Gender, Race and Class in the Social Economy of the English ...

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


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


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


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


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.



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.


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



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.


In the Social

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Gender,

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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



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


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


undis


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).


Gender,

Race and Class

in the Social

77

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



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.


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



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:


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.


The

race


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).


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.



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


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



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,


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


economy

has

been

accidentally formed by the intersection and crisscrossing of disparate cir local

cuits,

The

and

transnational. sector

transnational-enclave

is hosted


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


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


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



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


as well.

For

the do

example,

mestic-national economywould be expected to combine formal and informal circuits

of

and

production

the

whereas

exchange,


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


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"



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).


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


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



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


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



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


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


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


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).



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


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.



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


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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