Shifting arrangements: Indo-trinidadian women, globalization, and the restructuring of family life

This article focuses on the changing relationships between East-Indian daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law in a developing society: Trinidad, West Indies. Changes in how families are structured are seen as active responses to processes of globalization. While these changes have provided younger women with opportunities to resist older arrangements, their responses have in turn created new problems that remain unresolved. I argue that these families' experiences of change are linked to complex relations that include increased access to education, changes in the village economy, and global media penetration, all of which are part of broader processes of modernization and globalization. The study draws on ethnographic fieldwork as well as census data and economic, educational, and demographic changes since World War II.