Downtown ladies informal commercial importers, a Haitian anthropologist, and self-making in Jamaica - Ulysse, Gina A. (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
Includes bibliographical references (p. [283]-315) and index
Introduction: Toward a reflexive political economy within a political economy of reflexivity -- Of ladies and women : historicizing gendered class and color codes -- From higglering to informal commercial importing -- Caribbean alter(ed) natives : an auto-ethnographic quilt -- Uptown women/downtown ladies : differences among ICIs -- Inside and outside of the arcade : my downtown dailies and Miss B.'s tuffness -- Shopping in Miami : globalization, saturated markets, and the reflexive political economy of ICIs -- Style, imported blackness, and my jelly platform shoes -- Brawta: Written on black bodies : the futures of ICIs
The Caribbean ?market woman? is ingrained in the popular imagination as the archetype of black womanhood in countries throughout the region. Challenging this stereotype and other outdated images of black women, Downtown Ladies offers a more complex picture by documenting the history of independent international traders?known as informal commercial importers, or ICIs?who travel abroad to import and export a vast array of consumer goods sold in the public markets of Kingston, Jamaica. Both by-products of and participants in globalization, ICIs operate on multiple levels and, since their emergenc