Race, Class, and the Politics of Decolonization ─ Jamaica Journals 1961 and 1968

This book consists of two journals kept while the author was carrying out fieldwork in Jamaica – the first in 1961, one year before the colony's independence in 1962, and the second in 1968. Research in Kingston and visits to rural communities are described, before the reader is taken into the 1961 political underworld of black racism and Marxism, where the machinations of the various political groups involved lead up to the Federal Referendum (and rejection of federation). The 1968 journal explains the impact of independence and the intervening elections of 1962 and 1967 on the dissolution the dissident forces of black racism. It also identifies the post-independence roots of Jamaica's two-party politics – the misuse of patronage by politicians, who drip-fed homes and jobs in return for electoral support, and the deployment at election times of violence by gangs allied to the political parties.

Colin Clarke is an Emeritus Professor at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, UK. He is a Caribbeanist and his research interests are in race, ethnicity, and class in urban and rural communities and national contexts. His most recent publications include Decolonizing the Colonial City: Urbanization and Stratification in Kingston, Jamaica (2006) and, with Gillian Clarke, Post-Colonial Trinidad: An Ethnographic Journal (2010).