's scholars have begun to look to the Caribbean for concepts they can use in describing the globalization process. But their results are mixed, in part because they continue to treat the region's distinctive history too lightly.