Review by Choice Review
Ethnographers--anthropologists and sociologists--continue to probe Caribbean society and culture, and are much more engaged with these multiracial island societies than historians and other social scientists, it seems. The reasons are not difficult to fathom, for Caribbean societies are more oral, aural, and visual than documentary, richly captured by sights, smells, colors, and sounds, characteristics that lend themselves well to the keen eyes and ears of a good ethnographer, such as Brown-Glaude (African American studies, College of New Jersey). She views the Jamaican "higgler"--a lower-class black woman engaged in petty trade in the island's informal economy, whether as street vendor of fruits and vegetables, a role dating back to slavery days, or as a modern, independent, and very small-scale international commercial importer selling cheap shoes and clothing from China--through the lens of a theoretical framework she terms "embodied intersectionality" of race, class, and gender. The author carefully traces how others have perceived higglers historically, and how these usually demeaning representations have affected higglers' self-identities and experiences. Brown-Glaude's well-written, jargon-free study offers a refreshing, long-overdue discussion of the ethnographer's embodied presence--her own race, class, and gender, in this case--on the research process and the information gathered. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. E. Hu-DeHart Brown University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
