Ulysse and Shoaff

Once again, the pairing of Ulysse’s Downtown Ladies with Shoaff’s article Borders within Borders is excellent. Both authors delve into how borders interact with the women who choose to cross them in order to buy/sell goods. Though the borders in question may be different, Shoaff focuses on the Haitian/Dominican border while Ulysse focuses more on international borders, it is obvious that gender, race, and class are factors that affect their crossing. As Shoaff states, “the importance of borders to the everyday lives of individuals lie in what they reveal about interplay…between the nation and the state” (Shoaff, 241). What may be just as pertinent is the ways in which those who research have their own borders to cross and how race, gender, and class interact in those crossings.

One of the more interesting aspects of these pieces though are the ways in which the authors found themselves crossing race and class borders. Notably, Ulysse mentions how her own experiences and situation led her to having difficulties crossing the social borders that exist. As she says, “managing the emotions produced by my context was one of the most difficult aspects of research for me to adjust to” (Ulysse, 181). This was obvious with her discomfort to the ‘gendered violence’ she witnessed as well as her astonishment at the ways in which the women she interacted with dealt with such realities.

Violence isn’t only gendered in how it relates to men though. As shown by Shoaff’s work, women were often subject to violence and aggression at borders when they would cross to sell their wares as well as when they would return from buying goods. This goes to show the ways in which women are not only trying to cross class borders with their profession, but also gendered ones. The use of crude verbal assaults and harassment by men who are in positions of power, if even for the day, against these women exemplifies how illegitimate their positions are seen. Though some have the protection of union cards, these women are still seen as bodies that can be manipulated and violated.

What is interesting is the fact that there are many positions of power in place to regulate the bodies that cross borders both international and national, but there seems to be very few in power that desire this regulation to be one that respects or recognizes the black female bodies as legitimate actors with rights to be protected as opposed to exploited.

Downtown Ladies Pt.2

In the second half of Downtown ladies, I feel like an important theme across the many chapters focus is resistance. ICIs and lower class resistance , where ICIs resisted to share information with "strangers" "traders know that government officials and researchers are collecting data for policy decisions that will affect them"(159). with ICIs and traders being more involved in illicit activities, Ulysse had difficult times getting them to share with her their tactics to distributing and smuggling drugs.
Another instance of resistance is closer to the end of her book, when she realizes that Mrs.B had been lying to her about how successful being ICIs was for her, who her neighbors were, and little small things that Ulysse took for granted, assuming that they had formed a relationship where they trusted each other to share personal information.
The association to toughness (of ICI women) in relationship to US women "superhero" signifies black women's resistance to societal gender norms of femininity. ICIs explained that they had to be tough in order to make it in this market. People would run all over you is you allowed them to take advantage of you and overcharge for their items.
Lastly resistance of the classes between uptown(middle class) and downtown (lower class) women. "Creative means of reasserting a distinctive black lower class space, identity and politics "(221). Ulysse insist that downtown women and more specifically dancehall females disrupted uptown classes standard of decency and respect. something similar to U.S. politics of respectability that i feel further enhanced policing of black women's bodies (middles class black further oppressing those already marginalized).
One last description Ulysse discusses is the fear of natural looking hair (in contrast to wearing weaves) that looked natural and were synthetic. but natural in an extent to european standards, meaning bright colors in hair (most identified with Dancehall women) were not respectable. However Dancehall (downtown women) resistance to european standards of beauty, was evident as self affirming this creating their own, distinguishable identity.

Not every body can cross every border with jelly shoes.

Not every body can cross every border with jelly shoes. 

Who can go where? When? and for what reason? The idea of mobility is woven through the reading this week. 

In the chapter Borders within Borders, Shoaff explains the economic necessity of Dominican pepeceras and Haitian migrant women to cross the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic and the challenges that creates- metal gate or through the river, market days, taxes, fees, papers- the governments have have made it consistently difficult to safely cross and return without violence or unnecessary financial costs. This of course depends on your skin color and if you have appropriate documents or your ASOMUNEDA card. 

The relationship between Anadina and Mamdchia brought to light a new perspective in the market-women category for me- friendship. These women live on different sides of the border, one buys and the other sells, but they treat each other fairly, have worked together for many years, they know about each others families- they are friends. There is a real business connection between the women, yes. But there is also a social connection across the border. 

“Migrant mobility must not be limited to dominant perspectives that presume ‘border crossings’ as solely indicative of transferred or transnational flows. Narratives of loss and family separation link up Haiti with the Dominican Republic for many migrant women since few have the monetary and legal resources to regularly cross the national border” (Shoaff, 251). 

The narratives, the real relationships between people, reminds me of the film Babel and the US-Mexico border. Amelia and the children could so easily go to Mexico to see friends and family and celebrate, but it was not just difficult, it was impossible to come back together. 

Who can go where and when? and for what reason? and for how long? and what can you take? AND WHO GETS TO DECIDE?

These women aren’t traveling back and forth with illicit goods or drugs- they have second hand clothing and jelly sandals. 

