Date of Award
May 2020
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
African American Studies
Advisor(s)
Linda Carty
Keywords
Racialized and Gendered Labels, Respectability, Skettel, Transnational Black Feminism
Subject Categories
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
Through a framework combining historical materialism and transnational Black feminist epistemologies, this study examines how working-class and poor Black women in Kingston, Jamaica negotiate, make meaning, and respond to the label of the Skettel and the tensions that arise in this process. The Skettel is defined as a woman who is perceived as having questionable morals, a characteristic measured against middle-class respectability. Respectability, as it relates to women, privilege a conceptualization that maintains that body language, sexuality, dress codes, and verbal communication should follow European conventions. As such, the Skettel stands as the antithesis of European notions of respectability in general, and respectable womanhood specifically. These ideologies facilitate control and promote the exclusionary politics often prescribed to working-class Black women’s bodies without acknowledging the sites of struggle that these women engage with within a capitalist patriarchal society. Therefore, it is essential to understand the lived experiences of these women as well as deconstruct how labels such as the Skettel are racialized, gendered, and class-defined, influenced by notions of respectability and reproduced through socialization.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Munroe, Chivonne, "Wrapped in Labels: An Examination of Black Women and the Politics of the Body in Kingston, Jamaica" (2020). Theses - ALL. 402.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/402
