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Entrepreneurial Selves
Neoliberal Respectability and the Making of a Caribbean Middle Class
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2014
About this book
Entrepreneurial Selves is an ethnography of neoliberalism. Bridging political economy and affect studies, Carla Freeman turns a spotlight on the entrepreneur, a figure saluted across the globe as the very embodiment of neoliberalism. Steeped in more than a decade of ethnography on the emergent entrepreneurial middle class of Barbados, she finds dramatic reworkings of selfhood, intimacy, labor, and life amid the rumbling effects of political-economic restructuring. She shows us that the déjà vu of neoliberalism, the global hailing of entrepreneurial flexibility and its concomitant project of self-making, can only be grasped through the thickness of cultural specificity where its costs and pleasures are unevenly felt. Freeman theorizes postcolonial neoliberalism by reimagining the Caribbean cultural model of 'reputation-respectability.' This remarkable book will allow readers to see how the material social practices formerly associated with resistance to capitalism (reputation) are being mobilized in ways that sustain neoliberal precepts and, in so doing, re-map class, race, and gender through a new emotional economy.
Author / Editor information
Carla Freeman is Winship Distinguished Research Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and associated faculty in Anthropology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies, at Emory University. She is the author of High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work, and Pink Collar Identities in the Caribbean, also published by Duke University Press, and a coeditor of Global Middle Classes: Ethnographic Particularities, Theoretical Convergences.
Reviews
"Entrepreneurial Selves is an important addition to a Caribbean studies perspective on neoliberalism and affect."
-- Sarah E. Vaughn Hispanic American Historical Review
“Carla Freeman’s book makes a unique contribution to current debates on the issue of neoliberalism in its linking of economic with social and cultural impacts. It also makes a substantial contribution to the literature on Caribbean society by revealing the paradigm shift in the socio-economic and cultural landscape of Caribbean societies today. … With its fascinating and compelling case studies, its scope – linking economy with culture, and historic contexts – and story-telling style, it is an easy and enjoyable read. This book should be read not only by development scholars, practitioners and activists and policy makers, but especially by those interested in learning more about Caribbean society today.”
-- Peggy Antrobus Gender and Development
"Entrepreneurial Selves provides a historically nuanced, theoretically sophisticated and empirically detailed account of the emergence of neoliberalism and the rise of the entrepreneurial middle class in Barbados over the past ten to fifteen years. Freeman’s anthropological approach to the study of entrepreneurship is refreshing and innovative (including her self-reflexive ruminations), and vividly demonstrates the importance of moving beyond the familiar economic frameworks into the realm of identity practices and the construction of entrepreneurial subjects along the lines of gender, class and race."
-- Emiel Martens European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
"Entrepreneurial Selves is Carla Freeman’s rich and theoretically sophisticated account of ‘middle-class entrepreneurs’ in Barbados.... Although this is a very Caribbean story, Entrepreneurial Selves will appeal to wide audiences because of the diverse applicability of its findings: that the successful reproduction of neoliberal capitalism requires it be made culturally ‘local’ in every context where it takes root, and that through ethnography we can examine these processes in the subtle detail they deserve."
-- Rebecca Prentice Journal of Latin American Studies
"Freeman’s book provides an ethnographically thick and theoretically elaborated contribution, not only to Caribbean anthropology but also, more broadly, to our understanding of the profound affective dimension of work and life at stake in the expansion of entrepreneurship across every sphere of everyday life."
-- Guillaume Dumont Social Anthropology
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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CONTENTS
vii -
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Acknowledgments
ix -
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Entrepreneurial Selves: An Introduction
1 -
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CHAPTER ONE. Barbadian Neoliberalism and the Rise of a New Middle- Class Entrepreneurialism
17 -
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CHAPTER TWO. Entrepreneurial Affects: “Partnership” Marriage and the New Intimacy
57 -
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CHAPTER THREE. The Upward Mobility of Matrifocality
97 -
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CHAPTER FOUR. Neoliberal Work and Life
131 -
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CHAPTER FIVE. The Therapeutic Ethic and the Spirit of Neoliberalism
169 -
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Conclusion
207 -
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Notes
217 -
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References
235 -
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Index
251
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 28, 2020
eBook ISBN:
9780822376002
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780822376002
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