The idea of jelly sandals takes me to second half of Downtown Ladies by Gina Ulysse. She uses the example of her much beloved, platform, jelly sandals as entry into the conversation with the Jamaican ICIs about whether your "social skin trump the value ascribed to one’s actual skin” (Ulysse, 235). The market women have opinions! They know what is sold in Kingston shops, what is worn in Miami, and they know exactly when it becomes too common for them to wear. 

Miss Q talked about Tommy Hilfiger clothes as an example. There was a time when they were expensive, stylish, and indicated a particular kind of wealth. Then they were too accessible. Hilfiger clothes were sold in the arcades and markets and no longer had the same status. The brand and design of clothes in Jamaica, especially for the ICIs, is very important. They work in a dirty arcade, but still wear dresses. They select what people can buy. As Shoaff mentions in Borders within Borders, they are able to “Refashion” their community. 

The article, "A Global Sense of Place" by Massey brings a very zoomed out perspective of both of these ideas- mobility and influence. The idea of zooming out on the globe and being able to see it all at once- physical movement, invisible communication, social relationships, all the links between people. What determines our degree of mobility? Is it a border? is it money? When you step back far enough, you can see all of the small ways that people are influenced by others: "every time someone uses a car, and thereby increases their personal mobility, they reduce both the social rationale and the financial viability of the public transport system - and thereby also potentially reduce the mobility of those who rely on that system" (Massey, 4). 

The world is much more connected than I realize and my individual actions have an influence on people near and far. What gives us a sense of place on the globe? "It is a sense of place, an understanding of 'its character', which can only be constructed by linking that place to places beyond. A progressive sense of place would recognize that, without being threatened by it. What we need, it seems to me, is a global sense of the local, a global sense of place" (Massey, 9).

Ulysse, Shoaff and Massey

Ulysse, Shoaff and Massey

            ICI and migrant women face several intersection of discrimination that limit their mobility including, but not limited to, their race, gender, class and, in some cases, citizenship. Mobility is one of the most important aspects of working in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica; it will determine whether some families are able to eat that day or not.

            As Massey (1994) stated, “mobility, and control over it, both reflects and reinforces power.” Limited/hindered mobility shows up in the writings of both Ulysse and Shoaff. Shoaff’s example pointed to the mobility issues Haitian women face when attempting to cross over to the Dominican Republic. It was interesting to note the need of the government to limit access to Haitians because they didn’t want the Dominican Republic to become too Haitian. Although their basic premise is simple, limit the amount of Haitians allowed in the Dominican Republic, their methods are harassment and oppression. The government officials use this limitation as an excuse for despotic oppression of these women trying to make a living. It is evident that this is a tactical move by the government to show these people that they have a power over them that can invade their everyday so pervasively that they can change the course of whether a family eats that day or not; thereby reinforcing their power. What is interesting about this power dynamic, especially where the Haitian women are concerned is the tickle down to the everyday civilian. The story Shoaff referenced about the women who was trying to get a taxi, but was being ignored for the lighter skinned women, and a man even tried to light a match on her. The driver attempted to reinforce his power with colorist ideals and sexist mistreatment of her simply because of her skin tone/presumed status as a Haitian woman.

            While the trip to Miami was a great example of Mobility it was interesting to note some of the things they encountered along the way. Miss T and Miss M have made several journeys to the US to shop for items to sell in the arcade. While they were not harassed in the same manner as the Haitian women trying to migrate to the inner areas of the county, they did have mobile differentiators. When they were preparing to leave for Miami they had to go to a plane that was filled with mostly ICIs. On their way back into Jamaica they were separated from Ulysse so they could go through a different screening process from her, since she was an American citizen. It reminded me of A Small Place. When Kincaid pointed out that local country people had to stay in a separate line, with a more thorough screening process, to get back into their own country was mindboggling. To combine the accounts of customs from Ulysse and Kincaid, there is an obvious power structure at play attempting to show it’s despotic rule over the people it governs and reinforce in their mind the power they do not possess.

            The added layer of the gendered harassment makes an interesting intersectional analysis. Because these people are women, especially women of color, they are targeted and further harassed because they are easily identifiable victims and ICI, higgler or etc has been attached to their identities as mobile transnational female merchants. While they are deemed a protected class, of sorts, in Jamaica, but there are other women (Haitian workers) who are still susceptible to abuses from government, police and civilians.

            The emphasis on mobility, or lack thereof, was interesting. These women are very dependent on being mobile that they find creative solution to ease or circumvent the obstacles that are attempting to limit them.

