Gender, Race and Class in the Social Economy of the English-Speaking Caribbean Author(s): Cecilia Green Source: Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2/3 (JUNE/SEPTEMBER 1995), pp. 65-102 Published by: Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the West Indies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27866027 . Accessed: 12/08/2013 15:36 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
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Social and Economic Studies 44:2 & 3 (1995)
and
Race
Gender,
of
Economy
ISSN:0037-7651
in the
Class
The
English
Social
-Speaking
Caribbean
Cecilia
Green
ABSTRACT In thisessay, I trytoproduce a multi-layered schematic-analyticaldescription ofAnglophone Caribbean social economy with regard todivisions of gender, race/colour
and
societies,
My
to integrate
"structuralist"
and
international
on non-aplural",
on Jamaica,
focus
local
of
ismodelled
analysis
a particular
with
the need
I address
in the context
especially
relations.
centre-periphery African
class,
and
majority
and Dominica.
Barbados "culturalist"
conceptions
of society, as well as the need to treat "equally" and "in combination" all the major
of postcolonial
contradictions
colour,
ethnicity,
class,
gender,
?
society
and
national
dependency,
modes
of production.
coexisting
race/ The
subject and subjectivityare embedded in and shaped by the structured inter action of all of these contradictions.
INTRODUCTION The Anglophone Caribbean territoriescan be roughlydivided according to two types of ethnic compositional structures: those inwhich theAfrican labour forcewas joined in the post-emancipation period by largenumbers of immigrant indentured labourers from the Indian subcontinent,making the labouring population base an overwhelmingly (but not exclusively) bi-ethnic
one (as inTrinidad and Guyana), and those inwhich the influx of Indian indentured labourerswas either negligible (in a relative sense) or practically non-existent,
leaving
the African
majority
intact. This
paper
comes
out of a
larger study-in-progressfocusingon majority African Caribbean societies of the lattertype,and using the islandsof Jamaica,Barbados and Dominica as a referencebase. The followingconceptual analysiswill thereforeapply prima rilytomajority-AfricanCaribbean societies as faras the race/ethnicity factor is concerned, islands.
The
and will make analysis
particular
is an attempt
reference
to integrate
to the three aforementioned sociological
and
political-eco
nomic perspectiveswithin a frameworkforunderstanding the intersectionof Pp 65-102
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66 SOCIALAND ECONOMICSTUDIES
race, class and genderwithin the "social economy" of theAnglophone Carib bean. The "social economy" is implicitlyunderstood as comprising the entire configurationof relationshipsamong race,class, culture (or "ethnicity"),gen der, and modes of re/production.
ECONOMIC REPRODUCTION AND CARIBBEAN REALITIES: CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIES Economic
as one
reproduction,
aspect
of total
social
encom
reproduction,
passes those activities, processes and relationswhich directly sustain and reproduce human life in one historical formor another, as well as materially and
support
enable
activities
non-subsistence
their material
(i.e., by providing
substructures). The economy of a social formation is reproduced by the activities and processes ofwhat I call, in short,"re/production". Re/produc tion refers to the combined activities of goods-production and human-repro
duction.
is a general
Goods-production
to the production
reference
and
ser
vicing of consumer and producer goods. Human-reproduction is a combined reference to biological reproduction (which strictly speaking, includes childbearing and breastfeeding) and non-biological reproduction (which in cludes childrearing, the day-to-dayphysical and emotional nurturance and "servicing"of human beings, typicallywithin a family-household ,and house hold maintenance activities). In most
societies,
precapitalist
and
goods-production
human-reproduc
tion tend to be more or less combined within a single extended "domestic thus generally
sphere", "inner"
and
"outer"
institutionalized
conceived. spheres,
Even
such
when
there
demarcation
tends
In pre- or non-capitalist
separation.
is a demarcation not class
between to an
to amount
this rela
societies,
tive lackofmaterial and institutionalseparation of spheres isalso tied to the fact that the reproduction of themajor classes is based on mutual ties of ? personal dependence and obligation in a context of spatial and juridical ? though thoroughlyhierarchical and differentiated continuity. Reproduc tion here is not realized inmutually inaccessible, entirely closed-off,private domains.
In capitalist
society,
there
is a separation
between
human
reproduc
tion in an immediate sense,which becomes theexclusive preoccupation of an
attenuated private family/domesticsphere,and goods-production,which now takes place, for themost part, in the public commodity sphere. However,
the material
boundaries
are more
ambiguous
than
the institu
tional and spatial ones. The processing and servicingof subsistencegoods for immediate
consumption
that routinely
takes place
in the home,
referred
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to in
Gender,
terms as the "transformation
capital-logic
in the Social
Race and Class
of exchange-values
67
Economy
into use-values",
can be regarded as part of goods-production. Also, the physical and emo tional "servicing"of human beings which takes place in the public sphere (in anywhere from restaurants to counselling offices) could be seen as part of human-reproduction. Certainly, from the point of view of the producer in the firstcase and the consumer in the second, these activitiesbelong in these respective categories. institutional
However, from the perspective of the total socio
the terms,
field,
labour",
"reproductive
"reproductive
sphere",
will tend to referexclusively to the context of the private domestic sphere and the family/household. "Reproductive labour"may or may not directly involvebiological reproduction, and non-biological reproduction, of course, may be carried out by women or men (even though it tends overwhelmingly to be socially ascribed as "women'swork"). The historical specificityof the situation iscritical here. In combined or "mixed"
say that of Caribbean
contexts,
mixed
farm
peasant
cash-crop/food
ing, itmay be difficultto separate out reproductive fromproductive labour, and itmay be definitely ill-advised to ascribe different types of labour to different types of cultivation (the preparation of food-crops for subsistence purposes
might
be seen
as both
"productive"
and
However,
"reproductive").
the distinctions are still conceptually important (they are certainly socially important), and, indeed, the occasional ambiguity reinforces the usefulness of the articulated
term,
"re/production".
Before I go on to consider all these concepts and categories in relation to the particular situation of theCaribbean, Imust correlate them conceptually with the sexual division of labour. First of all, itbears repeating a point made elsewhere that the "two productions" (the production and servicing of
material goods and theproduction and servicingof human beings) are caught up from the verybeginning in a natural division of labourbetween the sexes ? ? I continue: (Green, 1986: 211). But evoking Engels At some point in human history,however, these two labours be came directly implicated in a social division of labour inwhich women and men are differentiallyassigned to the "domestic" and "extra
domestic"
dominant, Thus,
spaces
but not
in most
of economic
exclusive,
societies,
spheres
women
are
life, as
their
respective
pre
of attachment. producers
or paid
workers
in
the public sector, primary child minders and responsible for the major share of domestic work.As such, theybear the unfair burden of two or three
labours
which
create
the notorious
double
or even
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68 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
tripleday for them. Men, on the other hand, are primarily identi fiedwith goods production or paid publicwork and only peripher ally involved in childminding or domestic maintenance activities.
Historically, there has taken place a process of separation and hi?rarchisation of the reproductive and productive spheres,based on
the increasing
subordination
of women.
Woman's
status,
there
fore,comes to be based on the relationshipbetween the two types of production and her relationship to both labours, to property [both domestic and class] and tomen... The gender contradiction, therefore,isbased on an unequal sexual division of labour and property, in which men and women are assigned todifferentand socially unequal spheres and categories of work and inwhich men have superior rightsover thingsand non reciprocal
rights
over women.
a relation
It is, at bottom,
of dispos
session. (Green, 1986:211-212). The usefulness of the term, "re/production", therefore, is thatwe can now talk about the "mode of re/production" and immediatelypresume an articulationbetween the "twoproductions",an articulationbetween the sexual division of labour and the class division of labour, and the correlation be tween the two, involving interlockingsocial, institutionaland spatial dimen sions. In theCaribbean, thisweb of complexity is compounded by the so
called dualism of the economy,which in turnhas been historicallycorrelated with (a) a racial economic division of labour and racial-ethnicdivision of re/productive enclaves, (b) a transnational/local split that occurs between as well as within sectors and (c) a gender-based dualism thatoccurs across as
well as within sectors. The dualism of the economy has less to do with the misconceptualized traditional/modern dichotomy thanwith the "dis/articu lation" (another coined word, meaning connection and fragmentationat the same time) of enclave capitalist (or colonial capitalist) and "domestic"modes
of re/production, or the heterogeneous peculiarities of neo-colonial or de pendent capitalism. Acosta and Casimir (1985: 38, 59) describe it in the followingway forSt. Lucia: St. Luc?an
society
appeared
as a dual
structure:
a colonial
one,
im
posed by the political authorities through public administration, import-export
trade and plantation
activities,
and
a local one
emerg
ingaround inward-orientedagriculture,familyand community life. At no time had the bearers of the local structure been able to develop fullythemodel which can be designed on thebasis of their
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in the Social
Race and Class
Gender,
69
Economy
practices, nor had theybeen able to isolate themselves from the dominant
plantation
system,
to create
a distinct
economy.
peasant
They add later: Other sets of rearrangements are taking place in the urban areas with
of tourism
the development
and
enclave
The
manufacturers.
convergence of these trendswill be responsible forthe abilityof the to respond
country
to a third system of processes,
namely
interna
tional trade and politics. The dual or multiple structure identifiedbyAcosta and Casimir and others has historically corresponded to a racial-ethnicdivision of economy and society in the Caribbean connected
transnational^ class
and
groups,
represented by the locally situated but
Euro-colonial
peasant-proletarian
ruling
classes,
labouring
race/
"intermediary"
classes
the ma
constituting
jorityof descendants ofAfrican slaves and Indian indentured labourers. In one of itsmost basic formsas post-emancipation modification of slave soci ety,
the dual
structure
represented
"two
societies"
of distinct
racial-ethnic
character,organized in part within relativelydistinct spaces and circuits of re/production but confronting each other from opposite sides within the single spatial circuit(s) of the dominant colonial-capitalist relation.Within the latter spatial-circuit,the "two societies" met as opposed and mutually dependent classes.The re/productive orbits of both "societies"or race/class communities were in a sense spatially and socially split: that of the colonial ruling
classes
was
split
transnational^
between
"core"
and
"periphery",
and
thatof the labouring classes was split locallybetween thedominant capitalist enclaves resented
and
the domestic
somewhat
"hinterland
different
variants
economy".1
Barbados
of the dual-society
and
structure
Jamaica
rep
(i.e. within
themajority-Africanmodel). In Jamaica (and theWindward Islands), social dualism encompassed a pronounced plantation/peasant divide and there forehad a clear correspondence with differentmodes of production,whereas in Barbados (and theLeeward Islands) social dualism correlated with divi sions of race, culture and class, but, in the context of the pervasiveness of the capital-labour relation and theplantation-type economy,did not extend to a fundamental (segmental) dualism of the economy.A discussion of post-eman cipation modifications to the relatively"pure" plantation economy of slavery
1
Best (1968) and Levitt and Best (1975) always use "hinterland economy" to describe the entire peripheral economy, hut here I refer to an internal "hinterland", relative to themod ern capitalist enclaves.
