Cindy Hahamovitch
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691102689
- eISBN:
- 9781400840021
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691102689.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
From South Africa in the nineteenth century to Hong Kong today, nations around the world, including the United States, have turned to guestworker programs to manage migration. These temporary labor ...
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From South Africa in the nineteenth century to Hong Kong today, nations around the world, including the United States, have turned to guestworker programs to manage migration. These temporary labor recruitment systems represented a state-brokered compromise between employers who wanted foreign workers and those who feared rising numbers of immigrants. Unlike immigrants, guestworkers could not settle, bring their families, or become citizens, and they had few rights. Indeed, instead of creating a manageable form of migration, guestworker programs created an especially vulnerable class of labor. Based on a vast array of sources from U.S., Jamaican, and English archives, as well as interviews, this book tells the history of the American “H2” program, the world's second oldest guestworker program. Since World War II, the H2 program has brought hundreds of thousands of mostly Jamaican men to the United States to do some of the nation's dirtiest and most dangerous farmwork for some of its biggest and most powerful agricultural corporations, companies that had the power to import and deport workers from abroad. Jamaican guestworkers occupied a no man's land between nations, protected neither by their home government nor by the United States. The workers complained, went on strike, and sued their employers in class action lawsuits, but their protests had little impact because they could be repatriated and replaced in a matter of hours. The book puts Jamaican guestworkers' experiences in the context of the global history of this fast-growing and perilous form of labor migration.Less
From South Africa in the nineteenth century to Hong Kong today, nations around the world, including the United States, have turned to guestworker programs to manage migration. These temporary labor recruitment systems represented a state-brokered compromise between employers who wanted foreign workers and those who feared rising numbers of immigrants. Unlike immigrants, guestworkers could not settle, bring their families, or become citizens, and they had few rights. Indeed, instead of creating a manageable form of migration, guestworker programs created an especially vulnerable class of labor. Based on a vast array of sources from U.S., Jamaican, and English archives, as well as interviews, this book tells the history of the American “H2” program, the world's second oldest guestworker program. Since World War II, the H2 program has brought hundreds of thousands of mostly Jamaican men to the United States to do some of the nation's dirtiest and most dangerous farmwork for some of its biggest and most powerful agricultural corporations, companies that had the power to import and deport workers from abroad. Jamaican guestworkers occupied a no man's land between nations, protected neither by their home government nor by the United States. The workers complained, went on strike, and sued their employers in class action lawsuits, but their protests had little impact because they could be repatriated and replaced in a matter of hours. The book puts Jamaican guestworkers' experiences in the context of the global history of this fast-growing and perilous form of labor migration.
Janson C. Parker
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195332025
- eISBN:
- 9780199868179
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332025.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
Describes the optimism that accompanied the settlement of the Chaguaramas dispute, which formed part of the Kennedy administration's anti-Castro hemispheric diplomacy. Along with the Alliance for ...
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Describes the optimism that accompanied the settlement of the Chaguaramas dispute, which formed part of the Kennedy administration's anti-Castro hemispheric diplomacy. Along with the Alliance for Progress and other initiatives, the now-solidified West Indies Federation was as crucial a part of American designs as of British and West Indian plans. The September 1961 Jamaican referendum, on that island's continued participation in the federation, was expected to return an affirmative answer. When it did not, all parties were forced to improvise. Jamaica's exit doomed the union, and the federation joined others around the postwar globe in fracturing along insular lines. The United States retooled its regional policy around the “twin pillars” of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, both of which achieved their independence in 1962.Less
Describes the optimism that accompanied the settlement of the Chaguaramas dispute, which formed part of the Kennedy administration's anti-Castro hemispheric diplomacy. Along with the Alliance for Progress and other initiatives, the now-solidified West Indies Federation was as crucial a part of American designs as of British and West Indian plans. The September 1961 Jamaican referendum, on that island's continued participation in the federation, was expected to return an affirmative answer. When it did not, all parties were forced to improvise. Jamaica's exit doomed the union, and the federation joined others around the postwar globe in fracturing along insular lines. The United States retooled its regional policy around the “twin pillars” of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, both of which achieved their independence in 1962.
Dianne M. Stewart
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- July 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195154153
- eISBN:
- 9780199835713
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195154150.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
This concluding chapter considers the implications of studying African-Jamaican religiosity for theology and for African-derived religions. It suggests new directions for Caribbean theology that are ...
