| Chapter 1: | Jamaican Governance and Citizen Politics in Context |
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the system and ultimately determine their behavior towards the system. It also requires a critical look at the systems and mechanisms of state governance that organize and structure the social space in which citizens operate. Here, I take into account the extent to which the quality of governance impacts or directs the kinds of behavioral norms that become manifest in political protests. The political rebellion in which Jamaican citizens participate is therefore not alienated from the role of the state and the quality of its political performance. Similarly, it is not estranged from the political culture and values that have evolved over a period of time or from the historical circumstances which attend to such development (see Ritzer, 1996, p. 20). Despite the Caribbean’s long-standing historical relationship with political rebellion, empirical interest in the subject remains stunted in Jamaica or, at the very least, limited to a reinvestigation of protest within the context of the historical past. Very little scholarly attention is thus paid to the character and personality of contemporary political protest and its impact on the nature of citizen politics and the quality of the emergent civil society. It is with this aspect that I am preoccupied in this book.
Popular protest is conceptualized in this book as a political strategy or technique of political participation at the citizen level and hence construed as a subset or a manifestation of civil society. The term is often used to encompass a wide range of political dissent—symbolic and material. For the purposes of this book, I use it to refer mainly to direct street-level action—marches, blockades (roadblocks), burning debris on roadways, stone throwing, placard picketing, vandalism, gun battles, looting, and boisterous displays (issuing threats, screaming, shouting, and disrobing), as well as rioting. Though the scope of the book conceptually precludes such forms of popular protest as industrial action (strikes and go-slow, or doing as little work as possible), I account for the caller-complaint mechanism that is embodied in call-in radio shows because of its significance within contemporary protest politics in Jamaica. In terms of the time frame, it is pertinent to note that the main focus is on the contemporary manifestations of protest in Jamaica. By contemporary, I mean the period stretching from the latter half of the 20th century to