History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)

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Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)
Mike Featherstone
Manufacturer: Sage Publications Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Globalization and Culture

ASIN: 0803976062
Release Date: 1996-08-22

Book Description

"This is a worthwhile discussion of postmodernity and modernity that overlaps theoretically with Chris Rojek's Decentring Leisure. Excellent Bibliography and Index." --Choice What is the relationship between culture and postmodernism? How has globalization influenced our understanding of culture? This shrewd book, written by one of the most accomplished and authoritative writers in the field, is a major contribution to rethinking culture. Mike Featherstone examines how culture is produced, reproduced, challenged, and transformed under current social conditions. Undoing Culture provides a guide to the dramatic changes that everyday life is currently witnessing and also suggests ways of analyzing these changes in theoretically meaningful ways. It explores the meaning of ordered life, the heroic life, revolutionary myth, symbolic power, and forms of consumer culture. What emerges is a highly original and significant attempt to ground culture in the context of globalization and postmodernism. Written with the customary clarity and judicious style that readers have come to expect from this author, Undoing Culture will be essential reading for students in the sociology of culture and cultural studies.

Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity

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Global/local poetics reign splendidly in this collection...
Can i review your indice?

Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity

Manufacturer: University of Minnesota Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Civics | Government | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0816629536

Customer Reviews:

Global/local poetics reign splendidly in this collection..........2003-02-08

Although this book based on a set of talks at SUNY Binghampton in 1989 has been hard to get (except in library collections), its impact has been instant and abiding: the collection is still being used by cultural critics and social science scholars from England to Australia and Taiwan, as I found out during my visit there as National Science fellow in 1995 where it was being used to help map cosmopolitan-yet- local strategies of "Asian/Pacific Cultural Studies."

Anthony King's collection, with a stunning and much-cited essay on transnational and ethnic complications of cultural identity in England by Stuart Hall called "The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity," on the one hand, and rather more homogenizing and predictable mappings of the capitalist culture of globalization by major sociologists like Immanuel Wallerstein and Rowland Robertson on the other, opens up the problematics of mapping global and local interactions, flows, contradictions, and synergies. King's own solid scholarship inquiring into the colonial infrastructures of transnationalizing global cities gave him a solid base on which to construct such cultural and ideological dialogues across disciplines and areas, and the collection remains a site where critical dialogue and trans-disciplinary interaction did take place.

In sum, the collection shows how some emerging new sensibility of "global paradox" complicates the globsl/local power of the local, sub-national, ethnic, and tribal to alter the seamless workings of global domination and transnational restructuration. Noteworthy in the collection, as well, are powerful critiques of reigning globalization models by Ulf Hannerz ("Scenarios for Peripheral Cultures") and an internal critique of the whole collection by Barbara Abou-El-Haj, who shrewdly remarks of such models (as theorized by the keynote speakers in the collection, Hall and Wallerstein), "Our ambition to do equal justice to the global and local is limited at the outset by our failures to generate a comparative language beyond the set of tiny binaries which reproduce the global regime in the very attempt to eviscerate it: center/periphery, core/periphery, western/non-western, developed/developing, etc."

This trans-disciplinary way of theorizing and representing global/local interactions called for in the collection does comprise what Abou-El-Haj notes is "a qualitative step forward." Subsequent collections of national/transnational interaction like Donald Pease and Amy Kaplan, eds., Culture of United States Imperialism (Duke University Press, 1993) and Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, eds., Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices (Minnesota UP, 1994) have been working out the far-reaching implications of these new global/local discourses and frames.

Can i review your indice?.......1999-06-27

My interest is for the impact of globalizacion in México and LA

Blackness Without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil

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challenges previous epistemologies
Attention grabbing title ..

Blackness Without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil
Livio Sansone
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0312293755

Book Description

Drawing on 15 years of research in Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Suriname, and the Netherlands, Livio Sansone explores the very different ways that race and ethnicity are constructed in Brazil and the rest of Latin America. He compares Latin American conceptions of race to US and European notions of race that are defined by clearly identifiable black-white ethnicities. Sansone argues that understanding more complex, ambiguous notions of culture and identity will expand international discourse on race and move it away from American definitions unable to describe racial difference. He also explores the effects of globalization on constructions of race.