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This concluding chapter considers the implications of studying African-Jamaican religiosity for theology and for African-derived religions. It suggests new directions for Caribbean theology that are consonant with the historical manifestations of Jamaica's African-derived religions and with the spiritual insights and ethical imperatives of broader African-Caribbean religions. It argues that African-derived religions are critical in shaping liberative perspectives in Caribbean theology. Some methodological insights and limitations of contemporary Caribbean, Black, Pan-African, womanist, and Latin American theologies are explored, particularly liberation theological approaches to indigenous religions, which seek to bring credibility to aspects of indigenous traditions as they have been incorporated into localized expressions of Christianity.Less
This concluding chapter considers the implications of studying African-Jamaican religiosity for theology and for African-derived religions. It suggests new directions for Caribbean theology that are consonant with the historical manifestations of Jamaica's African-derived religions and with the spiritual insights and ethical imperatives of broader African-Caribbean religions. It argues that African-derived religions are critical in shaping liberative perspectives in Caribbean theology. Some methodological insights and limitations of contemporary Caribbean, Black, Pan-African, womanist, and Latin American theologies are explored, particularly liberation theological approaches to indigenous religions, which seek to bring credibility to aspects of indigenous traditions as they have been incorporated into localized expressions of Christianity.
Cindy Hahamovitch
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691102689
- eISBN:
- 9781400840021
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691102689.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter examines the experiences of the Jamaican guestworkers who came to the United States during World War II. These guestworkers were an unusually worldly, educated, and articulate group of ...
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This chapter examines the experiences of the Jamaican guestworkers who came to the United States during World War II. These guestworkers were an unusually worldly, educated, and articulate group of farmworkers. Determined to be treated as the equals of whites, they boldly defied growers' expectations that they would be cheap, tractable, and submissive. They responded decisively to affronts to their dignity and violations of their contracts. They were British war workers and volunteers, and for a few months at least they were treated as such by U.S. officials and the liaison officers assigned to enforce the terms of their contracts. Those few months were the pinnacle of the U.S. guestworker programs; it would be downhill from there.Less
This chapter examines the experiences of the Jamaican guestworkers who came to the United States during World War II. These guestworkers were an unusually worldly, educated, and articulate group of farmworkers. Determined to be treated as the equals of whites, they boldly defied growers' expectations that they would be cheap, tractable, and submissive. They responded decisively to affronts to their dignity and violations of their contracts. They were British war workers and volunteers, and for a few months at least they were treated as such by U.S. officials and the liaison officers assigned to enforce the terms of their contracts. Those few months were the pinnacle of the U.S. guestworker programs; it would be downhill from there.
Cindy Hahamovitch
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691102689
- eISBN:
- 9781400840021
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691102689.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter looks at the Jamaican guestworkers' transfer to Clewiston, Florida, where their status sank from exotic British war workers to “alien negro laborers,” and neither their British ...
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This chapter looks at the Jamaican guestworkers' transfer to Clewiston, Florida, where their status sank from exotic British war workers to “alien negro laborers,” and neither their British citizenship nor U.S. officials could protect them from the perils of farm labor relations in the southern countryside. In Florida, guestworkers' foreignness provided employers with a new and effective weapon in the arsenal of labor discipline: workers who protested their treatment now faced detention, repatriation, and blacklisting. In this new era of transnational labor, the threat of deportation became the new whip. No longer were Jamaicans told to expect “a friendly English-speaking people,” with habits and customs “somewhat different” from their own. In Florida, they were warned to adapt to the dictates of “the Jim Crow Creed.”Less
This chapter looks at the Jamaican guestworkers' transfer to Clewiston, Florida, where their status sank from exotic British war workers to “alien negro laborers,” and neither their British citizenship nor U.S. officials could protect them from the perils of farm labor relations in the southern countryside. In Florida, guestworkers' foreignness provided employers with a new and effective weapon in the arsenal of labor discipline: workers who protested their treatment now faced detention, repatriation, and blacklisting. In this new era of transnational labor, the threat of deportation became the new whip. No longer were Jamaicans told to expect “a friendly English-speaking people,” with habits and customs “somewhat different” from their own. In Florida, they were warned to adapt to the dictates of “the Jim Crow Creed.”
Kenneth M. Bilby
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813032788
- eISBN:
- 9780813039138
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813032788.003.0013
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter discusses the ethnographic future of the Jamaican Maroons. No one can tell how many Kromanti language specialists remain in the Maroon communities in Jamaica. By the late 1970s, there ...