The symbolism of attire is fascinating, and especially the way it changes as it moves from one cultural venue to another. What Ulysse could wear in Michigan without notice made her an object of – what? – annoyance? pity? when she wore it around Kingston. It seems that, in Jamaica, the policing of fashion has more serious consequences than it does in the U.S.A. No doubt that in some circles of American womanhood, what you wear is critical to your social success, for example in the rigid codes to which sorority sisters adhere on American campuses. In terms of putting on a professional appearance, the right hair and clothes can make or break one’s career. However, I doubt that wearing jogging attire into a bank would have any bearing on whether or not one is permitted to withdraw money, in this country. Indeed, from Ulysse’s reaction at the Jamaican bank, it seems she did not expect it either. She was accustomed to the individualism of an American culture, where eccentricity and self-expression are acceptable in fashion as in other areas of life. Even in the matter of professional attire, for an anthropologist a there is more latitude than there would be for a professor of law or of marketing.   

Thinking about the colonization of costume, the rebellion of the PNP against British business suits, and the return of the suit when the JLP took power, I think about all the different types of ceremonial dress worn by diplomats and heads of state. The Chinese President Xi-Ping wears a suit, but King Abdullah habitually wore his robes and kufiyah, and the Presidents of India and of Afghanistan are normally seen in traditional costume. Goodluck Jonathan wears traditional attire, as did his predecessor, but Kenyatta wears a Western-style suit. Why should not the prime minister of Jamaica wear something appropriate to the climate and to his or her heritage? Did the resumption of British dress signal the resumption of obedience to British ideology and domination? Was it simply a way to dissociate the new regime from the ideology of the preceding communist era?

Toward the end of Chapter 7, Ulysse writes about the ways things seems to be changing for Mrs. B. and her peers. The economic gap between middle and working class in Kingston is closing, but class status is more reliant on social capital than financial capital. Manley says it is lineage, as evidenced by phenotype and by family name. Apparently, that phenotype and name was allowed to obtain a British education during the 50’s, and from that indoctrination into British ideals of culture and class, their current social capital emanates. Although more and more of the working class have accumulated sufficient capital to purchase nice cars and nice clothes, people like Mrs. B do not want to become members of the elite. They want only to have their needs met, to be comfortable, to take care of their families, and to be themselves. What Mrs. B values, what she wants to be, is independent and self-reliant – a person of substance who is not defeated by the many obstacles an ICI must cope with.

The use and control of space is a thread that ties together all of the readings for this week. D’Massey writes that “…mobility, and control over mobility, both reflects and reinforces power,” (p.4). For the ICI, the arcade was created in order to clear them from the rights of way, as a place where they would have a limited ability to realize their modest ambitions.  These are the people D’Massey would say are being moved. However, they do exercise a degree of self-actualization in their movements through the time-space continuum, on shopping trips to Miami or New York, even if such movements are highly surveilled and regulated. 

In Shoaff, the movements of women across the border and around Santiago show a vivid contrast between the Dominican pepeceras and the Haitian migrant women who bring their wares to town. The pepecera can cross into Haiti and make her purchases, then return to the Dominican Republic unmolested (if she is a member of the ASOMUNEDA union) and conduct her business in any place she chooses. The Haitian women suffer abuse at the hands of both officials and civilians, risking not only loss of their trade goods but physical injury, so that they must travel together in groups on their way to Santiago, and once there they are immobilized in the Haitian immigrant neighborhood. 

Both the Jamaican and Dominican governments appear to have conceded that the activities of such market women in the lower rungs of society fulfill an otherwise unmet economic need. This is why they finally relented to the unionization of the pepeceras and why the created a regulated status for the ICIs.  Yet they are maintained in a subordinate state, denied justice, and left vulnerable to the predations of violent men. The lines of race and class are reinforced by government action and inaction, but why? The probable answer is that business arrangements have been made between government officials and foreign nationals, like Syrian importer of Japanese cars that Kincaid wrote about, to provide importation of certain goods, and the profitability of those arrangements must not be vulnerable to the economic activities of indigenous start-ups. As long as the market ladies keep to their place, and serve a clientele no one else is interested in serving, they will be tolerated.

Downtown Ladies

Karina von Kentzinsky
Prof. Jennifer Shoaff
22. September 2015
WS 575


Downtown Ladies
Gina A. Ulysse

In chapter one ICIs (Informal Commercial Importers) are introduced, moreover, women who performed for ICIs are classified. There is a so called Jamaican uptown elite of white “Ladies“ and downtown lower-class, named as black “women“ She discusses further the color as the visible capital, the distinction between ‘Whites’ and ‘White Jamaicans’ in contrast to ’Jamaica Whites’ on page 35 remains unclear for me. It is said that “Downtown Ladies“ challenge these categories of ’lady’ and ’women’, are “class trouble“ (15).

Nevertheless, these categories are build by an analyzation of class an gender codes, and rely therefore on the constructed gender identities. In chapter five Ulysee says “Toughness is a defining characteristic that black females embody (…). The experience of the absence or presence of toughness in everyday life reveals its complex significance. It is yet another false binary that upholds the gendered polemic. Indeed ‘women' is not ’lady’ as ‘toughness’ is to ’weakness’ any more than ’uptown’ is to ‘downtown’ as ‘civilized’ is to ’vulgar’ (188). Performance and representations of the “women“/“lady“ dichotomy is further discussed when she focuses on fashion for example.

