Category Archives: News

When I was reading Chapter 1, I was first interested in the use of Jack’s Hill as a microcosm of the greater issues of violence and a way to lead into the discussion of the larger history of Jamacia and … Continue reading →

I thought that this week’s reading was a bit more on the difficult side. While I could understand most of the concepts being discussed, I struggled with some of the language and terms used. There were several topics from the … Continue reading →

Thomas’ utilization of reparations as a framework for research serves to further dismantle the persistent manifestations of biological determinism. It’s clear that her ethnographic work aims to dispel the belief that Jamaican culture is the core reason for these postcolonial … Continue reading →

The first thing I thought about when the author mentions the extremely high rates of violence and poor economy of the Caribbean region is how that region was the first to be colonized by Columbus. When the author then established … Continue reading →

I found the selections from Deborah Thomas’s work, Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica, incredibly thought provoking. I like how she starts out with a broad call to reframe anthropology’s role in defining and describing “culture.” When she calls … Continue reading →

Upon reading from Thomas’s book, I was fascinated by her view of the central role that history continues to play in our daily lives and our study of the world around us. Thomas consistently references colonialism and encourages her audience … Continue reading →

When reading Exceptional Violence, especially alongside the Murchison reading, I couldn’t help but break up my analyses into two distinct parts: the book’s content/main research and the formation/structure of the presentation of her argument. From the content perspective, I found … Continue reading →

One of Deborah Thomas’s central arguments is that “violence generally is not a cultural phenomenon but an effect of class formation, a process that is immanently racialized and gendered.” While I partly agree with this claim, since the attribution of … Continue reading →

My first impression of Exceptional Violence is that the subject is not what I expected in ethnographies. How can you study violence but be ethical at the same time? That’s the first question that came up to me. However, while … Continue reading →

The first portion of Thomas’ novel was a dive deeper into anthropologists’ traditional notions of what social and economic factors contribute to both the presence and persistence of violence in a community or culture. Her definition of the central concept … Continue reading →

I particularly thought it was interesting how Thomas acknowledges an anthropologist’s role in studying culture, but also clarifies that culture is a difficult concept to understand in the complex “institution of the academy and the politics of knowledge production” (4). … Continue reading →

Thomas’s ethnography on Jamaica’s violence works well as an example of an ethnography. Thomas is well-immersed in the community, and she does a fascinating job explaining the landscape (for example “up the road” and “down the road”) while still using … Continue reading →

It was a cool afternoon, I walked into Kissam and was met with the smell of dining hall, not really good or bad but definitely food. There was music playing pretty loud and I was first greeted by the sights … Continue reading →

The encounter that I had was when I went to Popeyes and bought me some food for me and my sister. Pulling up the Popeyes with is on Jefferson Street that I frequently go to is always packed. It is … Continue reading →

Field Notes Location The chosen field site where the food was purchased was at Grins cafe on Vanderbilt campus. Situated in between Branscomb residence hall, Memorial Gymnasium, and the first portion of greek row, Grins sits on an extremely accessible … Continue reading →

I went to get breakfast and coffee from Suize’s Cafe at Central Library last week. Suzie’s is located at a fairly easily accessible location on campus that is on main campus(where sophomores and upperclassmen who live on campus live) and … Continue reading →