Demeaned but Empowered - by Obika Gray (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Obika Gray asserts that state power in Jamaica is predatory in its reach, incorporating contradictory social forces in an arrangement that is hierarchical, often brutal and ultimately debilitating to democracy. In this groundbreaking study, 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".

Review Quotes

"This is certainly among the best written of the recent manuscripts that I have read in Caribbean studies or, indeed, in any discipline. Gray is a wordsmith and constructs his evidence and arguments with a style and finesse not often seen in the social sciences. This makes it eminently accessible to a wider field of readers than the usual . . . political science text."