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This chapter discusses the ethnographic future of the Jamaican Maroons. No one can tell how many Kromanti language specialists remain in the Maroon communities in Jamaica. By the late 1970s, there were clear indications that very few among the younger generation were receiving serious training in the Kromanti tradition. Those interviewed for this book are no longer alive. This chapter suggests that the apparent waning of the Maroons' ancestral religion evidences the same kinds of damaging cultural contradictions, bred by colonialism, that linger on in other parts of Jamaica.Less
This chapter discusses the ethnographic future of the Jamaican Maroons. No one can tell how many Kromanti language specialists remain in the Maroon communities in Jamaica. By the late 1970s, there were clear indications that very few among the younger generation were receiving serious training in the Kromanti tradition. Those interviewed for this book are no longer alive. This chapter suggests that the apparent waning of the Maroons' ancestral religion evidences the same kinds of damaging cultural contradictions, bred by colonialism, that linger on in other parts of Jamaica.
Brian Meeks
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628461213
- eISBN:
- 9781626740679
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461213.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
This book reflects on Caribbean politics, particularly radical politics and ideologies in the postcolonial era. The book also explains the peculiarities of the contemporary neoliberal period while ...
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This book reflects on Caribbean politics, particularly radical politics and ideologies in the postcolonial era. The book also explains the peculiarities of the contemporary neoliberal period while searching for pathways beyond the current plight. The first part, “Theoretical Forays” makes a conscious attempt to engage with contemporary Caribbean political thought at a moment of flux and search for a relevant theoretical language and style to both explicate the Caribbean's recent past and confront the difficult conditions of the early twenty-first century. The next part, “Caribbean Questions,” both retrospective and biographical, retraces the authors own engagement with the University of the West Indies, the short-lived but influential Caribbean Black Power movement, the work of seminal Trinidadian thinker and activist Lloyd Best, Cuba's relationship with Jamaica, and the crisis and collapse of the Grenada Revolution. The concluding section “Jamaican Journeys,” excerpts and extracts from a longer, more sustained engagement with Jamaican politics and society. Much of the author's argument builds around the notion that Jamaica faces a crucial moment, as the author seeks to chart and explain its convoluted political path and dismal economic performance over the past three decades. The book suggests that despite the emptying of sovereignty in the increasingly globalized world, windows to enhanced human development might open through greater democracy and popular inclusion.Less
This book reflects on Caribbean politics, particularly radical politics and ideologies in the postcolonial era. The book also explains the peculiarities of the contemporary neoliberal period while searching for pathways beyond the current plight. The first part, “Theoretical Forays” makes a conscious attempt to engage with contemporary Caribbean political thought at a moment of flux and search for a relevant theoretical language and style to both explicate the Caribbean's recent past and confront the difficult conditions of the early twenty-first century. The next part, “Caribbean Questions,” both retrospective and biographical, retraces the authors own engagement with the University of the West Indies, the short-lived but influential Caribbean Black Power movement, the work of seminal Trinidadian thinker and activist Lloyd Best, Cuba's relationship with Jamaica, and the crisis and collapse of the Grenada Revolution. The concluding section “Jamaican Journeys,” excerpts and extracts from a longer, more sustained engagement with Jamaican politics and society. Much of the author's argument builds around the notion that Jamaica faces a crucial moment, as the author seeks to chart and explain its convoluted political path and dismal economic performance over the past three decades. The book suggests that despite the emptying of sovereignty in the increasingly globalized world, windows to enhanced human development might open through greater democracy and popular inclusion.
Charles Price
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814767467
- eISBN:
- 9780814768464
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814767467.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Religion
So much has been written about the Rastafari, yet we know so little about why and how people join the Rastafari movement. Although popular understandings evoke images of dreadlocks, reggae, and ...