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70 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
as typifiedby the case of Jamaica ismost useful because it assumes a basic understanding of themore "classic" case representedby Barbados. However,
it isnecessary first to understand the correlations of race, class, culture and mode of production within a more general frameworkof (majority-African) West Indian society.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RACE,CULTURE, CLASS AND MODE OF PRODUCTION My reference to "two societies" dialectically and oppositionally locked to gether in a single differentiated set of economic and social relations is an to dramatize
attempt
the coexistence,
correlation
and
relative
of
autonomy
relations of class, racial-ethnic identity,and modes of production within Caribbean
social
systems.
Before I go on to assess competing theories or models of Caribbean social structure, I want to establish the historically specific parameters of ?
"race"
or "race/colour"
as
it is sometimes
?
designated
in the Caribbean.
Hall (1977: 170-71) perphaps put itbest: Race
is not a
'pure'
as
in the Caribbean,
category
it is, say, in South
Africa, where it is legallydefined and defined 'genetically'rather than socially. In theCaribbean, even where a strongwhite local elite is present, race is defined socially.Thus, it enters into the mechanisms of social mobility and stratificationvia itsvisible regis trations: terminate
physical
characteristics, 'culture'.
way,
Of
in some more
pigmentation, these,
is the most
colour
inde
visible,
the
most manifest and hence thehandiest way of identifyingthediffer ent social groups. But colour itself is,also, defined socially: and it, too,
is a composite
term.
The importanceof the "race/colour"designation, therefore(even though I will not always be using the term), is that it establishes that "colour" is historically derived from stricter notions of "race" and continues to be undergirded by those notions, but itselfconstitutes themore fluid index of historically specific adaptations in theCaribbean. There, mixed-race groups attained socially distinct and relativelypowerful statuses? especially in the context the
local
of a demographically importance
not of social ness
or
whiteness).
as "stand-ins"
weak
European
sacrosanctity The
or "trustees",
so-called even
of genetically "coloured" though
?
presence
thus undermining
"pure" group
they did
whiteness
represented
so, for the most
(but white part,
in idiosyncraticand uniquely "creolized" (Africanized, hybridized) ways.
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in the Social
and Class
Race
Gender,
71
Economy
The twomain opposing paradigms of Caribbean society within main stream thoughthave been the cultural pluralist and the social stratification models. Below, I present each model inbroad outline, and challenge each of them,with a view to yieldingmore complex, dialectical and historically accu rate analytical
constructs.
The Social StratificationModel In generous definitional terms, the so cial stratificationmodel might be seen as embracing both Marxist and struc turalist-functionalistparadigms, since both insiston understanding society as a differentiatedbut intimately interdependentwhole, but, in a narrower and more
rigorous
sense,
to the
it refers exclusively
latter paradigm.
Lloyd
Braithwaite (1953; 1960), who has delivered the classic social-stratificationist account
of West
Indian
society,
sees
the
latter as characterized
by an extant
but historically retrograde (caste) systemof social stratificationbased on ascriptive-particularistic cross-cut by ? even as
criteria it holds
of
back
race
is progressively colour, which ? the attainment of a modern
and
somewhat
occupational and income (class) hierarchygrounded inuniversalistic-achieve ment
criteria
and
democratic,
egalitarian
and
values.
meritocratic
Those
tryingtomove up the social ladder are forced tonegotiate both status systems to "make
in order
it*.
Although the details of Braithwaite's analysis carry a certain resonance and contain much that is empirically and even conceptually valuable, the basic
structural-functionalist
of his model
precepts
have
been
thoroughly
cri
tiqued in the literature,not the least through the analytical forceofMarxism. Thus, it isobvious that the two systemsof stratification,race/colour on the one hand and occupational class on the other, do not just intersectbut also interpenetrate
in such a way
as to redefine
and
reconfigure
each
other.
Also,
it is simplynot true that the class system isderived primarily froma consen sual and universalistic system of occupational rankings; it is rathermore
fundamentally rooted in a systemof ethnodass property holding, economic ascendancy and exploitation, and political and (particularistic) cultural domi nation
and
conflict.
There lingers
on
is insufficient in institutional
as
attention "culture"
?
to how and
"race"
therefore
(as a social class
construct) ? even
positions
when detached from (particular) "phenotype", which was always just the most immediatesymbolicmarker or "sign"of it in thefirstplace. "Phenotypical race" becomes
relatively
detached
from class-ascriptiveness,
most
particularly
around themiddle/upper middle range of the social hierarchy,but "cultural
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72 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
race" does not (at least certainly not to the same extent).2 Moreover, the separation between phenotypicalwhiteness and (a version of) Europeanness or "culturalwhiteness" has only limited local tenure,because the two compo nents are safely recombined and mutually guaranteed in the globally domi nant
and
nations/classes
symbolic
formations
and Euro-America.
of Europe
At the same time,of course, instancesof collective social mobility, as in the formation of new middle class fractionsduring periods of momentous social change, have usually ensured some transposition of Afro-Caribbean "folk"values across class as well as some impact of those values upon class formations,but any reciprocity that occurs is strictly limited and class cul
tures tend to ultimately conform to a scale of values driven by thedominant "whitebias". The tensionsare partly accommodated through thedifferentia
tionbetween private and public class cultures,but, as faras themiddle classes are concerned, it is the latterwhich provides the arena and the prevailing calculus for social mobility. And, while the recruitmentof personnel into professional and bureaucratic apparatuses may be color-blind,the institutional ends
of these
are not.
apparatuses
Furthermore,
even
though
local
whiteness
(phenotypical-cum-cultural)
has historically assumed a distinctlycreole form (as well as a somewhat flex ible genetic
range),
it serves
as an ever-present
stand-in
? or a reminder
the absent ideal paradigm of Europe and Euro-America. Hall understands thiswell:
?
for
(1977: 172)
Local white society represents,culturally,the absent paradigm: its representatives
are,
so
to speak,
'stand-ins'
for the
invisible
and
ideal culturewhich validates thewhole graded structureby itsvery absence:
Europe,
more
particularly,
the metropolitan
culture,
as an
ideal value-system.
Some sections - or versions - of local white society share only - or ? largely a fictivekinshipwith the absent ideal ofAnglo-Saxon Europe. This
2
"Social whiteness" must incorporate a high degree of correlation between "phenoty pical whiteness* and "cultural whiteness" or "physical" and "social race", albeit within a highly flexible local range (see Girvan, 1975, for the use of these distinctions). The lingering significance and relative autonomy of phenotype or "colour" (and, by implication, racial ancestry) as a principle of social differentiation is illustrated by the fact that phenotypically black elites (especially in a collective social sense) are usually considered to be outside the boundaries of social whiteness. They may, however, merge with the "socially brown" group, even where their emergence (i.e., as a black "bourgeois" social stratum) is accompanied by the projection of an explicit and self-conscious ideology of blackness - in opposition to brownness and whiteness ? as was the case in Haiti.
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In the Social
Race and Class
Gender,
Economy
73
is classically illustrated in the case of "white Jamaicans" who represent a multi-ethnic and even multi-racial aggregate,as well as miscegenetic blend, of whiteness, derived fromoriginal and disparate (and stillmarginally intact) groupings ofAnglo-Saxons, Jews,Lebanese/Syrians, "JamaicaWhites" (light skinned Browns), and Chinese, all with differenthistorical and/or social points of entry into theWest Indian social formation.The twenty-threeor so "white" ethnicminority familieswhich control Jamaica's economy continue to reproduce the exclusive local aggregate-cum-blendof whiteness through class,
and
ethnic
(non-black)
"racial"
endogamy
or
(see Reid,
inter-marriage
1977). A parallel situation exists inBarbados, where thewhite ruling group is,however,more ethnicallyand raciallyhomogenous. As Watson (1990: 16) has noted, "Intermarriage among whites and consolidation of close family ties,which are cemented by an exclusive racial ideology,have kept the eco nomic
power
the apex
structure
white
and
produced
a virtual
race-class
correlation
at
of the economy".
Another distinguishing featureof theWest Indian society in relation to the biological and social reproduction of color and class is the continuous linking and simultaneous reinforcingof classes through cross-class sexual and biologically generated kin relations initiatedby higher class males and reproductiveof a complex class/kinship systembifurcated along "legitimate" and "illegitimate" lines. Intermediate or higher class males typicallybecome the common
protagonists
of two sets of heterosexual
relations,
one
involving
legalmarriage and class endogamy and the other traversingclass boundaries and
involving
"concubinage"
or sexual
exploitation
of working
class women.
R.T Smith (1987), correctly 1 think, locates the origins of these practices in the "dualmarriage system"of upper-classwhite men during slavery,involving white wives and "colored" or black concubines and theirrespective offspring.
These practices, according to Smith, have been handed down to the colored middle classes who have replicated them in their relations with the black
working classes, forgingcomplex kin-based linesof continuity and differen tiation between classes ? simultaneously reproducing social intimacy and social distance - within a context of class/patriarchal power. The ambiva lent,and sometimes openly antagonistic, sharingof kinship across class lines and across a hierarchical legitimate/illegitimateor inside/outside divide isa critical aspect ofCaribbean social and political culture (see Austin, 1979). It is further
reinforced
by the small
scale
of the societies
involved.
