Research Abstracts

The study explores how high school students negotiated non-academic school spaces within the broader context of youth cultural expressions. The research is a qualitative ethnographic study in which the researcher used a cultural lens to study selected non-academic spaces in two urban high schools in Western Jamaica. The techniques employed were photographs of physical spaces, ...

This work identifies the extent to which Christian women subscribe to traditional gender roles and expectations in the private and public domain, and discusses, in light of the findings, the role of women’s beliefs and behaviours in transforming gender norms in the society. Suitable quantitative and qualitative methods were used to complete this project. Data ...

The thesis is a religious response to ‘Globalisation’ in light of its effects on Post-colonial Jamaican Christian Experience. Arguing that ‘Globalisation’ is an American Religious Hegemonic Project, and is really an update of the Christendom ideal, the work attempts to show how that ideal was contested before and throughout its history. Gaining insights from such ...

This thesis investigates the way in which Jamaicans have interacted with their primary level reading books at different periods, specifically with regard to the books’ impact on their identity formation. Colonial education and its cultural products are widely acknowledged to have affected Jamaican students negatively. This thesis investigates that notion by hearing from some people who ...

This dissertation explores the viability and development of a professional theatre culture in Jamaica by examining the models and aspects of professionalism already existing in Jamaican theatre.The study looks at the development routes to the modern Jamaican theatre, within the conceptual framework of ‘creole theory.’ It further explores the roles, functions and responsibility of the ...

Who speaks for us? Can they speak for us? Can we relate to what they say? The motivations of this study are the concerns for identity assertion and representation through theoretical lens such as race, class and culture broken down into specific anthropological concerns to evolve a “Jamaican Cultural Studies” framework. I examine the notion that ...

Dancehall is currently the most popular genre of indigenous music in Jamaica, and it enjoys a similar popularity throughout the Caribbean region. Since its emergence in the early 1980s, it has risen to prominence and stayed in the spotlight for the past fifteen to twenty-five years. Of all the genres of Jamaican popular music, dancehall ...

Dead-yard Kumina in St Thomas is one of the few traditional forms in Jamaica that have maintained some relevance as a wake ritual within a highly contested and changing dead-yard space. From the arrival of the Kikongo speakers of Central Africa between 1840 and 1865, the culture of “Kumina” has impacted that of the Jamaican ...

In this thesis, changing meanings and practices in television broadcasting and production in Jamaica and Ghana are used to examine transitions in structures, processes and policies associated with the adoption of cultural/creative industries and economy concepts. The television industries of both countries were used to illustrate these large, complex concepts. Television in those countries changed ...

This dissertation conducts an examination into issues of power and culture through the case of tourism in the parish of Portland. It evaluates the power structures that have privileged traditional tourism and certain ideas about culture and explores the viability of cultural heritage tourism as an alternative. The purpose of this study is to assess ...

This paper examines the issue of gender and hegemonic masculinity through the lens of football in Jamaica. The paper seeks to interrogate notions of hegemony as it relates to gender and sports, particularly football. This notion translates to societal norms dictating what men and women could and should do. The result most times is that ...

The present master’s thesis seeks to pinpoint the issues that impair and even discourage Caribbean dance practitioners from setting their sights on, actually creating, or having already created Modern Dance Techniques steeped in our very own Caribbean idioms. The approach to this research is based on Beryl Mcburnie’s sentiments that the Caribbean civilization has shied ...

In 2004, concern was raised by the Jamaican Government about the unsatisfactory performance in literacy by the students at the primary level and hence a taskforce was appointed to investigate the causes of this unsatisfactory performance. As a result of this investigation, several strategies have been implemented by the MOE. Educators and researchers have also ...

In the 1940’s Jazz underwent a transformation instigated by the return to source of musicians disenchanted with the musical cul-de-sac that Swing had played itself into. Looking for inspiration and new direction, they turned to the rhythms of the Caribbean as a way of reconnecting with their African origins. From New Orleans and Dixieland to ...

‘Limbo,’ Butterfly and the ‘Jerry Springer’, dances throughout Jamaica’s Dancehall history, have mostly been created in the Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA). The stories they tell about history, the birth and evolution of New World culture, cross-fertilization, and strategies of self and identity, help to construct a narrative of the transformation of Kingston’s urban postcolonial to ...

This thesis argues that sites of Christian worship in Caribbean territories such as Jamaica are essential to any attempt at understanding the identity politics that govern daily life within the region. In this vein, it highlights ideological contestation and spatial battles as the most important influences on the evolution of the varying aesthetic conventions utilised ...

This dissertation offers a reading in postcolonial museology or what I have called a museology of displacement. Taking the Caribbean museum and other exhibitionary institutions as the object of study, it connects museology and Caribbean cultural studies. It asks how museology can account for peoples whose originary formation is not located in the territory of ...

This paper investigates the impact the payola system has on the music and broadcasting industry in Jamaica. The research draws upon primary and secondary data with interviews and focus group discussions along with existing literature on the payola system from newspapers, online journals and articles. The findings of this research show the class struggles as ...