Customer Reviews:

challenges previous epistemologies.......2007-03-18

Sansone's book should resonate with students and academics interested in identity studies in general, but especially identity studies in Brazil and in a transnational/diasporan frame. However, the underlying significance of the work is in its historiographical contributions, so readers might not catch any "breakthrough in intellectual thinking and debate on the matter" without having read 15-20 other works on race in Brazil. Much of the studies on Afro-Brazilian identity have been done by North American scholars who brought with them their own ideas of what "blackness" should mean. Sansone is among the first to suggest that such methodologies and assumptions are wrong and have skewed those earlier studies, and then he goes on demonstrating how/why throughout the book.

Attention grabbing title .........2007-01-18

but I didn't get much out of this book. It seems to stray too often from the subject title. Also the book seems to be lacking in anything that might be considered a breakthrough in intellectual thinking and debate on the matter. It also seems a bit jumbled. For general reading on the subject I am not sure if I would recommend it, however if you are a researcher of academic type looking for information that you can quote you may just gleen something useful out of it.

An Introduction to Women's Studies: Gender in a Transnational World

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Intro to Women's Studies

An Introduction to Women's Studies: Gender in a Transnational World
Inderpal Grewal , and Caren Kaplan
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 007109380X

Book Description

This anthology for first and second year students introduces them to the history of key ideas in the modern period related to sexual difference, gender, race, class, and sexuality. While most introductory Women's Studies textbooks focus on the United States, even if they add multiculturalism to the discussion, this book looks at the history of important differences between women in diverse locations around the world and continually challenges students to think through the issues that are raised.

This transnational approach to understanding gender brings Women's Studies into an era of globalization and connects women’s issues in the United States to women’s issues elsewhere. The book shows how colonialism and imperialism, as they spread across the world, shaped ideas about gender as much as other modern phenomena. It addresses issues of power and inequalities and focuses on links and connections rather than commonalties. The readings are truly interdisciplinary, drawing upon scholarly work in many disciplines and interdisciplinary fields as well as non-scholarly sources.

Customer Reviews:

Intro to Women's Studies.......2006-01-08

This book was a good introduction to Women's Studies, especially for those who have never taken a class or major in Women's Studies. The format of the book made it easy to understand concepts introduced in the essays. They even have a key terms section, which I found VERY helpful. Some of the essays can be dense, like the one going over intersectionality. Overall, I found this book very pleasant to read.

Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s

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not rock criticism, but an academic study of the girl groups
Interesting Take On Impact of Girl Group Sound of the 1960s

Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s
Jacqueline Warwick
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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Reference | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Globalization | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0415971136

Book Description

Then He Kissed Me, He's A Rebel, Chains, Stop! In the Name of Love all these songs capture the spirit of an era and an image of girlhood in post-World War II America that still reverberates today.While there were over 1500 girl groups recorded in the '60s--including key hitmakers like the Ronettes, the Supremes, and the Shirelles - studies of girl-group music that address race, gender, class, and sexuality have only just begun to appear. Warwick is the first writer to address '60s girl group music from the perspective of its most significant audience--teenage girls--drawing on current research in psychology and sociology to explore the important place of this repertoire in the emotional development of young girls of the baby boom generation. Girl Groups, Girl Culture stands as a landmark study of this important pop music and cultural phenomenon. It promises to be a classic work in American musicology and cultural studies.

Customer Reviews:

not rock criticism, but an academic study of the girl groups.......2007-09-12

An excellent book, provided you realize what it is and what it's not. It is by a college professor and it is published by an academic publisher. It's an academic study. There are lots of footnotes.

So it is not for everyone. It is not INTENDED for everyone.

Warwick argues that the girl groups weren't just disposable pop music. They were a very prominent and important dimension of 1960s feminism. They were also an important element of the civil rights struggle of the time. For musicological analysis the writing is very accessible. I'll never listen to the Crystals in the same way again.