The Cultural PluralistModel. The cultural pluralistmodel, classically set down in the work of M.G. Smith (1965; 1984), argues thatCaribbean
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74 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
society is composed of a plurality of racial-cuiturai sections (according to Smith, usually referred to as social classes, but best described as "culturalor social sections"), which all practice theirown institutionsand are held to gether "by force", through the political dominance of one of the sections (which is a minority). More precisely, [hisj argument is that,with respect to each institutionalsubsystem in Jamaican society? kinship, family, magico-religious systems,edu cation
and
occupation,
etc.
?
there
are diverse
alternatives',
and
the threemain 'cultural sections',white, brown and black, exhibit very distinct patterns of behaviour. (Hall, 1977: 153). According to Smith, thecultural sections formclosed socio-culturalunits, each having theirown distinct core institutionsand status systems.They are ranked in a hierarchy,but are internally independent and are indifferentto each other, interactingonlywhen absolutelynecessary. In Jamaica, thewhite section which ranks highest locally represents the culture of modern West European society. It is thedominant section,but also the smallest.The black
or lowest section includes up to four-fifths of the population, and practices a folk culture containing numerous elements reminiscentof African societies and Caribbean slavery.The brown intermediatesection isculturallyand bio logicallythemost variable, and practices a general mixture of patterns from the higher and lower groups (Smith, 1965). Interestinglyenough, it is the cultural pluralist model, the one most
methodologically alien toMarxism, which has posed thegreatest challenge to theoristsofCaribbean society. This isbecause longafter ithas been soundly demolished ? a taskwhich iseasy enough given itsflimsytheoretical founda tions ? it tends to leave a troublesome and gaping hole which is not easily covered up. For Marxism, this "hole" ismagnified by a historic failure to account for the realm of culture, especially as it is locally situated inparticu lar subject-formations.Caribbean scholarship,moreover, has been slow to respond to the latest attemptswithin Marxism and related paradigms to
correct
this weakness.
Stuart Hall, of BritishMarxist fame,and himselfof Jamaicanorigin, has written a seminal article (Hall, 1977) establishing certain fundamental his torical and analytical precepts thatmust informa frameworkforCaribbean studies. He (1977: 154) points out: The pattern of race/colour stratification,cultural stratificationand class-occupational stratificationoverlap. This is the absolutely dis tinctive featureof Caribbean society. Its stratificationsystemsand
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Gender,
the relations
between
In the Social
Race and Class
social
are massively
groups
75
Economy
over-determined.
It is thisover-determined complexitywhich constitutes the specific ityof the problem requiring analysis. It does not help, here, to some
depress
factors
of this matrix,
e.g. race/colour,
in favour
class,
of others, e.g. culture, and then,analytically,to subsume the former into the latter,since it isprecisely thegenerative specificityof each, plus the over-determined complexity of the whole, which is the problem. sees
Hall
as "[concentrating]
the "plural model"
our
on
attention
plural
cultural values, but not on the structureof legitimation",which he defines as "thatwhich secures the unity, cohesion and stabilityof this social order in " and through(not despite) its"differences" (Ibid.: 159, 158).After all, "[what] matters isnot simply thepluralityof their internal structures,but the articu lated relationbetween theirdifferences"(Ibid.: 162). Not only does themodel absolutize differences, it also unrealistically absolutises force, so that "the whole conception of 'culturalpower', of legitimation,of domination and he gemony in itsenlarged sense, isbadly foreshortenedby themanner inwhich
it is conceptualized in the 'plural society'model" (Ibid.: 159). According to Hall, "a model which accounts for and takes account of this diversity, but account
cannot
which
for its structure
in dominance,
in some
has,
funda
mental sense,missed the point" (Ibid.). First of all,Hall recognizes thepeculiar cultural differentiationofCarib bean society and its special historical articulation with class: Thus all class societies exhibit enormous cultural complexity as between the class segments and fractions: theymay not be as sharp as thedistinction found inCaribbean society,but there iscertainly no cultural and
bean
example
tiation,
as between,
one-dimensionality aristocratic
class
but
'segments'
is distinct, because
(a)
not because
middle
say, working-class,
in English there
this class-cultural
So
society.
the Carib
is class-cultural
differen
differentiation
is pecu
liarlysharp, and because (b) it is coincident to a high degree with race/colour stratification.(Ibid.: 154). He distinguishes between the stronglyplural societies of Trinidad and Guyana,
where
nic segments grant plural"
substantial
which
introduction societies
cultural
are parallel
exists
differentiation
or horizontal
into already-formed of our majority-African
as we//between
as a result of post-slavery
"creole"
structures,
type based
on
an
and
eth immi
the "weakly
essentially
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undis
76 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
turbed continuity of the vertical or hierarchical class-ethnic congruence/ fusion/reconfiguration of slave society: Thus, the culture and institutionsof the slave population are rigidly differentiated from that of the 'master' class; and African 'traces' enter
into the structure
of these
institutions.
These
how
cannot,
ever, be called 'plural' in the strong sense, since their formative context is the adaptation to and emergencewithin the slave society context. These are the institutions,the culturally differentiated
patterns of thedispossessed, the enslaved: theyare not the institu tions of a racially and culturallydistinct segment. (Ibid.: 161-62).
1 believe thatHall has correctlyestablished the "dominant" social dy namic impellingCaribbean social structureforward,and have long regarded his article as themost brilliant of all those attempting to do so. Certainly, as a once-and-for-all
correction
the
of
"plural
society"
model,
it remains
unparallelled. However, I have become increasinglydissatisfied with the structuralistbias ofHall's "complexity-and-unity" paradigm (also fora long timemy own), which, contrary to itsname, reduces the elements of complex ity to so many pawns in the game of (Eurocentric) hegemonic unity, and which accounts for "structure indominance" - as well itmight ? but not for the relative integrityof subject formations and their "lived cultures", and not
certainly
for them as "subjects-in-resistance".
Thus,
on
re-reading
Hall,
I
am disturbed that he can quote Lowenthal (1972) as saying that "[slave! culture
became
in large measure
a creolized
form of European
culture"
with
out evincing anydisapproval (Hall, 1977:162). This notion of totalhegemonic erasure seems to belie Hall's own definition of a differentiatedunity as "a complexly
structured
social
formation,
rather
than a simple,
unitary,
expres
sive totality" (Ibid.). And in spiteof his early acknowledgement of differen tiated class cultures,he appears primarily interested in thequestion of unidi rectional
"cultural
power",
"hegemony",
and
"legitimation".3
In fact, Hall's
concept of culture is, to all intentsand purposes, limited to hegemonic or dominant-institutional
1
culture
and
explicitly
eschews
any
connection
with
One major problem with Hall's paradigm is that itmakes no allowances for intcrcukuration or the reciprocal action of European and African cultures upon one another; he never considers the possibility of the Africanization of white creole culture, because forhim the African elements do not have that kind of force. See Brathwaite (1974) for a superb
discussion of the creolization process, which he sees as comprising a dialectical interplay between acculturation (forced or hegemonic incorporation) and inter/culturation (unstruc tured, "osmotic" interp?n?tration).
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Gender,
Race and Class
in the Social
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Economy
discrete (if reconstitutedand caste-bound) ethnicitiesor even ethnic orienta tions. He sometimes seems to collapse the "ethnic" into the "race/colour" category,and to thus impoverishhis own pronouncements on the extremely nuanced complexity of Caribbean social structures. What this does, for example, is to render invisible in the category "slave culture", the "lived cul ture" of the subjects, the persons, who are enslaved. Imyself argue in favour
of a distinct Afro-Caribbean "folk" culture reconstituted from fragmented and dislocatedWest African cultural resourceswithin the social accommoda
tions and constraints of sjavery and Eurocentrism. I have explored some parts of what thatmeans elsewhere (Green, 1992, 1993). The
concept
of "complexity-and-unity"
suggests
the possible
coexistence
of two competing paradigms which need to be reconciled. The structuralist ? paradigm tends to focus on theway inwhich dominant cultural forms structures,
"texts"
and discourses
?
have
been
produced
through
hegemonic
instrumentality,and how subordinate subjects are ideologically (and pas sively) reproduced and given identity through them. The culturalist para digm focuses instead on themaking and experiencing of "lived cultures" and
"autochthonous" identityby subordinate subjects themselves, in the context of theirown lives (see Bennett, 1986). It seems tome that these two para digms should not be posed as alternatives or even as individually irrelevant (pace Bennett), but instead as representativeof interactingaspects of social dialectics. However, their interactioncan only be understood after the spe
cific social terrain has been historically and structurallymapped out, since hegemony and autonomy are historically and socially relative concepts. I argue elsewhere, forexample, that in spite of (indeed, in congruence with) the high degree of brutality,Caribbean slave society, especially in Jamaica and theWindwards, appeared not tobe permeated by a singular,all-encom
passing hegemonic design or cultural power, and that thiswas so for two main reasons: (a) the high degree of planter absenteeism and their transnationally splitbase which allowed a certain inevitable openness to an interdependently (though negatively so) biculturalmode of social existence, and (b) the existence of a proto-peasant suf>mode of production among the black slavemajorities (Green, 1992, 1993). Not only do subordinate subject formationsactively resist even as they accommodate
to hegemonic
social
relations,
they also have
their "own"
social
biographies. In other words, they live their livesnot only inpassive or active response to,but also in spite of, theprevailing hegemony. The historyof the hegemonically inscribed "text" and the history of the subject formation di
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78 SOCIALAND ECONOMICSTUDIES
verge significantlyenough fromeach other, especially depending on histori cally specificarrangements. I think it isa mistake to completelycollapse the historyof the subaltern subject-groupinto the presumed historyof themacro structural position that they are placed in and come to occupy, especially since a complex and interactiveprocess of negotiation usually accompanies their
into such
"settlement"
"More
positions.
to the point,
concentra
huge
tions of African slaves alongside a handful of whites on relatively isolated plantations engaging for a fractionof theweek or month in proto-peasant
practices need to be understood in termsof the relative integrityof their
material
and
"cultural
ample,
take such
we
with
notions
Our
a struggle,
roles,
gender
of
accommo
that of cultural about
a dialectic,
such
a concept
to introduce
need
engagement
assimilation.
hegemonic
must
In addition,
in dialectical
struggle" or
dation
niche.
social
for ex
into account.