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So much has been written about the Rastafari, yet we know so little about why and how people join the Rastafari movement. Although popular understandings evoke images of dreadlocks, reggae, and marijuana, Rastafarians were persecuted in their country, becoming a people seeking social justice. Yet new adherents continued to convert to Rastafari despite facing adverse reactions from their fellow citizens and from their British rulers. This book draws on in-depth interviews to reveal the personal experiences of those who adopted the religion in the 1950s to 1970s, one generation past the movement's emergence. By talking with these Rastafari elders, the author seeks to understand why and how Jamaicans became Rastafari in spite of rampant discrimination, and what sustains them in their faith and identity. Utilizing new conceptual frameworks, the book explores the identity development of Rastafari, demonstrating how shifts in the movement's identity—from social pariah to exemplar of blackness—have led some of the elder Rastafari to adopt, embrace, and internalize Rastafari and blackness as central to their concept of self.Less
So much has been written about the Rastafari, yet we know so little about why and how people join the Rastafari movement. Although popular understandings evoke images of dreadlocks, reggae, and marijuana, Rastafarians were persecuted in their country, becoming a people seeking social justice. Yet new adherents continued to convert to Rastafari despite facing adverse reactions from their fellow citizens and from their British rulers. This book draws on in-depth interviews to reveal the personal experiences of those who adopted the religion in the 1950s to 1970s, one generation past the movement's emergence. By talking with these Rastafari elders, the author seeks to understand why and how Jamaicans became Rastafari in spite of rampant discrimination, and what sustains them in their faith and identity. Utilizing new conceptual frameworks, the book explores the identity development of Rastafari, demonstrating how shifts in the movement's identity—from social pariah to exemplar of blackness—have led some of the elder Rastafari to adopt, embrace, and internalize Rastafari and blackness as central to their concept of self.
Daniel Livesay
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469634432
- eISBN:
- 9781469634449
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469634432.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This book traces the lives of more than three hundred mixed-race Jamaicans who left the Caribbean for Britain in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Born to free and enslaved women of ...
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This book traces the lives of more than three hundred mixed-race Jamaicans who left the Caribbean for Britain in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Born to free and enslaved women of color and wealthy white men, these individuals fled Jamaica owing to its lack of schools, legal restrictions, and colonial prejudice. In Britain they lived with paternal relatives, attended expensive boarding schools, and apprenticed with their father’s extended networks. Many used this refined British upbringing as a launching pad for an eventual return to Jamaica, or to venture to other parts of the British Empire, in order to establish themselves as elite members of colonial society. This study is the first to trace the group’s migration back and forth across the Atlantic. It argues that family status played a central role in one’s racial category, in both the Americas as well as in Britain, during the long eighteenth century. Because of their kinship to wealthy and influential individuals as well as their intermediate racial status, migrants of color were critical actors in the debates around race, family, and belonging in the British Empire. Using thousands of wills, hundreds of legal petitions, dozens of family correspondences, and a number of inheritance lawsuits, this study shows the deeply complex evolution of Atlantic racial ideas, even in the most nakedly oppressive of slave societies.Less
This book traces the lives of more than three hundred mixed-race Jamaicans who left the Caribbean for Britain in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Born to free and enslaved women of color and wealthy white men, these individuals fled Jamaica owing to its lack of schools, legal restrictions, and colonial prejudice. In Britain they lived with paternal relatives, attended expensive boarding schools, and apprenticed with their father’s extended networks. Many used this refined British upbringing as a launching pad for an eventual return to Jamaica, or to venture to other parts of the British Empire, in order to establish themselves as elite members of colonial society. This study is the first to trace the group’s migration back and forth across the Atlantic. It argues that family status played a central role in one’s racial category, in both the Americas as well as in Britain, during the long eighteenth century. Because of their kinship to wealthy and influential individuals as well as their intermediate racial status, migrants of color were critical actors in the debates around race, family, and belonging in the British Empire. Using thousands of wills, hundreds of legal petitions, dozens of family correspondences, and a number of inheritance lawsuits, this study shows the deeply complex evolution of Atlantic racial ideas, even in the most nakedly oppressive of slave societies.
Christopher Stone
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199658244
- eISBN:
- 9780199949915
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199658244.003.0011
- Subject:
- Law, Public International Law
This chapter studies the bottom-up creation of locally usable near real time ‘active indicators’, as well as the top-down production of donor-demanded indicators. It explores the indicators of ...
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This chapter studies the bottom-up creation of locally usable near real time ‘active indicators’, as well as the top-down production of donor-demanded indicators. It explores the indicators of various performance patterns across police divisions in Jamaica, as well as the different drivers of pre-trial detention within a Nigerian prison. This chapter also suggests a recurring development of indicators from these local experiences in inter-country dialogues among important professionals, which would signal the eventual combination of these into global indicators.Less
This chapter studies the bottom-up creation of locally usable near real time ‘active indicators’, as well as the top-down production of donor-demanded indicators. It explores the indicators of various performance patterns across police divisions in Jamaica, as well as the different drivers of pre-trial detention within a Nigerian prison. This chapter also suggests a recurring development of indicators from these local experiences in inter-country dialogues among important professionals, which would signal the eventual combination of these into global indicators.
