Downtown Ladies

9/22/2014

Downtown Ladies

Gina Ulysse’s Downtown Ladies reads like a mix between a historical narrative about the lengthy emergence of Jamaica’s Informal Commercial Importers (ICI), an ethnographer’s confession, and a book on ethnographic research methods. The density of the chapters we have read thus far have been, honestly, almost overwhelming.

The development of the island’s slave-managed, market system was an entirely new concept for me. Again, this aspect forced me to question the version of slave history that I was taught. The structure of the markets, as Ulysse described it, placed agency into the hands of the slaves while simultaneously exposing yet another way that slave owners profited off the labours of the slaves (p. 62). More importantly, though, these markets highlight the perseverance of the slaves, their attempts to locate in autonomy ‘in the cracks,’ and the market’s function in the greater social realm for slaves (i.e. entertainment, socialization, education, p. 63).

I found the historical work in this book to be amazingly compelling primarily because of the ways in which Ulysse traces the creation of the various female identities – the matriarch, the lady, the woman – from slavery onward. An interesting point, of course, is the way that these identities not only coalesce around ideas regarding physical appearance and hence social nuance, but how they developed out of the economic resources and/or necessity. By this I mean that the Jamaican women used the few resources possessed, and skillfully worked the cracks, so they could support their families in moments of great necessity.  Meanwhile, those in power (slave owners, plantocracy, business owners, or government) were fine with turning a blind eye to trade in both the slave market and the contemporary arcades as long as it benefitted the power structure. Once trade started to cut in on business sector profits or once the “hustling economy” became too stabilized and led to too much self-reliance on the part of slaves, higglers, or ICIs, then the elite would impose restrictions on them (p. 75).

It was helpful to see the history of Jamaica’s independence play out in fuller detail than that which we viewed in Life and Debt. Through this, one gains a fuller understanding of the emergence and the agency of the higgler and ICI in this respect. Equally fascinating, though, was the way that Ulysse opened up about the difficulties, conflict, and perhaps irony that accompanies ethnographic work. The women policed each other for their discretions against the accepted notions of class, gender, and nationality even. This practice was made most evident through Ulysse’s personal experience with “cross-dressing-across-” the many realms she explored, the ensuing confusion it caused from the locals, and her struggles with and realizations about how certain personas either facilitated or complicated her work in different scenarios. By experimenting with “cross-dressing-across-” class, gender, and nationality Ulysse toyed with notions of power as they are based on appearance. Of course, this meant that in some ways she had to shift in and out of personas, and thus reinforce or recreate the stereotypes as she worked through her research.