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.