Interesting Take On Impact of Girl Group Sound of the 1960s.......2007-07-11

Jacqueline Warwick has written a thesis-like revisionist take on the girl group sound of the 1960s, focusing on the messages and impact of The Shangri-Las, Chantels, Ronettes, Marvelettes and their ilk. At times relying heavily on earlier tomes, Warwick nevertheless argues convincingly that teenage girls lip-syncing and singing along with these records and adopting different poses were an important aspect of the womens' movement as well as the civil rights explosion. She points out how many young girls worshipped Diana Ross in the mid to late 1960s, an unprecedented stance that I remember well. She also breaks down a number of songs according to song structure, chords and changes, and things get a bit dry right about then for the non-musician. Scholarly and often fun, this is a welcome addition to the girl group herstory shelf.

National Identity And Global Sports Events: Culture, Politics, And Spectacle in the Olympics And the Football World Cup (S U N Y Series on Sport, Culture, and Social Relations)

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National Identity And Global Sports Events: Culture, Politics, And Spectacle in the Olympics And the Football World Cup (S U N Y Series on Sport, Culture, and Social Relations)

Manufacturer: State University of New York Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Olympic Games | Miscellaneous | Sports | Subjects | Books

Sociology of Sports | Miscellaneous | Sports | Subjects | Books

Sports Events | Miscellaneous | Sports | Subjects | Books

Lacrosse | Other Team Sports | Sports | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0791466159

Book Description

Explains why cities dig deep in their pockets to host the Olympics and countries breed teams for success on the world soccer stage.

Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity (Architext Series)

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Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity (Architext Series)
Anthony King
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Reference | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Study & Teaching | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Urban & Land Use Planning | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0415196205

Book Description

The first book to combine global and postcolonial theoretical approaches to the built environment, and to illustrate these with concrete examples, Spaces of Global Cultures argues for a more historical, differentiated and interdisciplinary understanding of globalization: one that places material space and the built environment at the center and calls for innovative concepts to address new contemporary conditions.

Globalization, Communications and Caribbean Identity

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Globalization, Communications and Caribbean Identity

Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Media Studies | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0312127642

Book Description

This volume explores the economic, social, political and cultural implications of the new technologies especially as they relate to the Caribbean area. The editor uses an interdisciplinary approach to reflect the extensive reach of the new technologies into all sectors of the global economy and society.

Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica (Latin America Otherwise)

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Music for a new generation
Redefining Jamaicanness in the Evolving Global Climate
Simply a superb ethnography

Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica (Latin America Otherwise)
Deborah A. Thomas
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0822334194

Book Description

Modern Blackness is a rich ethnographic exploration of Jamaican identity in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first. Analyzing nationalism, popular culture, and political economy in relation to one another, Deborah A. Thomas illuminates an ongoing struggle in Jamaica between the values associated with the postcolonial state and those generated in and through popular culture. Following independence in 1962, cultural and political policies in Jamaica were geared toward the development of a multiracial creole nationalism reflected in the country’s motto: âOut of many, one people.â As Thomas shows, by the late 1990s, creole nationalism was superseded by âmodern blacknessââan urban blackness rooted in youth culture and influenced by African American popular culture. Expressions of blackness that had been marginalized in national cultural policy became paramount in contemporary understandings of what it was to be Jamaican.

Thomas combines historical research with fieldwork she conducted in Jamaica between 1993 and 2003. Drawing on her research in a rural hillside community just outside Kingston, she looks at how Jamaicans interpreted and reproduced or transformed on the local level nationalist policies and popular ideologies about progress. With detailed descriptions of daily life in Jamaica set against a backdrop of postcolonial nation-building and neoliberal globalization, Modern Blackness is an important examination of the competing identities that mobilize Jamaicans locally and represent them internationally.

Customer Reviews:

Music for a new generation.......2005-12-01

Forget your troubles and dance!
Forget your sorrows and dance!
Forget your sickness and dance!
Forget your weakness and dance!

Lyrics to Them Belly Full (But We Hungry). (1974) Composed by Legon Cogill and Carlton Barrett.

