Modern Blackness

Thomas Deborah A. Thomas

Description

Modern Blackness is a rich ethnographic exploration of Jamaican identity in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first. Analyzing nationalism, popular culture, and political economy in relation to one another, Deborah A. Thomas illuminates an ongoing struggle in Jamaica between the values associated with the postcolonial state and those generated in and through popular culture. Following independence in 1962, cultural and political policies in Jamaica were geared toward the development of a multiracial creole nationalism reflected in the country's motto: "Out of many, one people." As Thomas shows, by the late 1990s, creole nationalism was superseded by "modern blackness"-an urban blackness rooted in youth culture and influenced by African American popular culture. Expressions of blackness that had been marginalized in national cultural policy became paramount in contemporary understandings of what it was to be Jamaican.Thomas combines historical research with fieldwork she conducted in Jamaica between 1993 and 2003. Drawing on her research in a rural hillside community just outside Kingston, she looks at how Jamaicans interpreted and reproduced or transformed on the local level nationalist policies and popular ideologies about progress. With detailed descriptions of daily life in Jamaica set against a backdrop of postcolonial nation-building and neoliberal globalization, Modern Blackness is an important examination of the competing identities that mobilize Jamaicans locally and represent them internationally.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Cultural studies
• Biological anthropology
• Jamaica

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 29 novembre 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822386308
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

modern blackness

A book in the series

latin america otherwise:

languages, empires, nations

Series editors:

Walter D. Mignolo, Duke University

Irene Silverblatt, Duke University

Sonia Saldívar-Hull, University of

California at Los Angeles

Deborah A. Thomas

modern blackness

Nationalism, Globalization, and

the Politics of Culture

in Jamaica

S

Duke University Press Durham & London 2004

∫2004 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$

Designed by C. H. Westmoreland

Typeset in Quadraat by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thomas, Deborah A., 1966– Modern blackness : nationalism, globalization and the politics of culture in Jamaica / Deborah A. Thomas. p. cm. — (Latin America otherwise) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn0-8223-3408-9 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn0-8223-3419-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Jamaica—Cultural policy. 2. Ethnicity—Jamaica. 3. Identity (Psychology)—Jamaica. 4. Nationalism—Jamaica. 5. Politics and culture—Jamaica—History. 6. Social classes—Jamaica. 7. Popular culture—Jamaica. 8. Globalization—Social aspects—Jamaica. I. Title. II. Series. f1874.t46 2004 972.92–dc22 2004012453

about the series

Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations is a critical series. It aims to explore the emergence and consequences of concepts used to define ‘‘Latin America’’ while at the same time exploring the broad interplay of political, economic, and cultural practices that have shaped Latin American worlds. Latin America, at the crossroads of competing imperial designs and local responses, has been construed as a geocultural and geopolitical entity since the nineteenth century. This series provides a starting point to redefine Latin America as a configuration of political, linguistic, cultural, and economic intersections that demands a continuous reappraisal of the role of the Americas in history, and of the ongoing process of globalization and the relocation of people and cultures that have characterized Latin America’s experience.Latin America Otherwise: Lan- guages, Empires, Nations is a forum that confronts established geocultural con- structions, that rethinks area studies and disciplinary boundaries, that assesses convictions of the academy and of public policy, and that, correspondingly, demands that the practices through which we produce knowledge and under- standing about and from Latin America be subject to rigorous and critical scrutiny. Modern Blacknessa history and ethnography of the cultural politics of na- is tionalism in Jamaica. Starting with the years after independence, Thomas pre- sents the changing valence of nationalist ideologies—from the awakenings of ‘‘the people’’ as a creole nation to today’s nation, rooted in an ethos of urban ‘‘blackness.’’ Thomas places nationalism in several contexts: from the history of Jamaica in a changing world, to the history of Mango Mount in a changing Jamaica. With great analytical sophistication, Thomas gives, then, a three- dimensional view of the dynamics linking global forces, the Jamaican nation, and local possibilities: and all this with attention to political, economic, and cultural factors. Modern Blacknessan ambitious book that manages to tell a big story of is national and global transformations without sacrificing what matters—the day- to-day lives of ‘‘ordinary’’ Jamaicans. Thomas’s generous vision, then, is a les- son in how to see otherwise: to appreciate the simultaneous workings of global, national, and local forces, without forgetting the human beings that constitute them; to understand that ‘‘culture’’ (like dance) is part of this dynamic; and to remember that the Caribbean, including the English-speaking Caribbean, and ‘‘Latin’’ America are part of each others’ being in the history of the modern/ colonial world.

for my family and my posse

contents

acknowledgmentsxi introduction‘‘Out of Many, One (Black) People’’

1

part iThe Global-National 27 chapter 1The ‘‘Problem’’ of Nationalism in the British West Indies; or, ‘‘What We Are and What We Hope to Be’’ chapter 258Political Economies of Culture

part ii93The National-Local chapter 3Strangers and Friends 95 chapter 4Institutionalizing (Racialized) Progress 130 chapter 5Emancipating the Nation (Again) 158

part iii193The Local-Global chapter 6Political Economies of Modernity 195 chapter 7Modern Blackness; or, Theoretical ‘‘Tripping’’ on Black Vernacular Culture 230

conclusionThe Remix 263 epilogue271 notes279 bibliography311 index341

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