The annual graduation ceremonies at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, will take place this Friday, November 6 and Saturday, November 7, 2009. Just under 3000 persons have completed the requirements for completion of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the Faculties of Humanities and Education, Medical Sciences, Pure and Applied Sciences and Social Sciences.

The certificates for the faculties of Humanities and Education, and Law, will be presented at the ceremony on Friday, November 6; certificates for the faculties of Medical Sciences, and Pure and Applied Sciences, will be presented at the ceremony to be held on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 10 a.m. while those for the Faculty of Social Sciences will be presented later that day, at a ceremony to begin at 5.30 p.m.

Honorary degrees will also be presented at the three ceremonies to persons who have made a significant contribution to national or regional development.

Culture and politics in the Jamaican society

Understanding cultural habits is essential when designing policies to meet the needs of the Jamaican people.

Most national studies, from which policies are designed, have mostly looked at economic and legal aspects of Jamaican social life. Those past studies, therefore, collected information about the income, age and gender, etc, and not the 'habits of the heart', i.e., the personality traits and values of the Jamaican people.

Conducting a different kind of survey

In the 2006, 2007 and 2008 'national values surveys', Dr Lawrence Powell and his team of researchers investigated the expectations of the public in several areas including whether Jamaicans trust each other, respect the police, and their level of confidence in various institutions such as the family, the church, schools and universities. The researchers also looked at who has the responsibility to provide citizens with the basic human needs and who is responsible to correct social ills - the individual or the government.

Jamaicans choose the government

The results show that citizens have a high preference for government, rather than citizens to solve social problems. This view is in contrast to the United States where the society is more individualistic. Jamaican scores on an 'individual vs government responsibility' scale are consistently closer to the 'government' end of the scale, as opposed to the US, where scores tend to be closer to the 'individual' end.

The study goes on to show how the social needs most essential to Jamaicans are health and medical care and protection of helpless, socially disadvantaged groups such as the sick, disabled and elderly. The study found that there is a general dependence on government, as opposed to the individual, to provide for social needs. The high dependence on government creates an environment where citizens are not likely to be satisfied with the performance of any political party. This heavy dependence on government to solve problems, in a country of meagre resources, is a source of feelings of unfair treatment.

Trust: The glue that holds society together

A significant part of the research surrounds the issue of trust, asking the question: "to what extent are Jamaicans predisposed to trust other persons and to have trust in leaders and the major institutions of the society?' Three successive yearly surveys found, in each instance, that over 80 per cent of Jamaicans believe that most persons could be trusted. Though most Jamaicans showed caution in trusting others, when asked whether "most people are basically good", they tended to be somewhat more optimistic. Hence, the mistrust may be a reflection of a disintegrating society and not a reflection of the levels of faith in one another.

Need for culturally appropriate policies

To assume that such culturally rooted 'habits of the heart' are unimportant runs the risk of generating national policies that will be socially and culturally ineffective.

The research should be of value to policy-makers in Jamaica as the analysis helps to identify policies that are most likely to be favoured by the electorate, as opposed to the strategies that may result in resistance or alienation by citizens.

Dr Lawrence Powell is the polling director of the Centre for Leadership in Government and a senior lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.