Bob Marley's music helped define a generation of Jamaican culture through reggae. In Modern Blackness, Deborah Thomas proposes that the reggae "soundtrack" for Jamaica has been succeeded by dancehall, just as cultural identity has evolved to fit a new vision of blackness. She suggests that the "modern blackness of late-twentieth century. . . is urban, migratory, based in youth-oriented popular culture, and influenced by African American popular style" (p. 229). Thomas also asserts that black identity in Jamaica is not post-modern, which suggests a break with the past, rather connected to the development of an identity rooted in the local and historical yet dependent on national and transnational pressures. Thomas explores modern blackness by dissecting these influences on culture in Jamaica. She breaks her analysis into three sections: the global-national, the national-local, and the local-global. This separation allows for a critical analysis of the various influences while displaying both the connections and dissonances.

In order to guide her analysis of modern blackness in Jamaica, Thomas uses two years of ethnographic research conducted between 1993 and 2003. In this book, she brings us to a real community outside Kingston, fictitiously named Mango Mount, as a means of illustrating the concepts of modern blackness on a local community. Using this community as an example of the influence of modern blackness and a source of information provides a tangible illustration of how modern blackness is set in the everyday, yet linked to a national and global community. In addition to information about Mango Mount, Thomas delves into the historical influences on Jamaica prior to independence, as a new state, and within the context of a transnational society. She looks at modern blackness in the context of race issues, gender identity, socioeconomic differences and as an aspect of Jamaican culture. Her research also pulls in national and international institutions and their influences within Jamaica and Mango Mount. This wide scope provides the reader with a comprehensive yet contextualized understanding of cultural influences in Jamaica while illustrating that "culture is both the problem to solve and the recipe to follow" (p. 87).

Thomas begins her book with the global-national. She illustrates how the modern identity and culture are connected to pre-independence institutions, norms, and social hierarchies. Here she connects Jamaican identify to religious doctrines, emancipation literature, and the remnants of colonialism. In providing a historical context for her book, she links "blackness (a racial identity) and Jamaicanness (a national identify)" in order to elucidate the complex origins of the modern blackness (p. 30). In her focus on race and nationality, Thomas explores how concepts of blackness and brownness as well as notions of what it means to be Jamaican have contributed to national and global influences in the creation of modern blackness.

In understanding the national-local, Thomas' discussion of the reemergence of state-supported Emancipation Day celebrations provides insight into community connections to national policies. She pairs sections from the Report on National Symbols and Observations with quotes from Mango Mount community members regarding the renewed state interested in the celebration of Emancipation Day. She notes that "the dominant sense among nationalist elites was that the removal of Emancipation Day as a public holiday had left Jamaican youth without an awareness of their heritage and the steps in Jamaica's evolution toward modern statehood" (p. 162). However, community members generally did not see the Emancipation Day celebration as an educational movement, rather they viewed it as related to political maneuvering, as a distraction from "the government's ability to implement successful economic policies," or as "meaningless and irrelevant" to the average person (p. 168-169). Thomas also shows how the local celebration of Emancipation Day celebrations did not escape contemporary influences; inclusion of traditional kumina dance rhythm into the Emancipation Day play in Mango Mount was replaced by steps to a dancehall beat (p. 172). Thomas' illustration of the contrasting visions regarding the purpose of the reinstatement of Emancipation Day reflects the greater disparity between national and local views of modernity.

As Thomas explores the local-global, she places Mango Mount within the global economy. She illustrates the influences of global institutions and marketing in local choices and looks at how trends at the local level reflect global influences. She notes, the "entrepreneurial zeal with which people in Mango Mount seek to take advantage of migratory possibilities has facilitated their relative success within a global labor market," yet it has contributed to leadership deficits at the local level, problems for those unable to migrate, and "perpetuated an outward outlook whereby local ambitions require foreign realization" (p. 261). Nevertheless, in interviewing people in Mango Mount, Thomas finds that many people feel that "the United States was the place to make a living while Jamaica was the place to make life," illustrating that while economic opportunities necessitate global movement, local lifestyles continue to define aspects of national identity (p. 224). She also identifies the influences of the global on local music choices (such as dancehall rather than drumming) and culture. For example, she notes that dancehall music is a function of global influences tempered by Jamaican underclass definitions. Thomas notes, "Dancehall is not merely a response to hegemonic power but marks the changing aesthetic and political space that both contests and (re)produces broader relations of power" (p. 243).