Hall fails to consider in full the reconstitutedand reinforcedcorrelation between class, race/colour, culture and (subsidiary)mode of production in context
the posternancipation
of economic
and
dualism,
the relatively
au
tonomous world of the peasantry (in particular) built out of such a correla tion. The exodus of the ex-slaves from the estates to inhabitvillage commu
nities of theirown inmost Caribbean territoriessignals thenew articulated processes ening
of class,
separation
and
cultural,
economic
which
segmentation
or "three
into "two societies",
lead
to a deep
if the hybrid middle
societies"
group is to be considered independently.The crude empiricistappeal of the M.G. Smith model becomes evident, especially since it "naturally"militates against the reduction of relatively integralclass or sectional "lived cultures" to simply inferiorizedversions of themaster culture. At the same time,such
a reduction does takeplace in the ideological-institutionalrealm,and Smith's model, lacking (among other things) a concept of domination/subordina
tion and hegemony (Hall, 1977), cannot account for it. The Three Focus Islands. Of the three societies that provide the refer ential base for this study,Jamaica and Dominica share the historical experi ence
of economic
enclave-capitalist
dualism and
based
(quasi-)peasant
on
the coexistence modes
of plantation
of production.
or other exhib
Barbados
its the greatestmode-of-productionhomogeneity or universality, lackingas it does
a peasantry,
Barbados' exclusive
and
contemporary line of social
the highest economic and
familial
and most elite boasts descent
rigid a much
race/class more
congruence. continuous
from nineteeth-century
and
predeces
sors thando theircounterparts elsewhere in theEnglish-speakingCaribbean.
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Gender,
in the Social
Race and Class
Economy
79
This is compounded by the fact that the plantation society never passed into foreign-corporateand then national-state hands as itdid elsewhere in the Caribbean, partly due to the relative strengthand resiliencyof the old resi dent planter/merchant elite (a unique phenomenon vis-?-vis the predomi nant colonial Caribbean tradition of planter absenteeism and liquidation). This resiliencyhas meant minimal "postcolonial" transmission of power to non-economic
non-ruling,
elites.
For Dominica any such "line of descent" has long trailed off and discon tinued, relativelyspeaking, leaving an essentially "coloured" local elite base (economically, politically and culturally). Hall Dominica
as among
those
societies
"lacking
(1977:150)
white
Creole
has described
elites",
a phenom
enon which is highly correlatedwith theweakness of the plantation sector as a viable
its near-demise
and
economic
system,
concen
in spite of continued
tration in landholding (see Trouillot, 1988). In this itdiffers fromboth Ja maica and Barbados, and of the three is the least culturallyand raciallydiffer entiated.4 While it shares with the other two islands a small Lebanese/ Syrian commercial-industrialbusiness class, its industrial base is tiny (but growing), and there is a black/brown upper landholding class. Hall (1977:167) distinguishesBarbados in the followingarchetypal terms: In islandswhere the plantation dominates, a substantialwhite-mi nority plantocracy ispresent,with considerable local political, eco
nomic and cultural power, and the system is peculiarly inflexible; and though the free coloureds forma distinct, intermediarygroup,
the barriers between them and 'white settler society*remain high. One consequence is that this intermediarycoloured stratum tries even harder to assimilate and to distingush itselffrom those poor blacks
beneath...
The upper echelons of Jamaican society,while predominantlywhite or light-skinned,are somewhatmore racially and ethnically diverse than those of Barbados, as has already been noted: ...where
the plantation
a peasantry,
an
economy
independent
dominates,
agricultural
but where sector
and
there
is also
urbanisation,
and where thewhite plantocracy is powerful but small, the free
4
important qualification, however, is the existence of a semi-autonomous (and constitu tionally invested) enclave of indigenous Caribs, constituting the largest and most distinct "remnant" of this people in the island-Caribbean, but nonetheless comprising just a tiny fraction of Dominica's population.
An
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80 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
coloured group win an independent role for themselves,and are more easily assimilated to elite society,thoughnever identifiedwith it.Occupational diversity is greater, and so the movement of coloureds up the scale into previously dominated white social en and of blacks
claves,
'coloured'
into middle-class,
statuses,
is greater...
(Ibid.). In both cases, there is a (relative) racial-ethnic"division of labour" be tween the economic and political elites: In both
cases...
the political
representatives
are more
mixed,
ethni
cally and in termsof colour, than the planter class:members of the coloured elite preponderate over thewhite planters in the political domain,
though
In Barbados,
the latter
however,
retain
economic
the retention
and
social
power.
of the dominant
sector
plantation
in local private corporate hands and thenegligibledegree of stateownership and control of the economy render the "reigning"political bureaucrats less powerful or potentially powerful than elsewhere in the Caribbean (see Poulantzas, 1973). In practically all other independent Caribbean nations, state ownership ismore significant,even thougha great deal of IMF-induced
privatization
has
recently
taken
place
in Jamaica.
InDominica and theother smaller islands,thepolitical domain has been the arena where highlynuanced traditional colour/class tensions and divi sions ? some of themmore "socially" and fractionallythan, strictlyspeaking, ? have been economically based symbolicallyand, in a few cases, substan out between (socially) "black" and (socially) "brown" represen tively,fought tatives. In Dominica, the old "mulatto" commercial and political elite was
urban-based and has lost considerable ground economically to Lebanese/ Syrian capitalists and black landowners, although itmaintains a reworked socio-political and symboliccontinuitywithin a fragileand fluctuatinghege mony based on a new social bloc (for themost part well representedby the recentlyended governmentof PrimeMinister Eugenia Charles).
RACE AND ECONOMIC HISTORY: THE EXAMPLEOF JAMAICA Carl Stone (1991) has provided a useful ? schematic,but historicallyprecise ?
racial-economic
empirical
analysis
racial-ethnic/class
of Jamaican boundaries
society.
As
a way
of establishing
of contemporary
the
Jamaican/West
Indian society, Iwill briefly summarize his analysis here, utilizingother refer ences tobuttress and/or amplifythehistorical schema. Stone firstdescribes a colonial
system
of "tight ethno-class
structures
of power
built
on
racial economic division of labour." He explains further:
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top of a
Gender,
in the Social
Race and Class
81
Economy
Europeans owned most of thewealth-producing assets in the colo nial economy. The indigenous Ihere, imported labour] populations were allowed to engage in small-scalepeasant farmingon the fringes of largewhite-owned plantations but mainly relegated to providing cheap labour for the white settlers in the expanding corporate
thisposed problems, intermediary racial groups (Chinese, Indians, etc.) were brought in to fill the gaps in labour supply.As export staples increased thewealth base of the colonial
economy. Where
and
economy
as
some
manufacturing
tourism
into minerals,
diversification
increased
that wealth
base
further,
and
commerce
and
services expanded. This opened up opportunities for small-scale capital and smaller entrepreneurial firms to operate alongside the largewhite-controlled corporations. (Stone, 1991: 244). The opportunities forthegrowthof small-scaledomestic capitalism along side the traditional (neo-) colonial export enclaves were seized by those re
ferred toby Stone as "intermediaryethnic groups". The latterdenotes both their class and their racial-ethniclocationwithin a social structurebounded by a fundamental oppositionality/hierarchical continuum between European "elite" and African "folk" (joined by a small East Indian element - who will not be considered separately- in the case of Jamaica).
In Jamaica,this intermediate minority group comprised immigrant"white ethnics" like theLebanese and Jews (who joined a much older community of Jamaican Jewsdating back to theperiod of colonization and settlement) and theChinese, whose upper and middle echelons, occupying a "shopkeeper"
niche, secured for the group the real and/or symbolic function of "social whites". A raciallymixed "brownmiddle class" also formed a component of this "minority,intermediaryethnic group".
The traditionalwhite planter class was displaced both by foreigncorpo
rate capital,
whose
were
interests
concentrated
on
sugar,
and
later bauxite
and tourism,and the intermediaryethnic groupswith whom theyeventually merged. sector
The
latter groups
alongside
a domestic
formed
the transnational
merchant
and manufacturing
enclaves.
A black ruralmiddle class emerged on thebasis of medium-sized hold ings concentrating
on
export
crops
such
as bananas,
pimento,
coffee
and
citrus.This small black middle class investedheavily in educating their chil dren so that theywould move up into respectable professions.They com prised a tinyminority of the rural population, however,most ofwhom occu pied
a range between
full-time
peasants
and
full-time
proletarians.
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The
race
82 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
related dualism of Caribbean economywas classically exhibited in the divi sion between the (TNC or "Jamaica-white"-owned)plantation and (black) peasant economies of rural Jamaica. In 1938, thisdivision was reflected ina tenure systemwhich "concentrated over fiftyper cent of agricultural land into some 800 holdings and leftnearly 100,000 poor peasants and their familieswith twelve per cent of the land* (Post, 1981: 2-3). In addition, the black peasant economywas itself internallystratified,partly along the lines of the division between export production and domestic food crop produc tion,which was itselfrelated to size of holding. According to a definition of
the peasantrywhich establishes twentyacres as the cut-offpoint at theupper level,Post (1981:16) has identified"(in] the very roughestquantified terms in 1938... around 80,000 peasant households with an average of justover two
acres, 13,000 with an average of nearly seven and 10,000 averaging twenty acres each". In addition, therewere roughly80,000 households at the lower margins of the peasantry with an average of a quarter of an acre each. Only the twenty-acregroup could be said with any degree of certainty to enjoy the means for full-timefarming. Post explains: Given official estimates of between four and ten acres (depending on location) needed to keep a familyalive, thisgives us a stratifica tion into a poor peasantry which could not really reproduce itself from itsown resources, a middle peasantry (some of the 13,000 households at least) which could justmanage, and maybe make a littlemoney, and a comparatively richpeasantry which used hired
labour at least at peak periods. (Post, 1981: 16). the export cash-crop peasant economy, moreover, the transnational/local splitand the racialdivision of labourwere reproduced in Within
the relationshipwith monopoly marketing agencies,both foreign(e.g.,United Fruit Company) and local (centered around the big banana farmers). As
Holt (1992: 355) has pointed out, under conditions of transnational (and local-intermediary)
commercial
monopoly,
"deprived
of autonomy
in the pro
duction process and of the ability to bargain over prices, peasant producers were more likewage workers paid at a piece rate rather than independent contractors".