Ulysse herself is an Ethnologist and writes from the perspective of an Haitian Anthropologist, she is privileged in terms of received education, but also made the conscious decision to focus on her region rather then her local community. In chapter 3 she describes  her position as „“outsider“ and “native“ more detailed, she is performing otherness, as a black Haitian anthropologist, and she is not performing her class position as expected.

In her descriptions she uses the concept of intersectionality, meaning she examines in a holistic approach in which ways oppressive institutions (racism, sexism, homophobia, classicism, etc.) are connected. She uses this holistic approach, to explore “reflexivity“, hence, the circular, bidirectional, reflexive relationship between cause and effect, which affect each other without being assigned as neither cause or effect. Thus, Ulysse uses the “inter-sectional approach“ to investigate on “reflexivity“ to research on conscious relationships among power history and culture. More specifically Elysee focuses on the racialization of gender, how race is gendered and the connection of social class. We can find this class and color codes  on the introduced of the gendered identities of “Ladies“ and “Women“. These distinctions based on race and class reoccur in chapter 5, where she focuses on the market arcade, related to the the separated territories, described as inside/outside, downtown/uptown ICIs (173). This is exemplified by one women working inside and on working outside the Arcades. In her chapter Borders within Borders Jennifer Shoaff quotes Linda Seligmann to explain how "Market women rely on an array of networks that emerge from living in the same neighborhoods and sometimes from sharing the same rural origins", which is crucial to networking but also to flexibility (252).

What confused me in this chapter were the remarks on the cell phone, defined by her as a status symbol only, I think it also just a tool to network. Very interesting on the other hand though, was the symbolism of clothing in terms of self-representation, the critique on essentialism, or, how clothing in the end shapes race, class, and gender perception.

In conclusion, this work is not just a great summary of the history of Jamaica's ICI's and their impact, but it is also interesting to observe how the Haitian anthropologist interacts with them.

Ulysse and Massey

Ulysse continues her discussion of self identity. "Miss T's presentation was an embodied response that may end in her desired result (to not be cheated by the shop owners), but in the process, it reinforced the black superwoman stereotype as well as the perception of ICIs, in particular, as rude gals." This particular quote can be looked at in two different ways, identity and mobility.

Ulysse's quote can be viewed through the lens of identity. Throughout the book, Ulysse points out different outward appearances ICIs must endure in order to gain respect in the community, but also maintain their ability as a business owner. "ICIs' bodies are central to this business, which is premised upon their movement." Miss T in particular refuses to negotiate prices in her stall, not because she can't afford to lower the price, but because if she were to lower the price just once, customers would no longer trust that they are paying the least price for goods. Miss T continually must put on the stereotypical front of a "rude gal" in order to maintain respect, not get ripped off, and ultimately maintain her safety.

Massey discusses the time-space compression and how certain groups with greater social mobility effect and actively weaken others. "It is not simply a question of unequal distribution, that some people move more than others, and that some have more control than others. It is that the mobility and control of some groups can actively weaken other people. Differential mobility can weaken the leverage of the already weak. The time-space compression of some groups can undermine the power of others."

What is very interesting about Ulysse's quote is that Miss T's presentation was to not be cheated by the shop owners, yet Miss T already knows she is paying more than an ICI from Haiti, something that Ulysse finds out in a discussion with one of the shop owners. This can be viewed through a lens of mobility because, although Ulysse is not as disadvantaged at Miss T, she could still receive the discounts of Haitian ICIs just because of the value of money in Haiti. This de-mobilizes Miss T, because she is spending more money on purchasing goods that a Haitian ICI can purchase for cheaper, meaning some of the money she could have used to mobilize herself is going towards the goods she is purchasing as an ICI. Yet, Miss T still presents this front that reinforces this stereotype in order to be cheated less. 

You also see mobility when Ulysse is going through customs after going shopping in Miami with Miss T. As an ICI, Miss T's bags are thoroughly searched, she is required to provide documentation and receipts for everything purchased on her trip, as well as documentation of her requirements as an ICI. Beyond that, she is taxed nearly 45 percent of the price of the goods she has purchased, clothes, shoes and the like. Meanwhile, Ulysse slips through customs with somewhat ease. She is required to pay taxes on the fax machine she purchased, but the don't question the clothing she purchased, nor do they search the entire bag to find other electronics. Ulysse's mobility cripples Miss T.

Beyond that, Massey points out that different social groups not only have different mobilities, but some are more or less in charge of it than others. In other words, some people are on the receiving end — such as Ulysse who is able to purchase the clothing cheap and without tax — meanwhile Miss T has to pay 45 percent, meaning she also has to raise the prices she sales to her customers. This means that not only are her customers paying more than Haitians for the same goods, but they're paying even more because of the ridiculous taxes Miss T has to pay as an ICI.


Mobility and identity are just two of the many new intersections introduced by which ICIs are further oppressed and further de-mobilized by an abroad capitalistic society.