‘Plotting A Nation: Issues of Identity in Jamaican Theatre’ seeks to explore how issues of identity, which coalesce to form the concept of national identity, are explored in Jamaica’s theatrical output. It must be noted, however, study does not attempt to define the term Jamaican theatre. The study explores issues of gender, language, performance and ...

This study is about the leadership provided by Rastafari. This leadership is explored through a focus on Rastafari Elder Mortimo Planno, a man who describes himself as a rebel or a social outcast in relation to the wider society, indeed the Earth Most Strangest Man, who exercises leadership over some of the most marginalised members ...

My research involved the examination of three neo-traditional rituals choreographed over a thirty year period, by Rex Nettleford, for the concert stage. Nettleford’s philosophical intent is contextualized in examining these works, as he maintains the integrity of the ritual. By using thick descriptions of these choreographic works, Pocomania (1963), Kumina (1971) and Gerrehbenta (1983), Nettleford’s ...

In April 2005 the Coalition of Corporate Sponsors banned Jamaican deejays Beenie Man and Bounty Killer from events they supported, after the two cursed while criticising homosexuals during a live free-to-air televised concert. Comprising Cable and Wireless, Digicel, Courts, Red Stripe, Supreme Ventures, Jamaica Tourist Board and J Wray and Nephew, the coalition refused to support ...

This research paper seeks to interrogate Peter Tosh’s cultural legacy and intends to add to limited scholarship on this artist, his words, songs, and musical contributions. The central research method was critical discourse analysis of material from conferences, newspaper articles, journal articles, song lyrics, film, video and books. Tosh’s work offers important critiques of postcolonial ...

For more than three centuries Eurocentrism has been the dominant ethos in the evolution of Jamaican contemporary dance. However, since political independence in 1962 there has been significant research into African retentions in the island. This dissertation attempts to provide valid bases for a dance training process and procedure, which I have called L’Antech, that can ...

Dress as material culture allows the body to act as a platform upon which culture is performed both individually and collectively. Dress is the canvas upon which its wearer tells his/her story. Dance-hall dress is no exception. Dress stories told by dance-hall participants have the potential to provide narratives that explain the process involved in ...

Caribbean women in Antigua and Barbuda, The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica, have made significant progress in assuming leadership and decision-making positions in their respective foreign services. This study examines their progress and seeks to identify enabling and inhibiting factors that have influenced these trends. The analysis is based on primary and secondary ...

Calypso is a song genre and cultural art form which was brought to Antigua aby the Africans who were enslaved and brought to work there.   The contention of this thesis is that there is a discernible continuity between calypso as a cultural art form and the prophetic and apocalyptic traditions of the Bible. Calypso also fulfils ...

This study examines how the black male body is imagined in the art of Jamaica around Independence. Its case study is the photography of Archie Lindo, who was also a poet, playwright and radio broadcaster. While Lindo’s photography captured various aspects of Jamaican life, he also produced black male nudes with homo-erotic overtones, most of which ...

This dissertation examines football in Jamaica viewed through the bi- focal cultural lens of play and sport; looking at the evolution of recreational play to the level of work/business/industry (Hargreaves 1986), as well as the historical and social dimensions of the game and its impact on individuals, clubs, schools, communities, businesses and by extension- the ...

This dissertation examines the Management Studies Programme at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona in order to analyse its cultural content and evaluate whether some courses are adequately preparing students for the contemporary world of work. The methodologies used involved: (i) a survey of the students in order to gather their perceptions of ...

This study is concerned with the development of the peoples of the Caribbean. It accepts Walter Rodney’s elaboration in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa on the role of capitalism, both mercantile and modern, in the economic disenfranchisement of African peoples on the continent and in the diaspora. It considers the continued categorisation of Caribbean nations as ...

Rastafari has had a long tradition of using music to communicate messages of peace, love, unity, wellness, social justice and African consciousness. A traditional Rastafari is usually defined by these characteristics within a socio-religious context. However, Rastafari artistes’ involvement in Dancehall music and culture has obscured the sacred and socio-religious identity of Rastafari. This has ...

The study characterizes the women who perform soca as jamettes because the messages in their lyrics, stage performances, and personal brands constantly negotiate female autonomy. The thesis proposes that Trinidadian female soca artistes through their appropriation of the jamette persona are constructing a discourse on sexuality and empowerment that challenge the traditional patriarchal notions on female ...

In 1979, some 50 years into its development along conventional rules set by Western standards in the fine arts, the Jamaican art movement saw the formal inclusion of a group of artists known as the intuitives, who practiced an art form generally associated with naïve art. The fairly unique construct combining two opposing art forms ...

This paper’s objective is to contribute to the field of Cultural Studies, more specifically, Caribbean Cultural Studies. This study addresses the concern about the culture of violence in Jamaican dancehall music that has been critiqued on its promotion of gun violence, gang culture, and badmanism as an expression of hegemonic masculinity. The paper explores a ...

One of the strongest tools in recognizing an individual is their voice. The voice is “the sound made by passing air out through the larynx and tensing the vocal cords.” (Corsini1059). The voice in the human being is used as a way of communication and the transmitting of thoughts. It can convey our emotions, our ...