Susanna Sloat
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813034676
- eISBN:
- 9780813046303
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034676.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This book tells how Caribbean dance is shaped by cultures mixing Africa and Europe and sometimes Asia in a new world. Many authors are cultural leaders on the islands, while others live elsewhere, ...
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This book tells how Caribbean dance is shaped by cultures mixing Africa and Europe and sometimes Asia in a new world. Many authors are cultural leaders on the islands, while others live elsewhere, but have spent years steeped in island cultures.? It starts with connective chapters, on calypso and wining for the Anglophone Caribbean, and on how the French and enslaved Africans spread dances throughout the Caribbean. Cuban chapters focus on the Haitian-influenced culture of Eastern Cuba, Arará and its connection to Africa, a memoir from the father of Cuban modern dance, Africanness, and a search for the roots of international ballroom rumba. It has a comprehensive look at the context and content of Jamaican folkloric dance, one on the inventors of Jamaican dancehall dance and the dances, and a Ghanian take on the Jamaican ritual tradition of Kumina. There are chapters on the Dominican misterios, the subculture of Dominican son, on dancing stars on Dominican television, and on contemporary Haitian choreographers. It includes the history of Puerto Rican experimental dancemakers, the quadrille and bele of Dominica, the personalities of St. Lucia seen through its dances, and also on dance in Barbados and how it has helped create a national identity, on the Big Drum of Carriacou, on the intertwined history of Trinidad and Tobago and its dance, and on the dance traditions of the Indians of Trinidad, from ritual Ramdilla to secular chutney.Less
This book tells how Caribbean dance is shaped by cultures mixing Africa and Europe and sometimes Asia in a new world. Many authors are cultural leaders on the islands, while others live elsewhere, but have spent years steeped in island cultures.? It starts with connective chapters, on calypso and wining for the Anglophone Caribbean, and on how the French and enslaved Africans spread dances throughout the Caribbean. Cuban chapters focus on the Haitian-influenced culture of Eastern Cuba, Arará and its connection to Africa, a memoir from the father of Cuban modern dance, Africanness, and a search for the roots of international ballroom rumba. It has a comprehensive look at the context and content of Jamaican folkloric dance, one on the inventors of Jamaican dancehall dance and the dances, and a Ghanian take on the Jamaican ritual tradition of Kumina. There are chapters on the Dominican misterios, the subculture of Dominican son, on dancing stars on Dominican television, and on contemporary Haitian choreographers. It includes the history of Puerto Rican experimental dancemakers, the quadrille and bele of Dominica, the personalities of St. Lucia seen through its dances, and also on dance in Barbados and how it has helped create a national identity, on the Big Drum of Carriacou, on the intertwined history of Trinidad and Tobago and its dance, and on the dance traditions of the Indians of Trinidad, from ritual Ramdilla to secular chutney.
Anne Spry Rush
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199588558
- eISBN:
- 9780191728990
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588558.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter presents the first of three case studies that explore the place of the British royal family in Jamaicans’ understanding of and identification with Britishness. It explores Jamaican views ...
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This chapter presents the first of three case studies that explore the place of the British royal family in Jamaicans’ understanding of and identification with Britishness. It explores Jamaican views of Queen Victoria and the monarchy more generally, and examines the varied roles played by Jamaicans in royal occasions from 1900 to the mid-1930s. Many Jamaicans, particularly those of the middle-class, admired Victoria, whom they saw as the caring and respectable mother of an idealized imperial family, as well as a proponent of liberty and equitable treatment for all Britons, including colonial subjects. When combined with their familiarity with and participation in royal rituals, these beliefs about the monarch helped create in many Jamaicans a strong identification with the British royal family and the empire it represented.Less
This chapter presents the first of three case studies that explore the place of the British royal family in Jamaicans’ understanding of and identification with Britishness. It explores Jamaican views of Queen Victoria and the monarchy more generally, and examines the varied roles played by Jamaicans in royal occasions from 1900 to the mid-1930s. Many Jamaicans, particularly those of the middle-class, admired Victoria, whom they saw as the caring and respectable mother of an idealized imperial family, as well as a proponent of liberty and equitable treatment for all Britons, including colonial subjects. When combined with their familiarity with and participation in royal rituals, these beliefs about the monarch helped create in many Jamaicans a strong identification with the British royal family and the empire it represented.
Anne Spry Rush
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199588558
- eISBN:
- 9780191728990
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588558.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter traces how middle-class Jamaicans who participated in the public debate about Edward VIII's 1936 abdication understood the effects of his actions on the monarchy and the British people — ...
