Description
Book SynopsisAn ethnographic study of cultural policy in Jamaica as seen from above and below in relation to race, class, and nation
Trade Review“
Modern Blackness is an important book. It is well written, it puts forth a creative theoretical apparatus, and it displays Deborah A. Thomas’s keen ethnographic eye. It is on a topic of extreme importance to the discipline of anthropology as well as to African diaspora and Caribbean and Latin American studies, engaging as it does some of the effects of neoliberalism and structural adjustment in today’s world.”—Kevin A. Yelvington, author of
Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in a Caribbean Workplace“In its critique of creole respectability,
Modern Blackness challenges established views of Jamaican nationalism and the nation-state. Deborah A. Thomas argues that the young and black who live in Kingston have forged social values and transnational links that reflect their disillusion with education and aspirations to the middle class. She confronts the reader with the reality of life among the ‘lower sets’ and provides a provocative agenda for rethinking blackness.”—Diane Austin-Broos, author of
Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral OrdersTable of ContentsAcknowledgments xi
Introduction: "Out of Many, One (Black) People" 1
Part 1: The Global-National 27
1. The "Problem" of Nationalism in the British West Indies; or, "What We Are and What We Hope to Be" 29
2. Political Economies of Culture 58
Part II: The National-Local 93
3. Strangers and Friends 95
4. Institutionalizing (Racialized) Progress 130
5. Emancipating the Nation (Again) 158
Part III: The Local-Global 193
6. Political Economies of Modernity 195
7. Modern Blackness; or, Theoretical "Tripping" on Black Vernacular Cultures 230
Conclusion: The Remix 263
Epilogue 271
Notes 279
Bibliography 311
Index 341