Barriteau and Ulysse

The pairing of Ulysse’s ethnography with Barriteau’s article was amazingly complementary. Reading the Barriteau article prior to Downtown Ladies, it was easy to see how Barriteau feels that black feminist theory can contribute to feminist Caribbean scholarship. As Lowe pointed out, the effects of colonialism and enslavement are not just something felt in the United States.  However, at a certain point, black feminist theory becomes more specialized to the experiences of black women in the United States and the ways in which the enslavement of Africans and other groups has shaped the structure of the United States.

Barriteau’s article focuses on the many ways in which black feminist theory can contribute to Caribbean scholarship. One way in which it can is through “the notion that race, class, gender and sexuality are co-dependent variables that cannot readily be separated and ranked in scholarship, in political practice, or lived experience”(Barriteau, 15). These intersections create a unique set of experiences for black women in the US and Caribbean alike. Black female bodies have been and continue to be exploited in both these contexts. The black body has been seen as ‘capital’ by Europeans for quite a while and Ulysse argues that this view has become entrenched in the socioeconomic practices of ICIs in Jamaica. One such example of this is the beautification processes that ICIs tend to go through. On one hand these processes underline the Eurocentric standards of beauty and femininity, but they also underscore the fact that these women have the means and time to spend on themselves.

Black feminist theory uses, as Barriteau claims, the ‘lived experience’ to ‘validate knowledge claims’ and in many ways this approach to theory allows for a more subjective and comprehensive look at how race, class, gender and sexuality intersect. Ulysse’s research proves this by exploring the interconnection of higglers and colonialism in Jamaica with the current day ICIs.

Black feminist theory’s contribution to Caribbean scholarship does have its limits though. In many ways black feminist theory and its ideologies highlight the racialized and gendered issues that arise in a post-colonial/post-slavery society, but there is a point where these experiences are those unique to black women in the United States. Those who identify as black are a minority group in the United States and for a hundred years of its history slavery was still a practice. With emancipation came new ways to target black individuals through imprisonment, segregation, and an overwhelming racist mentality. These racialized practices have created these unique experiences that black feminism tries to address.

On page 12 of Barriteau’s article, she manages to show how black feminist theory not only can contribute to Caribbean scholarship, but it can also help to ‘deconstruct patriarchal relations’ in general with one eloquent statement: “However, the crucible of racism exposes patriarchy as a construct that is neither natural, nor sanctioned by biology, nor ordained by religion, as it is clear that racism denies black men the patriarchal privileges held by white men, thus exposing the fallacy that maleness automatically confers power.”

Ulysses

This week’s reading I found to be a very interesting study of social construction in Jamaican culture, gender and class (and more specifically between Informal commercial importers). Ulysses analyzes the “limits of local definitions of identities and how these affect individuals who exist inside between or outside the borders of instinctions”15.

            Chapter 1 focuses on the history of black woman in comparison to European white women. Thus perpetuating social hierarchies among races and creating class divisions. The idea of white purity with womanhood took away femininity from black women. “Color viewed as a manifestation of status and became a primary index of a person’s worth”35. Ulysses argues that being skin complexion emerged as a visible form of capital. In addition she further insist that appearance was also a visible marker of capital. Lastly she goes on to explore the stereotypes placed on ICIs being perceived as rude gals (bad women, rough, in your face, rumored to be prostitutes and lesbian and denied femininity).

            In the following Ulysses focuses on the transition from higgler to commercial importing, which she explains is caused by shortages and removal of merchandises from shelves to exportation of goods for foreign exchange.

Then next couple of chapters I found most interesting, as Ulysses shares her personal experiences living in Jamaica and her interactions with locals and ICI’s. as her focus within her program was to unpack local meanings of color, we see how skin complexion plays a major role in how locals in Jamaica view each other. Lower class people see light (white) as an important category to class, whereas middle/upper class don’t arguably see the same. One comparison to US is Jamaicans insistence on migration to the US as better life, similar to black migration from the south to the north for economic freedom and liberty.  She also states that she personally experienced “afrophobia”(black women being too black) of black women hairstyles. I can personally relate to this, because my natural hair texture isn’t deemed representable in profession settings and many have made me aware of this. And in conclusion for today’s reading, we see more about the work about ICIs and their (In)visibility in their country. Because of the stigma of ICIs many confront and “respond to socio economic and political structures differently” 136.

Ulysse - Downtown Ladies

In Downtown Ladies, Gina Ulysse describes her journey as a Haitian Anthropologist studying social construction in Jamaica’s culture and society, particularly gendered class and culture. Ulysse begins by explain the marginalization of women in Jamaica’s society, and the differences between a lady and a woman, a haggler and an Informal Commercial Importer (ICI).

Much in the same as previous texts that have studied “third-world” countries, Ulysse breaks down not only the differences in humanity in skin color, but also in gender, as well as how social class reinforces the social hierarchy that oppresses black women — particularly poor black women — in the first place.