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This chapter traces how middle-class Jamaicans who participated in the public debate about Edward VIII's 1936 abdication understood the effects of his actions on the monarchy and the British people — including themselves as colonial subjects. While they sympathized with Edward's feelings as an individual, most Jamaicans felt that he could not retain the respectability of the crown (and through it the empire's power) if he married a formerly divorced women. As Jamaican commentators framed it, by abdicating, Edward had made the honorable choice, bowing to the people's will in order to preserve Britain's dignity and advance what they considered the British Empire's commitment to democracy. Jamaican reactions to the crisis thus reflected and ultimately reinforced their perception of the British monarch as a symbol of British honor, respectability, and justice.Less
This chapter traces how middle-class Jamaicans who participated in the public debate about Edward VIII's 1936 abdication understood the effects of his actions on the monarchy and the British people — including themselves as colonial subjects. While they sympathized with Edward's feelings as an individual, most Jamaicans felt that he could not retain the respectability of the crown (and through it the empire's power) if he married a formerly divorced women. As Jamaican commentators framed it, by abdicating, Edward had made the honorable choice, bowing to the people's will in order to preserve Britain's dignity and advance what they considered the British Empire's commitment to democracy. Jamaican reactions to the crisis thus reflected and ultimately reinforced their perception of the British monarch as a symbol of British honor, respectability, and justice.
Anne Spry Rush
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199588558
- eISBN:
- 9780191728990
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588558.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter concludes the book's investigation of royalty by examining how, in the post-war colonial period, Jamaicans aligned themselves with the British monarch to emphasize their pride in being ...
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This chapter concludes the book's investigation of royalty by examining how, in the post-war colonial period, Jamaicans aligned themselves with the British monarch to emphasize their pride in being British, and also to promote their right to self-rule. It focuses primarily on Jamaicans’ response to Elizabeth II in the context of one year, 1953, when they celebrated both the royal coronation and Elizabeth's visit to their island. In this year, a wide variety of Jamaicans (including educators, politicians, students, religious leaders, and journalists) aligned themselves with the British monarch to emphasize and further their claim as proud Jamaicans deserving of self-rule, as well as to celebrate their homeland's place within the British Commonwealth. The symbol of the British monarch thus became a part of the Jamaican campaign for self-government (and, to some degree, independence) even as it remained a tribute to the continued role of Britishness in Caribbean life.Less
This chapter concludes the book's investigation of royalty by examining how, in the post-war colonial period, Jamaicans aligned themselves with the British monarch to emphasize their pride in being British, and also to promote their right to self-rule. It focuses primarily on Jamaicans’ response to Elizabeth II in the context of one year, 1953, when they celebrated both the royal coronation and Elizabeth's visit to their island. In this year, a wide variety of Jamaicans (including educators, politicians, students, religious leaders, and journalists) aligned themselves with the British monarch to emphasize and further their claim as proud Jamaicans deserving of self-rule, as well as to celebrate their homeland's place within the British Commonwealth. The symbol of the British monarch thus became a part of the Jamaican campaign for self-government (and, to some degree, independence) even as it remained a tribute to the continued role of Britishness in Caribbean life.
Brian Meeks
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628461213
- eISBN:
- 9781626740679
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461213.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, Political History
This chapter discusses how the Jamaican cultural hegemony is further sealed by the growth of an increasingly integrated Caribbean diaspora, resulting with several phases in Jamaican politics. The ...
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This chapter discusses how the Jamaican cultural hegemony is further sealed by the growth of an increasingly integrated Caribbean diaspora, resulting with several phases in Jamaican politics. The first phase took the form of symbolic clashes between groups of supporters. The second phase was the emergence of distinct urban enclaves, wherein the majority was used as a means of securing political control. The third phase involved Michael Manley's “democratic socialism” movement, and the 2010 Dudus events involving Christopher “Dudus” Coke and his Shower Posse. Ultimately, Jamaica's thirty-year crisis, which culminated in the Labor Day Dudus events of May 2010, provided the opportunity to reconfigure the arrangements that have reinforced Jamaicas postcolonial journey.Less
This chapter discusses how the Jamaican cultural hegemony is further sealed by the growth of an increasingly integrated Caribbean diaspora, resulting with several phases in Jamaican politics. The first phase took the form of symbolic clashes between groups of supporters. The second phase was the emergence of distinct urban enclaves, wherein the majority was used as a means of securing political control. The third phase involved Michael Manley's “democratic socialism” movement, and the 2010 Dudus events involving Christopher “Dudus” Coke and his Shower Posse. Ultimately, Jamaica's thirty-year crisis, which culminated in the Labor Day Dudus events of May 2010, provided the opportunity to reconfigure the arrangements that have reinforced Jamaicas postcolonial journey.
