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.