
Modern Blackness
Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica
Deborah A. Thomas(Author)
Duke University Press
Will be published approx. on 29. November 2004
Book
Paperback/Softback
376 pages
978-0-8223-3419-4 (ISBN)
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 As Thomas shows, by the late 1990s, creole nationalism was superseded by "modern blackness"-an urban blackness rooted in youth culture and influenced by African American popular culture.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.
Reviews / Votes
"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 OrdersMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
508 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8223-3419-4 (9780822334194)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Deborah A. Thomas | Irene Silverblatt | Sonia Saldívar-Hull
Modern Blackness
Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica
E-Book
11/2004
1st Edition
De Gruyter
€208.99
Available for download
Person
Deborah A. Thomas is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.
Content
Acknowledgments 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
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