Black rural and urban working class protests of the 1930s ushered in mass parties, strong political changes that led to representativegovernment, trade unions, "and a gradual drift towards political decolonization and de mocratization" (Stone, 1991: 249).
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Gender,
Race and Class
In the Social
83
Economy
With the deep distrust of themore privileged ethnicminorities by themajority Blacks, theblack and brown middle class political lead
ers assumed a dual role:bargaining for theBlacks while protecting the interestsof aspiring and economically powerful intermediary ethnic groups (Jews,Browns, Chinese and Lebanese) whom they saw as providing the enterprise and entrepreneurial dynamism to
themove the economy forward. (Ibid., 250). Beckford andWitter (1982:61) have statedmore bluntly that the "path to nationhood was negotiated skilfullyby themulatto petit-bourgeoisie",who "arrogated leadership of the national movement to themselveswith the tacit approval of the British colonialists in the aftermathof 1938". In their roles as the political leaders of the new nation, the "mulatto petit-bourgeoisie" (togetherwith theirblack colleagues) were playing an old part: This class had alwaysbeen the social bufferbetween themasses of
black people and thewhite European ruling classes. Now itwas to be the political bufferand broker between the two great antagonis tic classes ? capitalists and workers.At the same time the colonial authoritiesmanaged to create a "divide and rule" situationby estab lishingboth Bustamante and Manley as rival political leaders,both having acceptable class backgrounds. (Beckford andWitter, 1982: 61-62). Garveyism or black nationalist philosophy was rejected in favour of "multiracialism"5 ism and urban-based
and
(neo-colonial) manufacturing
economic and
modernization.
services
replaced
Bauxite, export
tour
agriculture
as the dominant sectors of the economy in the post-war era, as Jamaica pur sued
a programme
of "industrialization-by-invitation".
A
significant
bureau
cratic and professional black middle class emerged, but Blacks failed to chal lenge the entrenched economic positions of the intermediary-ethnicelites. In
themeantime, economic frustrationand disfranchisement led largenumbers of peasant and working class Blacks to participate in "a massive outward migration toBritain and a large-scaleexodus fromrural to urban areas,which translated rural poverty intourban ghettoes and urban poverty" (ibid.: 252). A new urban capitalist class developed, dominated by the Jews,theLebanese and theWhites, and to a lesser extent by theBrowns and theChinese. 5
Stone (1991: 248) has provided the following figures showing the overall ethnic distribution of Jamaica's population in 1938: dominant ethnic group - Whites: 1 percent; intermediary ethnic groupe - Browns, 17 percent, Chinese, Lebanese, Jews, 2 percent; subordinate ethnic - Blacks: 78 groups percent, Indians, 2 percent.
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84 SOCIALAND ECONOMICSTUDIES
The early 1970s' leftward turn of the People's National Party (PNP), one of the twomultipass, multi-ethnicmass parties to emerge out of thepre
war anti-colonial class struggles,has tobe seen in the context of increasingly volatile race and class-based disparities and frustrations.These frustrations had been given new expression during the late 1960s througha militant and radical-nationalist intellectualand fledglingsocialmovement (typifiedby the dialogue between theAbeng, Black Power and Rastafarian groups) which had facilitated and reflected the growingpoliticization of urban-based youth. The PNP came to power in 1972 under the leadershipofMichael Manley and undertook certain reformsaimed at increasing thedomestic retentionof
bauxite
earnings,
national
strengthening
control
over
the economy,
increas
ing realwages, reducing poverty and increasing levelsof literacyand culture. The declared "democratic socialism" of theManley government triggereda massive flightof capital, both foreignand domestic, and emigrationof domi
nant ethnics (although not the biggest "corporate" families). This "created unanticipated and unexpected new openings forblack entry into the entre preneurial class and facilitated large-scaleentryof Blacks into themiddle and
upper levelsof private sectormanagement" (ibid.: 254). Blacks became well established within the coporate managerial elite and gained a foothold in
many vices,
sectors
of
tourism,
?
business construction, manufacturing, ? still dominant the alongside agriculture
the economy
commerce
and
ser mi
were nority ethnic groups. Their enterprises tended to be smaller,but a few which were of the Other developments growth import-tradehigglering, large. represented
an expansion
in some
and
cases
a very
lucrative
enhancement
of
a traditional femaleworking class role,and illegal(Chinese, brown and black) drug
entrepreneurs, "The
big
some
corporate
tion, manufacturing,
of whom sector
hotels
and
made
enterprises services
fortunes. in insurance, remained
under
banking,
distribu
the predomiant
ownership of the economically dominant minority Jews,Whites, Lebanese and Browns" (ibid.: 256). Indeed, migration of some of the less important families appears to have facilitated a consolidation and expansion of corpo rate ownership among the biggest capitalist families. It is this group which spearheaded the attack on theManley government,whose deficit expansion
programme had already been crippled by the oil crisis,external and internal to social "destabilizing"pressures and an equivocal and ambivalent approach transformation.
In the 1980s, a pro-business,pro-US and free trade climatewas restored in Jamaica under the Jamaica Labour Party QLP) government of Edward
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Gender,
Race and Class
in the Social Economy
85
Seaga. The protective and support structures that had benefitted the new fledglingblack businesses were removed, causing several of the smaller ones to fold. Amidst the severe retrenchmentof IMF-imposed structural adjust
ment
programmes,
"new"
business
opportunities
have
emerged
in areas
of
entrepreneurship that have been specifically encouraged and privileged in the programmes of the IMF, theWorld Bank, and theCaribbean Basin Initia tive (CBI) - exportmanufacturing, to'urism,export horticulture and nontra ditional export agriculture (e.g., "winter vegetables" for theU.S. market).
Some of the smaller enterprises in these areas are owned by Blacks. The domestic-national economy of Jamaica iscontrolled by twenty-three prominent and strategicethnicminority family interests. Stone (ibid.: 261) points
out:
The corporate power of the ethnicminorities extends to their stra tegic location in sectors thatdetermine whether smaller enterprises survive. They control the ownership of the financial institutions and dominate the boards of directors. They thereforedetermine which interestsget big loans and how enterprises are treatedwhen they run into financial problems. They also control the big distri bution firms,which determinewhich goods reach themass market through theirdistribution networks. They thereforeoperate as the gate-keepersof the private sector,who control exit and entry and exercise enormous private power over the fateof smaller business
enterprisesowned by Blacks. Black business interestsare therefore intimidatedby theirawesome power and seek to court their favour. White-Jamaican corporate control of theeconomy isconcentrated in the
locally strategic (but globally "auxiliary"or secondary) areas of distribution, finance and real estate. Of three largeblack corporate enterprises thai ex isted at the end of the 1980s, twowere unable to sustain the precarious niche theyhad managed to carve out for themselves, illustrating the entrenched character ofminority ethnic controlof theprivate corporate sector. Jamaica's political economy continues to reproduce the pattern observed elsewhere in theCaribbean of an unsettled mode of coexistence between a largelyblack run political bureaucracy and a local white or minority-ethnic controlled "compradorial"
economy.
THE SPATIAL-CIRCUITSOF CARIBBEAN ECONOMY The neocolonially mediated and hierarchical articulation of heteroge neous modes of re/production is thereforeexpressed throughcombined so
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86 SOCIALAND ECONOMICSTUDIES
cial relations of nation, race/colour, class and gender, through institutional and
contexts
symbolic
side",
tonomous,
partly
maintain
intersecting
only
"con
"illegitimate",
and
"out
and
through
partly
"informal",
divisions,
"non-respectable"
an uneasy
and
"inside"
and
and
"legitimate"
and
"respectable"
"formal"
demarcating
or "common-law",
sensual"
"legal"
of economic
spaces/circuits
au that
reproduction
coexistence.
In an effortto clarifytheheterogeneityofCaribbean economic reality,I distinguish
three critical
tic-national,
and
mies"
and
intersect
circuit
household-domestic and
economy,
at the other
from
value
den
converge,
The
are
but
"feeds" end,
the domes
the household-domestic,
spatial-circuits:
the transnational-enclave.
the
end,
into the domestic-national
value
the transnational-enclave
the domestic-national
one
At
distinct.
relatively
invisible
or "econo
three spatial-circuits
circuit
The
economy.
hid
"bleeds"
household-domestic
circuit isprimarilyengaged in reproductive labour and production for subsis ?
tence
or
?
subsistence/exchange
Its primary
purposes.
is the
purpose
generational and daily reproductionof human beings and "labour power". It may be closely articulated or integratedwith, but will not forour immediate purpose be regarded as theprecise locus of, petty commodity production or circulation.
Thus,
a more
it retains
here
generic
application,
of the
regardless
class and the production formor livelihood (wage labour,petty commodity production/circulation, professional services) to which itmight be articu lated. Two production formswhose immediate (goods ) production circuit and
spans
integrates
sector
the household
and
sector
the commercial-market
have been singled out for special scrutiny inmy larger study (in a section on economic-sector
"case
studies").
