Higglers in Kingston
ISBN: 9780826517678
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / Vanderbilt University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Women''s studies; Informal sector (Economics); Small business; Social status; Women merchants; Street vendors;

Making a living in the Caribbean requires resourcefulness and even a willingness to circumvent the law. Women of color in Jamaica encounter bureaucratic mazes, neighborhood territoriality, and ingrained racial and cultural prejudices. For them, it requires nothing less than a herculean effort to realize their entrepreneurial dreams.

In Higglers in Kingston , Winnifred Brown-Glaude puts the reader on the ground in frenetic urban Kingston, the capital and largest city in Jamaica. She explores the lives of informal market laborers, called "higglers," across the city as they navigate a corrupt and inaccessible "official" Jamaican economy. But rather than focus merely on the present-day situation, she contextualizes how Jamaica arrived at this point, delving deep into the island's history as a former colony, a home to slaves and masters alike, and an eventual nation of competing and conflicted racial sectors.

Higglers in Kingston weaves together contemporary ethnography, economic history, and sociology of race to address a broad audience of readers on a crucial economic and cultural center.

Winnifred Brown-Glaude is an associate professor of African American studies and sociology & anthropology at the College of New Jersey. She is editor of Doing Diversity in Higher Education.

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