169 p., Examines entanglements of race, place, gender, and class in Puerto Rican reggaetón. Based on ethnographic and archival research in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and in New York, New York, I argue that Puerto Rican youth engage with an African diasporic space via their participation in the popular music reggaetón. By African diasporic space, the author refers to the process by which local groups incorporate diasporic resources such as cultural practices or icons from other sites in the African diaspora into new expressions of blackness that respond to their localized experiences of racial exclusion. Participation in African diasporic space not only facilitates cultural exchange across different African diasporic sites, but it also exposes local communities in these sites to new understandings and expressions of blackness from other places. As one manifestation of these processes in Puerto Rico, reggaetón refutes the hegemonic construction of Puerto Rican national identity as a "racial democracy."
306 p., Investigates the shifts in gender constructions currently taking place in Jamaica, a peripheral nation-state, during a period which is characterized by hegemonic dissolution in the world-system. These shifts are defined by class- and gender-based conflicts over the norms, values and aesthetics associated with the traditional bourgeois classes. The fulcrum for investigation is Jamaica's Dancehall culture, which currently exhibits changes in the field of masculinity, in which clashes over the body occur constantly. These conflicts center around dress, gendered dancing styles and adornment.