These
Iwould
are, firstly, what
call a house
hold-export sector, typifiedby peasant production of cash crops forexport (as in the banana industryof Dominica and the otherWindward Islands), and, secondly, petty commodity circulation, particularly of domestic food crops produced for themost part in the (peasant) household sector.Distinct often
and
tached
overlapping
re/productive
articulations
or household-at
of household-centered
systems within
the peasant
or
small
farming
popula
tion emanate from the fact that "(most) farmsgrow crops that enter intoall three
levels of the distribution
system
?
subsistence,
internal
exchange
and
export" (Katzin, 1959: 421). All threeoperationalise formsof "invisibility" for women The
as economic domestic-national
ing at the same
actors. circuit
time, household,
"dis/articulates",
(various)
connecting
domestic-market,
and
and
fragment
transnational
enclave activities. It is ideologically integratedthrougha (relatively)codified,
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in the Social
Race and Class
Gender,
87
Economy
Visible" and "imagined" national-economic unity and realitywhich combines formal and informaleconomic spheres,6but sublimates the role of the latter and fictionalizes thatof the former.Even though the links are compulsorily and
mediated
unfavourably
the external
through
the domestic-na
market,
tional economy is nonetheless the site of the particular articulation of pro duction, distribution and consumption on whose basis the national commu In some ways,
is reproduced.
nity
the domestic-national
economy
has
been
accidentally formed by the intersection and crisscrossing of disparate cir local
cuits,
The
and
transnational. sector
transnational-enclave
is hosted
the domestic-national
by
economy and at certain points convergeswith it,but belongs more integrally to a circuit of re/production thatbegins and ends extraterritorially,outside arena.
of the domestic-national cent manifestation free trade is precisely The
zone,
of home
projected
re
relatively
in the Caribbean:
economy manufacturing
"extraterritorial
of "domestic"
in one
is dramatized
fact
to export-processing as an
hyphenation
This
transnational-enclave
industries,
the which
space".
and
"national"
captures
the tension
in
the economy of the social formationbetween activitieswhich are more inter nally oriented (or "autocentric") and popularly based and tend to reproduce
domestic autonomy and thosewhich are artificiallyand officially "national" in stature and tend to reproduce national dependency. The household-do
mestic hyphenation is also meant to convey the differentialorientation and contribution of households towards a wider "domestic economy". Again, the emphasis
must
be on
its contradictory
nature:
the household-domestic
economy
isnot homogeneous, either internally(where it isgender-differentiated)or in relation to other household-domestic circuits (where it ispart of a division by class). The household-domestic circuit thereforetends tobe class-specificor class-endogamous ? while community
?
itmay
be more
the other
or
two circuits
less part
of an
interhousehold
are class-confronting
and
class compet
ing. Household-domestic circuits have a varying class relationship to the domestic-national
economy.
Gender
and
race/ethnicity,
as already
pointed
out, are also key structuringprinciples of thesedifferentcircuits. Domestic-national
and
transnational-enclave
circuits
are
sites of the an
tagonistic rendez-vous between competing and/or opposed classes, which 6
informal sector might be defined to include all unregistered commercial and non commercial enterprises or economic activities without formal structure, generally character ized by familyownership, small scale operation, labour intensity and reliance on indigenous resources.
The
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88 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
tend to correspond to differentracial-ethnicgroups.We need to remindour selves that class relationsof production (of surplus production by one group and its appropriation by another) bring opposed classes together,function ? ? if ally speaking, on common antagonisticallydefined ground, and rela ? tions of human emotional and cultural physical, reproduction tend to
divide them into separate or diverging subject formations. This isnotwith standing thefacts that there are personal and biologically generated circuits of cross-class
of human
relations
reproduction,
more
significant
structurally
in some societies (e.g., those of theCaribbean) than in others, and that there a
is, in any event, human
inter-class
determining
to intra-class
dimension
of
relations
reproduction.
Other correlationswith thehousehold-domestic, domestic-national and are pertinent
economies
transnational-enclave
as well.
For
the do
example,
mestic-national economywould be expected to combine formal and informal circuits
of
and
production
the
whereas
exchange,
transnational-enclave
economywould be principally enmeshed in so-called formal circuits,national and mal
and
form a critical
may
operations
in direct
Even
international.
"fully" monetized
ways,
infor
however,
of the transnational-enclave
component
circuit, as in the case of a garment export industrywhich relies on "home or craftwork i.e., piece-goods ? on a basis. piece-rate
work", women
produced
?
at home
often
by poor
rural
The household-domestic economywould again be class-specific,peasant and working-class
forms
ones
upper-class
more
relying
(professional
and
on
informal
commercial
circuits
petty
than middle-
and
and
vari
bourgeoisies
ous fractionsof the comprador bourgeoisie). The lattermight rely,for their reproduction,
primarily
on formal-sector
incomes
and
revenues
(professional
salaries and fees, rents,profits,etc.) and purchase of formal-sectorgoods and services,
and
only
secondarily
on
informal-sector
exchanges.
The
propor
tionswould almost certainly be radically differentforhuge sections of the rural
and
urban
working
classes.
Again,
it is important
to note
the ways
in
which middle- and upper-class families (and men inparticular) benefit from and exploit informaleconomic circuits,on thebasis of class and gender divi sions
of
labour.
Furthermore, bean
society
ifwe
between
assume
a fairly straightforward
race/colour,
class,
and
correlation
ethnic/cultural
in Carib
orientations,
perhaps bending reality somewhat, thenwe would find the household-do mestic circuitsof theworking classes tobe the prime repositories and reser voirs
of black/afrocentric
material
and
symbolic
subconcentrations
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within
Gender,
In the Social
Race and Class
89
Economy
thewider "Creole" cultural resolutions. Those of the upper classes would tend
to reconstitute
eurocentric
creole
variants
or
subconcentrations.
The
domestic-national circuit becomes the site of contestation and (unsettled) "resolution" between Afro-creole and Euro-creole cultural poles, while the transnational-enclave circuit is themedium throughwhich "modern"West ern, Euroamerican
forms and
values,
enter directly
convictions
into and
be
come diffused throughoutthe society,complicating and pluralizing the terms of the cultural struggle.
THE SPECIFICITIES OF GENDER AND CLASS And what about gender? As I have pointed out elsewhere: ...The
gender
contradiction
has
both
an
inter- and
intra-class
sig
nificance. It isarticulated into themode of relationsbetween classes; as well it is thebasis upon which classes reproduce themselves.The
community of class is a socially gendered one. The character of gender is of course specific to class and specific to themode of production. The gender contradiction is, therefore,both generally continuous throughout the social system and specifically discon tinuouswithin class boundaries. In other words, while middle-class women and working class women experience oppression in com mon as women, the construction ofwomanhood and the particular significanceof gender oppression differfromclass to class. (Green, 1986: 212). In termsof concrete social reproduction, the shape of the gender contra
diction is considerablymodified or "diffracted"by thedemarcation of class; in hegemonic terms,"patriarchy",in a historicallyand socially specific form, is articulated into the dominant class project and the character of the state, formingan integralpart of hegemonic domination over all subordinate groups (forexample, inEuro-capitalist societies, theworking classes, non-whites and women). Historically, gender has been displaced from itsposition as an inde and
pendent
pre-eminent
social
in pre-class
relation
societies
to become
sub
sumed within class modes as an "inner" condition of class, as class now its "outer"
becomes rameters) mous
"frames"
relation
and
condition. gender. in diffracted
Class
(i.e.,
its structural
In sum, gender concrete
modes
operates
and
experiential
as a relatively
throughout
the social
pa
autono forma
tion, and also as a subset of the class (and class-ethnic) relation of exploita tion. It can be noted in addition that, in the global capitalist system, (First
World/Third World) nation isan "outer"condition of class; class, its"inner"
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90 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
condition.The social formationsof the global capitalist systemare structured by articulated and overlapping contradictionsof nation, class, "race",ethnicity and gender; their social subjects are both "bearers" of these contradictions and part-authors of a self-identity which isnot reducible to the "effects"of these
contradictions. Afro-Caribbean
as a group,
women,
present
only
an apparent
paradox.
At one end, theyaremore embedded thanmen in informalcircuitsof repro duction and institutionalspheres.Through these circuitstheyare constrained to discharge major "provider" responsibilities for the family/kin collective, and although they derive a certain gender-specific,community-specificau thorityfrom their roles as familycaretakers and heads of households,7 these roles are extremely low-valued in the contextof the total social hierarchy.At
the other end, theyaremore dependent on and more constrained to seek and acquire formalaccreditation for individualmobility and higher-statusjobs in
the formal economy.This has to be explained partly by the way inwhich women are divided fromeach other by class: class forCaribbean women as a seems
group
to span and
"traditional"
the divide
"modern"
between
much
"formal"
more
than
and
"informal"
is the case
or so-called
for men.
This
is
fundamentally related to the fact that upward class accession forwomen in theCaribbean ismediated by increasing entry into singularlymale-defined
(as well as capitalistically and eurocentricallydefined) social spaces. Upper and middle class women access their identity throughmen (privately) or male-defined power (publicly) to a fargreater extent than lower-classwomen (i.e., in termsof their immediate lives).This is partly peculiar to theCarib bean,
where
as
marriage-and-wifehood,
simultaneously
all-inclusive
institution
the pre-eminently
for sexual
relations,
sanctioning childbearing,
and con
jugal community, and spousal and filial property rights, is a class-exclusive phenomenon. (Marriage isnot absent frombut has a differentmeaning and occupies a differentplace inworking class cultural repertoires and biogra phies). But, it also indicatesmore generally that ruling class men control systems enter
of power
their world,
in the society, either
as wives
and
control
the terms under
or as "fellow"
class
which
women
executives.
The "apparent paradox" also has tobe explained by the concreteways in which women are divided frommen by gender: traditional gender-typed
7
In 1980, female household-headship rates were 43.9 percent forBarbados, 37.7 percent for 1980? 1981 Population Census of the Dominica, and 38.1 percent for Jamaica (CAR1COM, Commonwealth Caribbean).
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Gender,
In the Social
Race and Class
91
Economy
"male" skills seem to retain their value and applicability across the house and
domestic-national
hold-domestic,
to a
economies
transnational-enclave
fargreater extent than is the case fortraditional gender-typed "female" skills. In transposition fromone "level" to the other, the latter tend to lose their value.