Andrew F. Jones
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226656397
- eISBN:
- 9780226656427
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226656427.003.0015
- Subject:
- Music, Performing Practice/Studies
This chapter examines the electronic mediation of the human voice in Jamaican popular music. The manipulation of vocal timbre and pitch in studio production since the 1970s, and through the software ...
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This chapter examines the electronic mediation of the human voice in Jamaican popular music. The manipulation of vocal timbre and pitch in studio production since the 1970s, and through the software plug-in Auto-tune in more recent years, has enabled Jamaican musicians to channel the voices of the dead, the vulnerable, and the voiceless, and in doing so, represent the sufferings of the historical past, as well as the depredations of the contemporary forms of exclusion and poverty. This chapter surveys the history of the sound-system and dub music, and shows how these innovations form the basis for the technological development and social valence of vocal production in Jamaican popular music. The chapter closely analyzes the innovative recording practices of the celebrated roots reggae performer, Burning Spear, as well as the more recent controversial work of dancehall performer Vybz Kartel, and proposes that they are linked by a shared interest in vocal timbre, and how it can be sculpted electronically so as to invoke historically resonant personae, and reflect on questions of dispossession, deprivation, and political representation in the present.Less
This chapter examines the electronic mediation of the human voice in Jamaican popular music. The manipulation of vocal timbre and pitch in studio production since the 1970s, and through the software plug-in Auto-tune in more recent years, has enabled Jamaican musicians to channel the voices of the dead, the vulnerable, and the voiceless, and in doing so, represent the sufferings of the historical past, as well as the depredations of the contemporary forms of exclusion and poverty. This chapter surveys the history of the sound-system and dub music, and shows how these innovations form the basis for the technological development and social valence of vocal production in Jamaican popular music. The chapter closely analyzes the innovative recording practices of the celebrated roots reggae performer, Burning Spear, as well as the more recent controversial work of dancehall performer Vybz Kartel, and proposes that they are linked by a shared interest in vocal timbre, and how it can be sculpted electronically so as to invoke historically resonant personae, and reflect on questions of dispossession, deprivation, and political representation in the present.
Colin A. Palmer
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781469611693
- eISBN:
- 9781469615301
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469611693.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This book concludes with a description of Jamaican society, which was not static in its century of freedom. A minority of the descendants of the enslaved had inched their way into the middle class, ...
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This book concludes with a description of Jamaican society, which was not static in its century of freedom. A minority of the descendants of the enslaved had inched their way into the middle class, and some even sat in the Legislative Council. There was a glass ceiling, however, and black Jamaicans could not aspire to fill the top positions in the colonial administration. The changes that would have created a dominant space for the majority of Jamaicans in the political and economic systems of the island did not occur. Marginalized and battered by the brutish circumstances of their lives, these people made the most of their situation, surviving as best they could. The enslaved peoples in Jamaica had a tradition of resistance, and that rebellious spirit continued in freedom. Occurring in 1865, the Morant Bay Rebellion was one dramatic example of violent protest.Less
This book concludes with a description of Jamaican society, which was not static in its century of freedom. A minority of the descendants of the enslaved had inched their way into the middle class, and some even sat in the Legislative Council. There was a glass ceiling, however, and black Jamaicans could not aspire to fill the top positions in the colonial administration. The changes that would have created a dominant space for the majority of Jamaicans in the political and economic systems of the island did not occur. Marginalized and battered by the brutish circumstances of their lives, these people made the most of their situation, surviving as best they could. The enslaved peoples in Jamaica had a tradition of resistance, and that rebellious spirit continued in freedom. Occurring in 1865, the Morant Bay Rebellion was one dramatic example of violent protest.
Isaac Nii Akrong (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813034676
- eISBN:
- 9780813046303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034676.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Writing from the cultural perspective of his native Ghana and Ga-Adangme roots, Isaac Nii Akrong looks into complex connections between aspects of Ghanaian culture and that of Jamaica. He discusses ...
