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civilizing agents and civil society as being a constantly positive force. By also focusing on the shortcomings of the Jamaican state, the book offers important insights into the performance of the state and the character of civil society; it canvasses an understanding of the real nature of the relationship between these two entities. By focusing on both civil and uncivil actors and legal and extralegal practices, processes, and dimensions, the book also questions who should (or should not) be represented in “civil” society and how the voices of marginalized people are to be heard. In the latter regard, the book explores the role of social inequality, media coverage, ingrained feelings of (social) injustice among the citizenry, and variable state responses and performances as contributory factors to the existing mood of citizen politics in Jamaica.
A Note on Method
An intellectual inquiry into the character of Jamaican popular protest is of necessity an open-ended enterprise and intrinsically qualitative. Qualitative research instruments are most suited to this study because at its core it is an investigation of people’s attitudes, values, opinions, and beliefs as well as the feelings they hold towards the state, their fellow citizens, and their community. It is also, significantly, an investigation of the behavioral norms and lived experiences that reflect those innate values. Qualitative research uses multiple research methods (observation and participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, documents, and the researcher’s impressions and reactions) that are interactive and humanistic, increasingly involving active participation by the study’s participants (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003, p. 12; Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p. 11).
I relied heavily on a wide variety of qualitative instruments—focus groups, participant observation, and in-depth interviewing for gathering primary data. Secondary data were also collected from a gamut of sources—transcripts of national broadcasts by political officials, political statements, police statistics and incident reports, books, articles, taped radio and television interviews, discussion programs, and newspaper articles as well as radio and television reports and commentaries.