Furthermore,
with more
formal
and
schooling
than men,
certification
women still tend to have less power and status in their occupational and professional lives.The class/gender nexus, in theCaribbean as elsewhere, is
mediated by socially ascribed associations of the public/formal sphere(s) mal sphere(s) with maleness and (therefore)superiorityand theprivate/ i for with femaleness and (therefore) inferiority.
This ismitigated and disrupted somewhat by thedualism of the economy, whereby so-called informalsector activitiesmay fulfilan indispensable "pub lic"economic function,or fufila "primary"economic functionbut be consid ered
part
of a "secondary"
economy.
women
Working-class
are often
at the
center of such informaleconomies, formingpart of the gender-related eco nomic dualism referred to earlier,which is furthercorrelated with class and ethnicity (or the "two societies"). As 1have pointed out before, the examples which I examine inmy largerwork are gender-differentiatedfarmingprac tices (which generate associations of export cash-crop farmingwith maleness and domestic food crop production with femaleness) and female-dominated domestic foodmarketing (see Trouillot, 1988;Katzin, 1960;Durant-Gonzalez, 1985; LeFranc, 1989). For generations, the domestically-oriented peasant economy
formed
an enclave
with
its own
market
domestic-national
(limited)
or ing circuitswhich relied on a sexual division of labour within the family a as whole. This domestic within the peasant/proletarian working classes circuitstrengthenedtheethnicautonomy food crop production-and-distribution and identityof theAfro-creole "folk"and marked a relative separation from the economic circuits dominated by the ethnicminority elites. Pool (1981: 69) illustratesthispoint with great clarity forJamaica circa 1938 (butwithin a scenario which still holds relevance for today): ... in Jamaica
the peasant
sector
did
not
interact
regularly
with
the
urban middle class and theethnicminorities ofChinese, Jewishand Syrian merchants [at least,as potential sellers of domestic peasant
crops]. The strengthof the peasant adaptation in Jamaicawas to a great extent founded on the internalmarketing system.This system contained
a vast
number
of women
who
obtained
small
profits
weekly (or even none under periodic gluts) and although thismar ket extended
into the urban
areas,
the contacts
were with
city higglers
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92 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
who in turn sold produce tohousehold servants.The only articula tionwith small businesses was to use them as a source of credit. There was also littlearticulation between the internalmarket and small farmersof banana and other export crops. The other exception to this rule of relativemutual isolation,of course, was to be found in the relation of the principals (of the two economic sec
tors) as personal consumers of each other's products. Ken Post (1981: 18) notes,moreover, "the limitationsupon (peasant production] resulting from an articulationwith capitalism": Firstly,peasant trade depended upon capitalist-owned,or at least owner-driver (petty bourgeois) road transport,exceptwhere rich peasants may have owned theirown lorries. Secondly, thehigglers
had tobuy the commodities theytook back from the towns either at retailprices fortheirown or theirneighbours' consumption or from
wholesalers
for resale.
the other hand, the rural-urbanfood trade "provided a very close link between peasant higglers and working class housewives, particularly since the formeroften sought as part of their tradingpractices to deal regu On
larlywith the same customers" (ibid: 19). Indeed, the food Jink did not always involvea cash-exchange, integralas itwas to relations of kinship and
community among theAfro-creole folk across the rural-urbandivide: "A survey of 486 working class households in Kingston made in the period
August to October 1939 revealed that no less than 45 per cent of them received giftsof food, no doubt frompeasant friends and relatives* (ibid.). Also, regular vendor-customer relations, even across the class divide (but almost always between women), sometimes include the occasional and spe cial exchange of gifts (see Durant-Gonzalez, 1985). It is clear,moreover, that forworking class or peasant women in certain traditional occupations likehigglering,economic dualism precludes a simple
or exclusive alignment of economic roles along a single scale of values, even though the "two societies'*are undoubtedly hierarchically relatedwithin the (singular) systemof domination. Relatively autonomous "local" status iden titiesmay exist alongside and challenge unilinearly ranked "national" status identities. In a recent study of petty trading (higglering) inKingston, Ja
maica, LeFranc (1989: 111) suggests just such a coexistence, amounting in effect to a complex and dialectical interplayor tension between two status ? systems but also, increasingly,in the contextof a global crisiswhich ensures the enlarged and refurbished reproduction of the informal sector,between
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the
status
(national)
in the Social
Race and Class
Gender,
and
system
purely
or
monetary
93
Economy
commodity-exchange
values:
... it is popularly believed, and it could indeed by argued, that the to low attached and prestige stigma higgleringby everyonedestroys thepossibilities forcontinuing and inter-generationalaccumulation and expansion. The data show that low status has not significantly curtailed the rates of recruitment.An increasing number of per sons even give up occupations of higher status but lower remunera tion in order to higgle. It isnot clear thenwhy this should be the
major independent variable depressing the profitmotive and the drive to expand. In any case, thedata on the status ascribed are not conclusive as there is some evidence that rural-based higglers tradi tionallyenjoyed high statuswithin the rural community. Edith Clarke found such evidence in her classic studyof rural Jamaica, where,
according
to "traditional"
values,
The higgler ranks socially above thedomestic servant or labourer; she is independent as compared with thewage-earner and wears an apron as the badge of her calling. Itwas noticeable thatmany of them livedon familylandwhich in itselfconfers status in the com munity. (Clarke, 1966 11957]: 152-53).
GENDER IN THE DOMESTIC-NATIONAL ECONOMY The productive base of thedomestic-national economy comprises the follow ingmajor components: the production of primary products (agricultural or
mineral, processing or unprocessed) forexport through large-scaleand/or petty forms,articulated directly to (local) monopoly commercial or (foreign) transnational concerns; small-scale production of food crops and crafts for subsistence and for the domestic market; related small-scalemarketing; im port/wholesale/retail financial,
trade; commercial (including tourist), government, and
professional
skilled-trades
real estate,
construction,
services;
transportation; limiteddomestic manufacturing,often through joint venture or
licensing
arrangements
bly manufacturing. form foreign
at the larger-scale
and/or
-controlled
based/"hotel-chain"/"packaged"
manufacturing
concerns.
Although,
stapletourism,
in general,
or
export-processing
niches
Transnational-enclave
in foreign-owned
end;
are
found
or mineral-export and offshore
Caribbean
-assem
in their "purest" sectors,
banking
economies
and
are ge
neticallyand structurallycharacterizedby a highdegree of transnationalization in a peripheral or dependent mode, therearewidely differing levelsof (exter
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94 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
nally-oriented) enclavization of domiciled activities in relation to thedomes tic-national or
economy.
sectors
other
Many
the basic
lesser degree
of the economy
to a greater
mediate
of the classical
characteristics
transnational-enclave
sectors. Also, the lattermay shed some of their "purer"or original features, such as juridical foreignownership, but still retain a high degree of separa tion or enclavization.
Finally,
are represented
economies
transnational-enclave
by "older" types and "newer" types, the latest tendencybeing appropriately captured by the designation of special "extraterritorialzones" for export industries.
processing
The major domestic classes and class fractions emanating from these economic activities and their social relationsof production are identified, in a somewhat descriptive and ad hoc fashion, as follows: the "compradorial" ruling and
classes,
comprising
bureaucratic
state)
agro-commercial,
merchant-industrial and
professional
bourgeoisies;
and
(private (farm
entrepreneurial
ingand non-farming)pettybourgeoisies; the "white-collar"lowermiddle class; the (quasi-)
skilled
artisans,
peasantry,
and
tradepersons,
(other)
com
petty
modity producers and traders (or vendors); "informal"and "formal"agricul service
tural,
and manufacturing
are women
How
differently,
with
to these
regard
classes
and
class
frac
thisquestion is tryingto get at should probably be approached
tions?What women's
workers.
distributed
or, at least, re-contextuated. in the economy
position
can discern
One
with
distinct
to occupational
regard
in
patterns
specialization,
level and nature of labour forceparticipation and status ranking in relation to men.
These
patterns
the "gender
ously,
are mediated
by class,
is... both
contradiction
so that, as pointed
generally
continuous
out
previ
throughout
the social system and specificallydiscontinuous within class boundaries". We are referredback to the complex articulationbetween the sexual division of labour and the class division of labour, correlated across the private/ public and reproductive/productive divide (and in theCaribbean across the
"dualism" of the economy). This makes for a complex set of interrelations indeed.
Women
as
a whole
are oppressed
as
a
gender;
are
oppressed
in
differentways within classes; experience accordinglydifferent"articulations" of identity across the private/public divide; consciously or unconsciously experience theirgender identitiessimultaneouslyas class identities,differen tiating themselves and being differentiated fromwomen of other classes;
participate in class oppression of other women inboth gender-specificand non-gender and
specific ways;
non-gender
specific
experience ways;
have
class oppression a
class-specific
in both response
gender-specific to the overall
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in the Social Economy
Race and Class
Gender,
95
patriarchal system,articulating private and public forms (of response) differ ently,and so on. This "web of complexity"must be the filterthroughwhich
simple empirical differentiationsare understood. It is in fact fairlyeasy - by conjuring up a mental image of familiar Caribbean societies ? to generate an empirical listof typicallyor modally female occupational roles from the lowest to the upper-middle levels of the economy (which is the full,but highly skewed, range of their concentration): the casual
or seasonal
or agro-processing
estate
the provision
labourer,
farmer
or food-crop "gardener", thedomestic worker, the small trader (of food prod or miscellaneous
ucts
small merchandise),
the "shop
or sales
assistant"
clerk,
the office clerk, the low-waged (formal sector) serviceworker, the garment or electronics
the nurse,
factory worker,
sor, the
lower- or junior-level
service"
entrepreneur
of small dressmaking,
(owners
ing establishments,
or administrator,
manager
and
restaurants,
boutiques,
teller or supervi
the bank
the teacher,
the small
"personal and
cater
Women
be
hairdressing
guest
houses).
come smaller and smallerminorities, slowly dwindling to a virtual absence (in
their own
as spouses,
right, not
or
sisters
daughters),
as the range moves
upwards frommiddle to upper-level management, through (hierarchically ranked) professionaland entrepreneurialpettybourgeoisies, towards the ranks of the local bourgeoisie. therefore,
Generally,
middle-class not
in (but, of course,
trated
and
administrative
service
occupations
limited
positions
a narrow
to)
and
sex-typed
for women of
range
are
concen
"white
lower-ranked
and/or
collar" pro
fessional and entrepreneurial livelihoods,while working class women find themselvesdisproportionatelyengaged in (sex-typed) "unskilled"production, service and clerical jobs and various "unpaid family labour" and "informal sector"
some
activities,
of which
constitute
traditionally
female
small-scale
enterprises occupying the (contradictory) border between informaland for mal
sectors.
