Yardie Epistemologies: Queer Survival, Respectability, and Political Economy in Contemporary Jamaica
Date of Award
6-26-2026
Date Published
August 2026
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
African American Studies
Advisor(s)
Linda Carty
Keywords
Caribbean Studies;Jamaica;Political Economy;Queer studies;sexual citizenship;Yardie Epitemologies
Subject Categories
African American Studies | Arts and Humanities | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies
Abstract
This thesis examines how queer Jamaicans navigate, survive, and theorize life within a social order structured by colonial legacies, racialized class hierarchy, nationalist masculinity, Christian moral authority, and neoliberal austerity. Drawing on qualitative, narrative-centered research conducted between 2012 and 2014, with consistent return visits in subsequent years, the study employs grounded theory, critical ethnography, and Black feminist political economy to analyze how sexual citizenship is unevenly distributed across lines of color, class, gender expression, and access to resources. Participants include LGBTQ individuals, activists, academics, state actors, and community members whose narratives are treated not as illustrative data but as sites of epistemic production. The findings identify Respectable Sexual Citizenship under Austerity as the core organizing logic of queer belonging in Jamaica. This framework captures how safety and recognition are conditionally afforded to those who can approximate middle-class respectability—through employment, discretion, masculinity, and social capital—while those marked by poverty, gender nonconformity, or “downtown” status remain disproportionately exposed to violence, displacement, and social abandonment. Participants consistently challenge dominant human rights paradigms, particularly the emphasis on legal reform and visibility, demonstrating that these approaches fail to address the material conditions shaping queer life. The study’s central theoretical contribution is the articulation of Yardie Epistemologies: embodied, locally grounded knowledge systems through which queer Jamaicans interpret risk, navigate public and private space, and sustain forms of life under conditions of moral surveillance and economic scarcity. These epistemologies—manifested through practices such as strategic opacity, spatial awareness, and adaptive self- presentation—reframe survival as intellectual labor and position queer Jamaicans as theorists of their own conditions. By centering political economy and narrative as epistemology, this thesis intervenes in Caribbean studies, Black feminist theory, and Queer of Color Critique. It challenges universalizing frameworks of queer liberation and calls for approaches that address material inequality alongside legal and cultural change. Ultimately, the project repositions Jamaican queer life as a site of theoretical innovation, grounded in lived experience and resistant to both erasure and simplification.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
hylton, nicole, "Yardie Epistemologies: Queer Survival, Respectability, and Political Economy in Contemporary Jamaica" (2026). Theses - ALL. 1051.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/1051