Thomas provides a readable, enjoyable, yet critical look at modernity in Jamaica that bridges the past to connect to the future. She demonstrates that the global society has complex influences on blackness that are intertwined within Jamaica's historical context and national identity. Thus, Bob Marley's command, "You're gonna dance to Jah music" continues to push people to dance, even as the background music of modern blackness has changed from reggae to dancehall.

Redefining Jamaicanness in the Evolving Global Climate.......2005-11-30

"Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, gear on up, it's bobsled time!" This quote from the all-too forgettable movie Cool Runnings about a team of Jamaicans that made it to the Olympics accentuates how music becomes a part of the transnational Jamaican identity through global popular culture. An association to identity, such as music, reflects what Deborah Thomas refers to as "modern blackness," which has superceded the postcolonial identity of a creole nation with the motto "Out of many, one people." By ethnographically exploring Jamaican nationalism from the end of the 19th century to the present, Thomas sorts out the complex effects of colonialism and globalization on inequalities of race, class, and gender in her inspiring work Modern Blackness. Cultural practices, such as reggae, which were developed by lower class Jamaicans are unrecognized as part of the broader national identity.
Deborah Thomas structure's the text in an interesting way by outlining the relationships between the global-national, national-local, and local-global. By contextualizing the evolution of Jamaican identity, Thomas' argument flows from historical perspective during the "Crown Colony rule" to a contemporary understanding that effectively "clarifies the links between global processes, nationalist visions, and local practices (p. 31, then 19)." The capstone of her fieldwork is in Mango Mount where she uncovers the culture being shaped under neoliberal policies that continue to economically restrain the community.
The diasporal feeling of nationalism before Jamaica's independence from Britain in 1962 is based on the ongoing struggle of asserting an identity of the "respectable state." The early works by black Jamaicans such as Jamaican's Jubilee highlight their attempt to prove advancements in the black community, both morally and culturally. Asserting various aspects of Jamaicanness was an effort to unite one people with values held by the middle-class. Thomas posits, "As black intellectuals, the Jubilee writers insisted that they articulated important mass concerns on the basis of their shared blackness, but they distanced themselves from lower-class blacks and African-derived cultural expressions (pg. 48)." Jamaican pride was racially characterized through forms of artistic expression and reflections of Creole multiracialism. The author adds that this identity "more closely resembled classical European nationalism (which) was founded on a concept of common history and culture rather than race and, as in Europe, obscured the conflation of class with race (pg. 55)." By embracing Jamaican heritage, the country demarcated themselves from historical representations of Africanness, as well as the practices of the poorer urban class. This reflected the attitudes of many previously enslaved individuals coming from rural areas with "values" and "respectable" culture. Thomas argues that references to "values" emulate the history of colonialism and reinvent the inequalities of power and class.
The national-local relationship is displayed by the author through the cultural politics of a tiny village with the fictitious name Mango Mount, just outside of Kingston. Throughout the end of the twentieth century, the leadership of the national government followed global economic policies through democracy and capitalism; therefore disconnecting themselves from the indigenous localities, one of which is Mango Mount. Thomas explains, "It has remained difficult for many Jamaicans to sustain the imagination of a community whose primary political, economic, and sociocultural institutions have been developed by black lower-class Jamaicans (pg. 91)." In her work in Mango Mount, the author demonstrates the practices that distinguish lower-class and local youth culture as forthcoming in flamboyant ways, especially during celebrations in the town square. The square becomes a noisy dancehall that is routinely scrutinized by middle-class residences. Thomas describes her experience and the comments of a participant in the following way: "Rhythm and blues and reggae gave way to hardcore dancehall toward the wee hours of the morning...and (unfortunately) were never as good as in other communities because the "rich people" would always call the police to `lock down the music' because `dem nuh like fi see wi do wha we a do' (pg. 114)." Although I do not understand exactly what this Jamaican was trying to express, it is valid to see how the shift to youthful urban blackness has been influenced by American popular culture and has redefined what it means to be "very, very, Jamaican." The ordinary lower class is challenging the previously held Afro-Jamaican identities of their postemancipation history. Thomas justifies these contradicting attitudes by stating, "Their worlds were increasingly urban and transnational and because they had apprehended the fundamental disjuncture between political and economic development strategies and cultural development initiatives they had to (look back, take pride, but move forward) (pg. 190)." Moving forward has caused a transition of political hegemony and has been characterized by activism and agency at the local level.
The racialized version of nationalism, which excluded urban culture, is now personified as contemporary `modern blackness'. Distinctions are being made between definitions of black and brown, as well as what constitutes Africanness and Blackness. Thomas adds, "If consciousness of an African heritage operated primarily on a symbolic level, even within popular expressive culture, racial consciousness was continually through day to day experiences of color prejudice and discrimination, both in Jamaica and abroad (pg. 183)." The relationship between local and international now bypasses state efforts that hold identities of British imperialism and further define Jamaicanness in terms of globalization and popular style. Thomas focuses on the influences of America on Jamaican culture, as well as Jamaica's ability to influence American culture. The irony of this "two-way process" is the size of Jamaica as a country and their power to impose Jamaicanness globally. The author states, "The frequency of these invocations also suggests a need to carve out spaces in which Jamaicans feel, and indeed have, power and recognition within a global public sphere (pg. 250)." Many Jamaican immigrants have spread this power and presented future possibilities for `moving ahead.'
Deborah Thomas' work is important in understanding the lasting effects of colonial rule, as well as the changing socio-political climates of globalization. What is clear is that Jamaicanness is not American, European, African, black, white, or brown. It is its own evolving identity that has become shaped by all these identities within the global environment. Finally, Modern Blackness presents possibilities for change and improvement where dreams become realized in the context of Jamaica's future.