(The
local
famous
inter-island
and
figure
of
the
"huckster",
"higgler",or "trafficker"comes tomind). One can detect a distinction,occur ring perhaps
middle-class
among
mostly
occupations,
between
an occupation
ally gender-segregated sexual division of labour (e.g., nurse and policeman; cash-crop
farmer
and
small
trader)
and
an occupationally
gender-stratified
sexual division of labour (differenttypes of lawyers,different types of doc tors).
Working
class
jobs
seem
to be more
consistently
sex-typed
in and
of
themselves (but the "huckster"or small traderhas a suigeneris quality which the semi-professional
nurse,
for example,
does
not have).
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96 SOCIALAND ECONOMIC STUDIES
there is a high level of casualization and informalization in the oriented and duaiistic economies of theCaribbean - this isobvi externally ous from thepoint of view of people's economic involvementand livelihoods, ifnot from the point of view of "national" accounting and codification sys tems,according towhich informaleconomic activities and agents simplydo While
not
?
exist
women
are
involved
disproportionately
in this phenomenon.
Casualization and inform?lis?tion emerge structurallyfrom the domination
of the economy by the capitalist or capitalisticallymediated export enclaves which are tied directly tometropolitan capital and markets and are not de rived fromor based on domestic entrepreneurship and labour and consumer
markets. Large numbers of people are forced to inhabit the ever-shrinking intersticesbetween the export enclaves and importedmiddle class lifestyles, or tomigrate back and forthbetween formal-and informal-sectoractivities.
Not
are
only
these
export
externally-oriented
and
enclaves
class-reproducing
incapable of incrementallycreating jobs and absorbing labour, theyare,more over, indifferent,and even hostile, to the consumption and social needs of themarginalized and dispossessed. They tie up a disproportionate share of domestic resources in either a state of idlenessor non-productive and selfish use, and dispose of theirdisproportionate share of the national income by way
of "repatriated"
sprouts
profits
to provide
up
and extralocal
goods
and
services
spending. and
The
"informal
as a means
economy"
of self-employment
for those who have been excluded from and unprovided forby the formal sector (see Harrison, 1988). The failureof theEstablishment to undertake family,especially children's,welfare as a social responsibility,the failureof
the economy to generate broad-based and incrementalemployment and to provide livingwages togetherwith mass consumer goods and services,poor women's overwhelming responsibility for childcare and child support, and the pervasive discrimination against them,based on the racist and sexist notion
that
"secondary
they are earners",
"natural"
and
combine
to force
"instinctive" them
but
caretakers/providers,
to seek
various
strategies
for
survival and familysupport outside of the formalmarket. Most of these strategies involvea parlayingof domestic skillsand unmet reproductive
needs
into income-generating
opportunities,
and many
of them
are combined with regular or irregularpaid employment.The informalsec tormeets reproductiveneeds with cheap goods and services,provided through intensive therefore, enclave;
labour
efforts, often
to compensate it is neither
as an extension
of domestic
for the super-exploitative
accidental
nor dysfunctional.
practices
tasks.
It emerges,
of the capitalist
In fact, by helping
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to repro
Gender,
Race and Class
In the Social
Economy
97
duce labour power cheaply, it subsidizes these enclaves and enables them to continue paying excessively lowwages. The latter (enclaves) are not geared towards mass internal demand or the satisfaction of domestic needs, and come to depend on the informal sector for fulfillingthese needs. A "func tional",but highly uneven, division of labour arises between the formal and
informal sectors, reflecting inpart separation or tensionbetween the do mestic-national economy and the transnational-enclavecircuit,a division be tween class-based household-domestic circuits (themiddle classes and work ing classes are reproduced within the informalsector in inverseproportions
to each other), and even a division within the household-domestic circuitby
gender.
Over the course of the last fourdecades, a number of distinct shiftshave nevertheless occurred in the production and employmentbase ofCaribbean economies. These shiftshave affectedwomen to a far greater extent than theyhave men because thedislocations have been more dramatic and perma nent for them. It has already been pointed out that "women's skills" tend to be less transferableacross the traditional/modern divide; women are more vulnerable to thewhims of labour demand, whereas formen the employment
market is always somewhat shaped by,or at least, congruous with, the par ticularly skilled labour supply that they represent (this, of course, being re lated to "primordial"male domination). The most dramatic change has been
thedecline of domestic service and agriculturalwage labour,which has been part of an overall decline in the informalizationand casualization of labour (see Gordon, 1989). In Jamaica and theWindward Islands of the Eastern Caribbean, thedecline of agriculturalwage labour has been accompanied by a relativegrowthof the small farmerpopulation, which is,at least in termsof officialoccupational designation, primarilymale. Women have, for themost part,moved (or been pushed) into towns and cities,where theyhave entered the expanding sectorsof industrialand servicewage labour. Itmust be pointed out, however, thatdisproportionate numbers of women continue to depend on the informalsector. Recent estimates forJamaica have placed the propor
tion ofwomen working in this sector at 38 percent, as opposed to 12 percent formen (Deere, coord., 1990:67). Itmust also be pointed out thatdomestic service,perhaps with significantlychanged working conditions, continues to be an important source of employment forworking class women all over the
Anglophone Caribbean, and that inBarbados todaywomen make up an equal or largerproportion of the agriculturalworkforce in the sugar industry than men.
This content downloaded from 128.230.134.67 on Mon, 12 Aug 2013 15:36:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
98 SOCIALAND ECONOMICSTUDIES
last point needs to be made
in this section about the predomi nantly female-employingexport assembly industries thathave seen a relative proliferation in theAnglophone Caribbean. These industriesare said to rep One
resent
a new
among
departure
"foreign
enclave"
sectors
in terms
of
their
labour absorption capacity. However, this ismisleading. Employment in this sector is capricious, volatile, and qualitatively static. These firmshave no
long-termcommitment to any particular "host" economy,and only a limited kind of short-termcommitment,having no linkageswith the local economy, except
low-wage,
through
low-skilled
employment,
and
passing
no
on
sus
tainable technologyor transferableskills. Because so many of these indus tries have a short life-span,their employment patterns imitate,over longer and more volatile cycles and within a more global scope, the shiftsof casual and
seasonal
employment
of the classical
agro-export
enclaves.
The
point
is
that theirbehaviour is characteristicof a systemthat sees thirdworld work women,
ers, especially
as part of a world-wide
reserve
army of labour
that can
be sucked in and spat out as desired. This systemhas contributed to a basic casualization, have
cheapening
in no way
and
of Caribbean
fragmentation
workforces
that
disappeared.
is a critical reference to gender segmentation as well, as third world industrial labour forcestend to be marked by the formationof a tiny There
male "labour aristocracy" (relatively speaking) in capital-intensive import substitution
sectors
and mineral-export
and a large low-wage
female workforce
in sectors of lightexport-manufacturing(see Lim, 1990). In theCaribbean, this is typified by the small, relativelywell-paid, highly unionized, largely male workforce in thebauxite, oil and certain import-substitutionindustries and
the low-wage,
non-unionized,
"free zone"
garment
and
electronics
female
workers (LeFranc, 1987; Durant-Gonzalez, 1983; Dunn, 1987; Kelly, 1987; Green, 1990). This dualistic pattern isbeing considerably exacerbated by the increasing incorporation of the sub-region into theUnited States-domi nated
American
Periphery.
CONCLUSION In this essay I have tried to provide, in preliminary form,a multilevel sche matic-analytical description ofAnglophone Caribbean social economywith regard to itscombined contradictions and re/productive relations.Method
ologically speaking, I have been guided by threeconcerns inmy approach: (1) the need to be historically specific? to "map out" the particular "topogra phy" of the social formationor group of social formations in termsofmodes
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Race and Class
Gender,
In the Social
99
Economy
of re/product ion; (2) the need to dialecticaliy integrate "structuralist"and "culturalist"
(I remain
perspectives
wary
to "transcend"
of efforts
terres
such
trial limitsand enter into some Utopian realm of subjective holism and irre ducibility; 1 see realityprecisely as fractured and multilevelled, but not amor
phously so); (3) the need to treat "equally" all themajor social contradictions in postcolonial (especiallyWest Indian) society - national dependency (the transnational/local
race/colour,
articulation-contradiction),
class,
ethnicity,
gender, and coexisting modes of production. There isa particular need to understand women as being embedded in all of these relations,and their social personhood (indeed, their socially spe cificwomanhood) as being critically informedby all of them.There is an unfortunate
to see
tendency only with
concerned
their
analyses
"everyday
about
women
as being
lives",
in some
sort of separate
appropriately sense.
This reinforcesthe sexistdivision of focus and of "spheres" (which ultimately goes something like this:men take care of theNational and Class struggles and
women
to everyday
themselves
devote
"women's
struggles").
At
the
same time, the feminist insistence thatwomen's (and, Iwould add, working class people's) everyday livesbecome an integralpart of what has tradition ally gone under the ratherexclusionary rubricof "economics" and "politics" is
one I completelyuphold. Looking ahead, 1 see themain task awaiting ana lystsofAnglophone Caribbean society as thatof exploring the full impactof this ongoing phase of the Caribbean's incorporation into a re-envisioned
American regional empirewithout underestimating the resiliencyof age-old social
"New World"
structures
and
cultures.
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