barbados
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Between 1996 and 2003 research was conducted in Barbados examining the importance of a Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA) in the lives of Barbadian people. Of course in order to be able to understand the importance of ROSCAs in Barbados, one had to be able to put it into context with a larger picture of Barbadian culture. By doing this one is able to compare contemporary Barbadian society with that of a Barbados 40 years prior. What this enables us to do is highlight the cultural similarities and differences that exist today. Currently, there are a number of cultural traits that symbolically manifest changes in the social and political minds of Bajan people. For example, in Barbados many people revere and celebrate an Afrocentric identity and demonstrate this connection in their daily discourse. It manifests itself in the lives they lead, the clothes they wear, the names they give their children, the people they celebrate as heroes (as well as the ones they now reject), the music they listen to and even the way they wear their hair. But all of these cultural changes exist within the realm of a ever changing and developing society; one that now finds water running in almost every home, cell phones in the hands of people young and old, automobile ownership for a large portion of the population, credit card membership and a daily outmigration from local communities to urban areas to work in the service, tourism and petroleum industries.