Demeaned but empowered : the social power of the urban poor in Jamaica / Obika Gray.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 407-411) and index.

Rethinking power : political clientelism and political subordination in Jamaica -- A fateful alliance -- Fulcrums of power in the ghetto -- Exile, space, moral culture and social identity in the ghetto -- Badness-honour and the invigorated authority of the urban poor -- A fettered freedom : warfare and solidarity in the ghetto -- Crime, politics and moral culture -- The struggle for benefits -- Uncaptured rebels -- Criminal self-organization and cultural extremism -- The cultural contradictions of power : badness-honour and liberal democracy -- Epilogue: The ordeal of social reconstruction in Jamaica.

Print version record.

Gray's central thesis asserts that the Jamaican state is a form of predatory state that incorporates contradictory social forces into an arrangement that is hierarchical, often brutal and ultimately debilitating to democracy. He introduces a series of constructs to support this argument, but the more interesting and novel theses are to be found in his vivid description of the social forces that resist the predatory state and how they have carved out a modicum of autonomy based on what he describes as an elaborate value system of "badness/honour."

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