Ulysse’s descriptions throughout the introduction and the first four chapters gave me flashbacks to “A Small Place” and “Babel.” The permanent and privileged existence of the whites juxtaposed with the poor, unprivileged and transient “blacks” with different variances of privilege, beauty and social class in between. I say permanent to describe the whites and transient to describe the blacks, to further prove the view of whiteness where while whites can remove themselves from the disadvantages of being black (transient), blacks cannot remove themselves from the advantage and privilege of being white (permanent). 

Each individual intimately affects another, through trade, government relations and self-worth, yet the black people can never transcend that barrier. Ulysse talks about the Jamaican culture’s view of the black “woman” and the white “lady,” and how it reinforces the idea of whiteness through beauty. Ulysse describes whiteness as a symbolic and material property that is a “possessive investment.” European ideals, features, even jewelry is used to determine one’s self worth and beauty, yet a black woman in Jamaica with all the jewelry in the world cannot transcend a white woman’s social class.

Ulysse uses the lengthy descriptions of the introduction and first two chapters in order to set up her personal introduction to the Jamaican culture that she begins in chapters 3 and 4. Ulysse, being a black Haitian woman, studying her region yet not her local community, as a privileged academic woman studying the privilege and lack-thereof in Jamaican society had to position herself in the best way possible in order to receive the most accurate results for her study.

So she enters her study through customs —seemingly invisible to the customs’ officers yet hyper-visible to the locals around he — and taking a car — that holds “greater importance in defining class status in Jamaica” than any other commodity. Ulysse goes to great lengths to not only position herself correctly in social class, but also to identify those privileges in which she holds by being in that social class. She does this, ultimately to show her knowledge that she is an American student and a Haitian native studying a local culture — that is not her own — and the benefits and issues that come along with that.

Ulysse - Negotiating the Academy and Identity

            Ulysse’s point of entry is the perspective of a graduate student, and she maintains a self-reflective point of view in Downtown Ladies. While her book is about the ICI ladies of Jamaica, it is also about a budding anthropologist struggling to negotiate the requirements of the discipline while remaining true to herself and to her purpose. She shares the lessons she had to learn, the compromises she had to make, the mistakes she made, while trying to complete her dissertation fieldwork.

The academy has its own hierarchy of privilege, codes of conduct, and blindness with regard to graduate students and fieldwork. Be reflexive, but don’t reflect your position as a minority trying to make your way through the department. Don’t reflect your position as a small black woman attempting field-work in a site where presentation of a non-privileged self can get you not only shut out, but put you in harm’s way. The researcher has to be conscious of her identity, her identification by others, and the congruity of her self-presentation with that identity. She needs to look and act like an American student, or she will be mistaken for a Jamaican misfit both by people to whom she needs access and some who might view her as prey.

I found myself relating to her story, with some clear differences. First, there is the work you want to do, and there is the career you need to make. If you fail to make your career, the work you do will not matter. If you propose the work you believe needs doing, you may not make it past the gatekeepers, and if you report anything too offensive, you may not get it published. On the other hand, you can find out what kind of fieldwork is being funded, being called for, and put together a proposal that is in your general area of interest, yet will gain their attention and approval. Find someone you trust to proof your proposals, because there are words you cannot use and names you cannot reference. No doubt, this is a dilemma for every idealist in the real world, where compromise is usually the way to get anything at all accomplished.

What is an anthropologist, and what does the anthropologist do? When I entered this discipline at an age past mid-life, I had to quickly reassure all of my loved ones that I had no intention of going out into the bush with a notebook and pencil. Since then, I have had to buck an expectation that I would choose a field site overseas, or at least in some exotic North American setting. Most people have not shared my concern that there might be cultural issues right here at home worth examination. However, I am not the first person to wonder whether it is really appropriate for an American anthropologist to visit a foreign land, gather some impressions, and then report them to the academy – this is the problem of representation that Ulysse refers to in her introduction, and it is an issue raised in many anthropology classrooms.

Unlike Ulysse, I do not carry the identity of a black Haitian woman. I am aware that my status as a white American woman has meant a certain degree of privilege and access, made better by an upbringing that taught me moderate skills for negotiating  potential social obstacles. Yet I carry an identity that is different from the identity of the Americans I will be studying, and in terms of gaining entry into the field site and population I have chosen, it could be a serious handicap. Who am I, after all, to think that I have any right to start asking questions? Why should they tell me anything? What can I promise they could get in return? How do I handle my own presentation of self, not only with regard to the academy, but to the people whose situations I wish to understand? These are questions I have already begun struggling with as I think about preparing my proposal, and I am grateful to Ulysse for sharing her experience. It is very interesting, very helpful, to read about the problems she encountered and the advice she received.

The intimacies of four continents by Lisa Lowe and a small place by Jamaica Kincaid

The intimacies of four continents by Lisa Lowe and a small place by Jamaica Kincaid

I perceived Kincaid as a contrasting reading to Lowe because of its very different style. Kincaid’s story can function as an example Lowe uses to prove her arguments; therefore, overlaps are obvious. Lowe investigates the bigger picture though. She examines the connections of the global power structures cross-culturally, based on historical development and events. Colonialism, slavery, imperial trades and Western liberalism within Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas in the late eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries are being connected.

