Deborah A. Thomas is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.

“Modern Blackness is an important book. It is well written, it puts forth a creative theoretical apparatus, and it displays Deborah A. Thomas’s keen ethnographic eye. It is on a topic of extreme importance to the discipline of anthropology as well as to African diaspora and Caribbean and Latin American studies, engaging as it does some of the effects of neoliberalism and structural adjustment in today’s world.”-Kevin A. Yelvington, author of Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in a Caribbean Workplace “In its critique of creole respectability, Modern Blackness challenges established views of Jamaican nationalism and the nation-state. Deborah A. Thomas argues that the young and black who live in Kingston have forged social values and transnational links that reflect their disillusion with education and aspirations to the middle class. She confronts the reader with the reality of life among the ‘lower sets’ and provides a provocative agenda for rethinking blackness.”-Diane Austin-Broos, author of Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Orders

• Acknowledgments xiIntroduction: "Out of Many, One (Black) People" 1Part 1: The Global-National 271. The "Problem" of Nationalism in the British West Indies; or, "What We Are and What We Hope to Be" 292. Political Economies of Culture 58Part II: The National-Local 933. Strangers and Friends 954. Institutionalizing (Racialized) Progress 1305. Emancipating the Nation (Again) 158Part III: The Local-Global 1936. Political Economies of Modernity 1957. Modern Blackness; or, Theoretical "Tripping" on Black Vernacular Cultures 230Conclusion: The Remix 263Epilogue 271Notes 279Bibliography 311Index 341

Deborah A. Thomas is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.

“Modern Blackness is an important book. It is well written, it puts forth a creative theoretical apparatus, and it displays Deborah A. Thomas’s keen ethnographic eye. It is on a topic of extreme importance to the discipline of anthropology as well as to African diaspora and Caribbean and Latin American studies, engaging as it does some of the effects of neoliberalism and structural adjustment in today’s world.”-Kevin A. Yelvington, author of Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in a Caribbean Workplace “In its critique of creole respectability, Modern Blackness challenges established views of Jamaican nationalism and the nation-state. Deborah A. Thomas argues that the young and black who live in Kingston have forged social values and transnational links that reflect their disillusion with education and aspirations to the middle class. She confronts the reader with the reality of life among the ‘lower sets’ and provides a provocative agenda for rethinking blackness.”-Diane Austin-Broos, author of Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Orders

• Acknowledgments xiIntroduction: "Out of Many, One (Black) People" 1Part 1: The Global-National 271. The "Problem" of Nationalism in the British West Indies; or, "What We Are and What We Hope to Be" 292. Political Economies of Culture 58Part II: The National-Local 933. Strangers and Friends 954. Institutionalizing (Racialized) Progress 1305. Emancipating the Nation (Again) 158Part III: The Local-Global 1936. Political Economies of Modernity 1957. Modern Blackness; or, Theoretical "Tripping" on Black Vernacular Cultures 230Conclusion: The Remix 263Epilogue 271Notes 279Bibliography 311Index 341

Deborah A. Thomas is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.

“Modern Blackness is an important book. It is well written, it puts forth a creative theoretical apparatus, and it displays Deborah A. Thomas’s keen ethnographic eye. It is on a topic of extreme importance to the discipline of anthropology as well as to African diaspora and Caribbean and Latin American studies, engaging as it does some of the effects of neoliberalism and structural adjustment in today’s world.”-Kevin A. Yelvington, author of Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in a Caribbean Workplace “In its critique of creole respectability, Modern Blackness challenges established views of Jamaican nationalism and the nation-state. Deborah A. Thomas argues that the young and black who live in Kingston have forged social values and transnational links that reflect their disillusion with education and aspirations to the middle class. She confronts the reader with the reality of life among the ‘lower sets’ and provides a provocative agenda for rethinking blackness.”-Diane Austin-Broos, author of Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Orders

• Acknowledgments xiIntroduction: "Out of Many, One (Black) People" 1Part 1: The Global-National 271. The "Problem" of Nationalism in the British West Indies; or, "What We Are and What We Hope to Be" 292. Political Economies of Culture 58Part II: The National-Local 933. Strangers and Friends 954. Institutionalizing (Racialized) Progress 1305. Emancipating the Nation (Again) 158Part III: The Local-Global 1936. Political Economies of Modernity 1957. Modern Blackness; or, Theoretical "Tripping" on Black Vernacular Cultures 230Conclusion: The Remix 263Epilogue 271Notes 279Bibliography 311Index 341