Higglers in Kingston : women's informal work in Jamaica

Making a living in the Caribbean requires resourcefulness and even a willingness to circumvent the law.

Women of colour in Jamaica encounter bureaucratic mazes, neighbourhood territoriality, and ingrained racial and cultural prejudices.

For them, it requires nothing less than a herculean effort to realise their entrepreneurial dreams. In Higglers in Kingston, Winnifred Brown-Glaude puts the reader on the ground in frenetic urban Kingston, the capital and largest city in Jamaica.

She explores the lives of informal market labourers, called ""higglers,"" across the city as they navigate a corrupt and inaccessible ""official"" Jamaican economy.

But rather than focus merely on the present-day situation, she contextualises how Jamaica arrived at this point, delving deep into the island's history as a former colony, a home to slaves and masters alike, and an eventual nation of competing and conflicted racial sectors. Higglers in Kingston weaves together contemporary ethnography, economic history, and sociology of race to address a broad audience of readers on a crucial economic and cultural centre.