The Caribbean is at the heart of the Americas in many ways. Yet its

historical and contemporary effect on the US, and traffic between the two

is sometimes reduced in magnitude or scope because of a reliance on

demographic data that highlights the small numbers of its diaspora relative

to other racial and ethnic groups in the US. Those small numbers seem to

justify the use of comparative approaches in which a pan-Caribbean

categorisation is used to represent the Anglophone, Francophone, and

A number of theories have been put forward to explain the existence of the

matrifocal family in Jamaica. One of the most widely accepted is that it is

the result of changes wrought by the plantation system. One searches in

vain, however, to uncover any similar attempt to explain the development

of the prestige system of working-class men. Rather than follow the

conventional anthropological approach, which has been to document how

pervasive male peer groups are in the English-speaking Caribbean, I