Caribbean Middlebrow

Leisure Culture and the Middle Class

Inbunden, Engelska, 2009

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It is commonly assumed that Caribbean culture is split into elite highbrow culture—which is considered derivative of Europe and not rooted in the Caribbean—and authentic working-class culture, which is often identified with such iconic island activities as salsa, carnival, calypso, and reggae. In Caribbean Middlebrow, Belinda Edmondson recovers a middle ground, a genuine popular culture in the English-speaking Caribbean that stretches back into the nineteenth century.Edmondson shows that popular novels, beauty pageants, and music festivals are examples of Caribbean culture that are mostly created, maintained, and consumed by the Anglophone middle class. Much of middle-class culture, she finds, is further gendered as "female": women are more apt to be considered recreational readers of fiction, for example, and women's behavior outside the home is often taken as a measure of their community's respectability.Edmondson also highlights the influence of American popular culture, especially African American popular culture, as early as the nineteenth century. This is counter to the notion that the islands were exclusively under the sway of British tastes and trends. She finds the origins of today's "dub" or spoken-word Jamaican poetry in earlier traditions of genteel dialect poetry—as exemplified by the work of the Jamaican folklorist, actress, and poet Louise "Miss Lou" Bennett Coverley—and considers the impact of early Caribbean novels, including Emmanuel Appadocca (1853) and Jane's Career (1913).

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2009-11-15
Mått155 x 235 x 21 mm
Vikt907 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor240
FörlagCornell University Press
ISBN9780801448140
UtmärkelserA 2010 Choice Magazine "Outstanding Academic Title

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Caribbean Middlebrow makes a major and original contribution to a field of study that is at once established and increasingly pursued: the status, definition, and involvement of the Caribbean middle class at a variety of levels and locations.... It is remarkable for the breadth of its interrogation of various popular culture genres across time without sacrificing analytical depth in the process. It is also a unique and updated point of departure for exploring the position and practices of the Caribbean middle class in relation to the working class.- Karla Slocum (New West Indian Guide) In Caribbean Middlebrow, Edmondson accomplishes her goal of demonstrating the existence of an aspirational and leisure-oriented middlebrow culture in the Anglophone Caribbean from the mid-nineteenth century through the present. Her cultural study provides a corrective to the established view of a polarized Caribbean culture and compliments previous scholarship focused on the political orientation of the Caribbean's black and brown middle-class. Further scholarly inquiries into the cultural or even political, social, and economic development of this historically misrepresented segment of Caribbean society will likely benefit from Edmondson's timely work.- Brandon Byrd (Caribbean Studies)