Kincaid one the other hand is the voice of one of the victims of these political mechanisms. I think Lowe is as enlightening as Kincaid, but also very dense and theoretical. Kincaid appealed more to my emotions. Especially Kincaids descriptions of the treatment after the British arrived on Antiqua are shocking, but the very grounded, almost childish perspective Kincaid uses to narrate about her experiences makes you automatically ask the following key questions, questions that are similar to what Lowe brings up.

Lowe shows that freedom and liberalism are constructed on exclusiveness, and are therefore only available to selected people. Ideas like citizenship are created to accomplish differentiation based on inequalities and hierarchy. Kincaid is a particular case showing how these exact mechanisms where executed.

Lowe’s word choice to describe these intercultural interweaving as intimacies is especially interesting, as the usage of the word is rather common in private spheres. Her word choice therefore emphasizes how close these international connections are. She frames her claims in a larger, global picture, which has not been done before in this format. Some definitions and word choices did not became clear to me, but Lowe made me understand how individual experiences are just the outcome of international politics based on differentiation and exclusiveness, which would be the main point to my understanding.

She therefore encourages me to open my eyes to read more between the lines. This point brings me back to Kincaids introduction, which was the only part of the read that I had problems to deal with. The typical tourist is described with features of ignorance and narrow-mindedness. Even though Kincaid managed to raise my interest for the book, I felt offended because I in particular do not travel like that. So who does she exactly address? Her remarks are in the end based on stereotypes, generalizations and assumptions. This is especially problematic, as this is one of her critiques towards the British. A general statement that can be made is that prejudices towards anybody will never have any positive impact.

A Small Place- Jamaica Kincaid

A Small Place- Jamaica Kincaid

“If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see… “ (Kincaid, 1). The lyrical first chapter of A Small Place paints a picture of the natural beauty, the crumbling school, the shiny Japanese car dealership, the damaged library, the hurting people, the remnants of colonial signage, and the exploitation of a 12 mile island. "And so you needn’t let that slightly funny feeling you have from time to time about exploitation, oppression, domination develop into full-fledged unease, discomfort; you could ruin your holiday” (Kincaid, 10). 

Crystal blue water and soft pink sand bring tourist from North America (or worse- Europe) to Antigua year round and there is a very tense relationship between the island and the visitors. “A tourist is an ugly human being. You are not an ugly person all the time; you are not an ugly person ordinarily; you are not an ugly person day to day… An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you” (Kincaid,14,17). Yet the country broadcast graduation from The Hotel Training School on television and over the radio as a national celebration. “In Antigua, people cannot see a relationship between their obsession with slavery and emancipation and their celebration of The Hotel Training School” (Kincaid, 55). The school teaches them how to be invisible, how to serve. Slavery by another name. The corrupt men who run their country have essentially given it away to corrupt foreigners on many levels. There is corruption in the hotel and gambling industry. There are drugs and prostitution and car dealerships- a myriad of unethical relationships that benefit everyone with the job title “Minister” of something. 

Kincaid goes beyond how the island operates now and dives into thewhy. The remnants of colonialism and British rule and the one time the Queen visited are everywhere. “So everywhere they went turned into England; and everybody they met turned English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English, so you can imagine the destruction of people and land that came from that” (Kincaid, 24). The English came, they conquered, they built, and then they left in 1981. “Have you ever wondered to yourself why it is that all people like me seem to have learned from you is how to imprision and murder each other, how to govern badly, and how to take the wealth of our country and place it in Swiss bank accounts? How to corrupt our societies and be tyrants?” (Kincaid, 34). Kincaid goes on to discuss if Antigua is better off as a self-ruled island or when it had been dominated by the English? The shame and bitterness she expresses as she explores the answer is heartbreaking. She uses the islands library as an example of what happened when the English left. There is still a sign that hangs on the door- This building was damaged in the earthquake of 1974. Repairs are pending. Still pending. It was a beautiful yellow building with a large veranda and was important to the English because it reminded them of home, but now it’s not important to the government to fix or repair or renovate. 

At times, I felt uncomfortable reading this book. My family owns a home in the US Virgin Islands, on a hotel property in St.Thomas where I’ve visited countless times in the last dozen years. After about 3 pages, I didn’t want to read this book. I didn’t want it to be relevant to me- the role that tourist play in the continued oppression of people in small places. Tiny islands bought, or taken, by larger nations. I didn’t want to feel the discomfort that Kincaid writes about in the first part of the book- the full-fledged unease. When she wrote about the Barclay Brothers who were prominent slave-traders who then went into banking and became even richer I put the book down. Barclays bank is the bank Apple works with to provide of all the financing in store for our customers. This connection - more than a century later- does it matter? I suddenly think so. In this course I’m becoming more aware than ever before how my life is influenced in ways I’ve chosen to be ignorant about. It is just a little island. It has been a big lesson.

