Male and Female and the Afro-Curaçaoan Household. BRILL. 1976.

The subject of the present study concerns the relationships between men and women and the composition of household groups among the lower Afro-American strata of the society of Curaçao. The material on which it is based was collected in Curaçao in the course of a 15-month period of fieldwork in 1965 and 1966. The research was conducted as part of a broader project aimed at furthering our present knowledge of the societies of Surinam and the Antilles. The Netherlands Antilles in particular have been apt to be neglected as a potential source of information on human societies in general in the past. Recognition of this fact has led to a greater interest in sociological research on this area in the period following World War 11, however. A number of social phenomena of particular interest were gradually earmarked for scientific research, while a list of research projects al ready in progress and proposals for future research was put forward in a publication by Speckmann and Van Renselaar in 1969 (Speckmann and Van Renselaar, 1969). The numerous phenomena which attracted special attention included several in Surinam and Curaçao, as elsewhere in the Afro-American area/ which were considered as contrasting with the familiar conditions in Europe. These phenomena came to be regarded as problems, moreover, the magnitude of which varied according to the place and group concerned. The phenomena we have in mind here are the high frequency of illegitimacy of birth and the instability of man-woman relationship in the Negroid population strata. In Surinam these phenomena were studied by W. F. L. Buschkens (Buschkens, 1975). As regards our own research on this subject, we were able to orientate ourselves by the literature on these themes pertaining to other Afro-American areas.