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Writing from the cultural perspective of his native Ghana and Ga-Adangme roots, Isaac Nii Akrong looks into complex connections between aspects of Ghanaian culture and that of Jamaica. He discusses the Gome drum and dance of Ghana and its links (through Sierra Leone and Central Africa) to Jamaican Maroon square drums, as well as the Jamaican danced religion Kumina, with Congolese origins, but also influences from Maroons, whose roots include Ghana, and with similarities, he notes, to dance moves and musical practices of Ghana. Above all, Akrong recognizes in the Jamaican spirituality of Kumina an intensely African connection with the spiritual traditions of Ghana.Less
Writing from the cultural perspective of his native Ghana and Ga-Adangme roots, Isaac Nii Akrong looks into complex connections between aspects of Ghanaian culture and that of Jamaica. He discusses the Gome drum and dance of Ghana and its links (through Sierra Leone and Central Africa) to Jamaican Maroon square drums, as well as the Jamaican danced religion Kumina, with Congolese origins, but also influences from Maroons, whose roots include Ghana, and with similarities, he notes, to dance moves and musical practices of Ghana. Above all, Akrong recognizes in the Jamaican spirituality of Kumina an intensely African connection with the spiritual traditions of Ghana.
Cheryl Ryman (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813034676
- eISBN:
- 9780813046303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034676.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Cheryl Ryman offers an intensive view of the complexities and richness of Jamaican folkloric dance. She sets up a detailed context for her unusually complete description of the dances, giving ...
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Cheryl Ryman offers an intensive view of the complexities and richness of Jamaican folkloric dance. She sets up a detailed context for her unusually complete description of the dances, giving insights into ways in which all dance cultures can be identified, the African aesthetics and spirituality that define Jamaican dance, and the way a dance event evolves, reflecting what happens in much of the Caribbean. Ryman's extensive descriptions of such traditions as Jonkonnu, Bruckin Party, Buru, Maypole, Mento, Kumina, the Nine Night dances, including dinki mini and guerre, Maroon Kromanti play nation dances, Etu, Hosay, and Rastafari greatly enhance knowledge of the complications of Jamaica's historic folkloric culture.Less
Cheryl Ryman offers an intensive view of the complexities and richness of Jamaican folkloric dance. She sets up a detailed context for her unusually complete description of the dances, giving insights into ways in which all dance cultures can be identified, the African aesthetics and spirituality that define Jamaican dance, and the way a dance event evolves, reflecting what happens in much of the Caribbean. Ryman's extensive descriptions of such traditions as Jonkonnu, Bruckin Party, Buru, Maypole, Mento, Kumina, the Nine Night dances, including dinki mini and guerre, Maroon Kromanti play nation dances, Etu, Hosay, and Rastafari greatly enhance knowledge of the complications of Jamaica's historic folkloric culture.
Sonjah Stanley Niaah (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813034676
- eISBN:
- 9780813046303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034676.003.0009
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Sonjah Stanley Niaah enters the creative world of dancehall queens and kings as they invent and pass on new moves and dances in a milieu that transforms people from their workaday lives. She cites ...
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Sonjah Stanley Niaah enters the creative world of dancehall queens and kings as they invent and pass on new moves and dances in a milieu that transforms people from their workaday lives. She cites wellsprings of Jamaican culture that provide a reservoir of movement for dancehall dances, cultural manifestations such as costuming, and an intensity of involvement akin to possession. Stanley Niaah offers the thoughts of dancehall stars like Bogle and Stacey about their roles, notes aspects of the subculture, including changing gender roles, and describes some of the dances. She charts an extensive chronology of dance moves, including yanga, shay-shay, cool an’ deadly, poco man jam, bogle, butterfly, urkel, jerry springer, log on, drive by, signal di plane, shelly belly, shankle dip, chaka chaka, spongebob, gangsta rock, dutty wine, beyonce wine, and gully creeper.Less
Sonjah Stanley Niaah enters the creative world of dancehall queens and kings as they invent and pass on new moves and dances in a milieu that transforms people from their workaday lives. She cites wellsprings of Jamaican culture that provide a reservoir of movement for dancehall dances, cultural manifestations such as costuming, and an intensity of involvement akin to possession. Stanley Niaah offers the thoughts of dancehall stars like Bogle and Stacey about their roles, notes aspects of the subculture, including changing gender roles, and describes some of the dances. She charts an extensive chronology of dance moves, including yanga, shay-shay, cool an’ deadly, poco man jam, bogle, butterfly, urkel, jerry springer, log on, drive by, signal di plane, shelly belly, shankle dip, chaka chaka, spongebob, gangsta rock, dutty wine, beyonce wine, and gully creeper.