The Intimacies of Four Continents

Lisa Lowe's "The Intimacies of Four Continents" analyzes the intimacies between colonial commodities and early Victorian households and their imperial relations to Africa, Asia and the Americas. We see this displayed in chapter three as she uses "Thackery" to explore how  bourgeois English households were intimately dependent on slave labor within cotton fields and textile artisan-ship from free trade workers in east India and china. From this Lowe examines how these trades in tea, cotton, silks, and opium directly connect to the rise of the British "Free trade imperialism". Lowe argues that this free trade imperialism, may resemble older styles of mercantilism, however new experiments in free trade are "intrinsic to both liberal and political economic freedom in England"75. social formation developed fetishism of commodities, which Lowe's defines as the production of value through the relationship of exchange.
Lowe's most compelling argument is that we need to dig deeper into our history into how and why we got here. As well as not only research what history tells us but to read between the lines through the intimacies from these four continents. For example Lowe states that black workers are not only a "crucial historical actor in world history" but "by telling the history of black labor would necessarily transform the historical for that had formerly centered European man" 171. I feel this is very important because many fail to realize that who built the U.S. is the same people who history "tells" were lazy, savages, violent and uncivilized people. Kincaid's "A Small Place" ties into Lowe's economical intimacies in that it explains how the west became rich from the free, undervalued labor workers in Antigua.

A Small Place - Kincaid

            Kincaid’s entrance to this book was something anyone can relate to. It was funny, not in a literal or non-literal sense, but in a sense that I (as a tourist and as a native) have had those exact conversations in my head.

            In Tuscaloosa where my family has lived for generations upon generations, I think of how different Tuscaloosa looks to me in comparison to students and especially tourists. How they come here, take over the city for an entire day (or weekend, or semester), and leave it trashed, downing in leftover beer, for the city (and tax payers’ dollars) to clean up.  My Tuscaloosa doesn’t look like game day.

Even being raised in a small town that splits the Alabama-Tennessee border, I think of the disruption any high-dollared lottery brings to my little town and the surrounding ones. Unwanted tourists, who barge into a town that isn’t theirs, take over restaurants and convenience stores that aren’t theirs, and act as if we should be thankful for their mere presence because they brought precious tax dollars that will one day pay for my (or my kid’s) education.

But from a tourist standpoint, I’ve visited cities and places and wandered in awe of how these people live in places like New York City, Floridian beaches and Colorado mountains. Am I, a tourist skier, a burden to the Colorado homeowner?  

            These are minor examples that honestly can’t even be used in comparison, but Kincaid’s entry gave me a sense of both sides immediately. I could relate (in my very Western sense) and see what Kincaid was trying to get to. What life does the maid, cook, taxi driver, convenient store owner, etc. lead outside of serving angry, tired, frustrated tourists who are oblivious to their surroundings (in both a historical sense and literal sense). She’s also making the larger statement of vacationing for a tourist is work for the native; indulgence for the tourist is despair for the native. Kincaid points out at the end of this section that even the tourist, at the end of the vacation, returns home in need of another vacation or another day of rest.

            Moving on, I read the rest of the book from a tourist standpoint. Because Kincaid was so purposeful in writing the introduction in a way to frame the tourist side and the native side, I felt she wanted the reader to not dismiss it immediately after the page turned. I also think it was helpful to enter the book from this mind frame because I was aware of my ignorance of Antiguan culture and history, so I tried to distance my Western mind frame in the reading.

            The most interesting part I found from the entire book was this: “But what I see is the millions of people, of whom I am just one, made orphans: no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, no excess love which might lead to the things that an excess of love sometimes brings, and worst and most painful of all, no tongue” (30). This quote saddened me in a way that the initial introduction to the book hadn’t. This land, these people that were left with no native genealogy, no history (outside of that written by it’s oppressors), no religion, nothing that was entirely theirs: they were orphans. Orphans who were still, although “free,” silenced by their oppressors because of the lack of native language.

            This continued to frustrate me because Kincaid spoke so much of the library and the ill image of its perpetual non-repair. Kincaid sought for the library, a building literally meant to contain collections of literature and history (that distort and erase Kincaid’s history while glorifying its own), to be rebuilt. Yet, Kincaid failed to inform the reader of the history that would have filled it (and the history that would have been erased from it). Because I am ignorant to the history of Antigua, her focus on the library in particular intrigued my want to know the background she in particular came from.

            Kincaid’s perspective is an interesting one that opened my eyes to the less-Western sense of tourism (and put my disdain for tourism in the U.S. to shame). But because she failed to inform the reader of the histories behind the tourism industry and government grievances, I found the book – though interesting and informative – to resemble a monologue of issues rather than a solid argument. 

That being said, I would like to point out that I just finished reading Portnoy’s Complaint, which actually is a monologue of complaints so I'm not sure how that may have affected my reading.