Simply a superb ethnography.......2005-01-27

Deborah A. Thomas is a cartographer of culture who maps the topography of Jamaican culture through time, across class, between urban and rural locales, and over a variety political landscapes. What emerges from her work is a detailed analysis of the various contours of culture that follow the shifting fault lines of Jamaica's political economy. Deborah Thomas has written a beautiful ethnography. Central to her analysis are several questions: what does it mean to be Jamaican? what role does culture play for a black and brown nation? and, what role does a black and brown nation play in shaping Jamaica's culture?

Dr. Thomas frames her important study by documenting the way a multi-racial creole culture was significantly eclipsed, during the late 1990s, by a culture of blackness forged in modernity but produced and re-produced in decidedly post-modern ways. Aligning this shift with shifts in the global economy, she 'reads' these changes through a variety of performances. Some of the performances she explores explicitly claim to represent Jamaica's national culture, but other performances she describes explicitly claim to counter notions of respectability to represent a sort of in-your-face booty grinding blackness, which ends up emerging as the cultural practices of the nation's people.

Thomas brilliantly illustrates how culture, nation, and the ideology of progress are implicated in an understanding of what blackness and Jamaican identity actually mean in various contexts. As she notes, "context is everything" and she takes the reader inside a variety of institutions that seek to define and redefine both race and culture in turn-of-the-century Jamaica. This approach is refreshing. She not only identifies structural entities that dictates cultural policy in Jamaica, but she identifies the agents within those structures, actually putting a name to both the powerful and the powerless, who constantly jostle over who gets to claim and name what constitutes Jamaican culture. From the organized and powerful National Dance Theater Company to the unorganized and entertaining "roots" theater performances, she allows the reader to experience the way the participants (dancers/actors and audience) perform, respond, and contest ideologies of race, nation, and progress. She does not stop there, however, weddings and dance hall session, movies and newspaper clippings are each scrutinized in an effort to buttress her argument that the multi-racial creole nationalism is waning as a modern blackness tied to the global economy waxes and the meaning of what it means to be Jamaican hangs in the balance.

Deborah Thomas has written a bold, refreshing, and powerful ethnography that grapples with some of the most sticky theoretical issues in contemporary theory today -- blackness, globalization, modernity, and the idea progress.

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