Cultural DNA: Gender at the Root of Everyday Life in Rural Jamaica

Cultural DNA builds on developments within indigenous Caribbean feminisms and gender studies as well as feminist anthropological currents to explore the nature of the rural Afro-Jamaican gender system, drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork in rural Jamaica. It is a cultural story of gender in rural Jamaica, specifically an ethnography of anthropological knowledge about the gender systems of rural Afro-Jamaicans in the community of Frankfield, Clarendon. It makes significant contributions to Caribbean feminist thought by offering novel ways of conceiving, portraying and reflecting on the significance of the dominant gender system through the use of a unique metaphor that posits a figurative relationship, comparing the role of gender in culture to DNA in biological life. In so doing, it asserts an ongoing, important role for non-native ethnography in the study of Caribbean gender dynamics.