National Harmony and Its Discontents

French anthropologist Catherine Douillet investigates the ways in which Trinidadian society has conceptualized and grappled with the issue of ethnic diversity at the national level, the local level, and the personal level. She explores how factors of division and factors of unity co-exist in Trinidad both in practices and in discourses. She argues that such a juxtaposition of the twin yet contradictory principles of mixing and divisions constitute the dual reality of Trinidad's society. Such principles co-exist in a dialogic tension and sometimes clash because of their uneasy compatibility and because of the political stakes involved in defining the place of ethnicity in the nation.