Legacies of indenture: identity and belonging in post-colonial Jamaica

Abstract

This article examines narratives of identity and belonging among descendants of white German indentured labourers in Jamaica and the local community in which they live. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews the research shows the ways in which members of the community in the village of Seaford Town make sense of and articulate elements of their German cultural heritage. This paper argues that while ideas about whiteness suffuse many of the identity-narratives, whiteness can variously be muted or amplified as a marker of identity. Similarly, notions of German-ness are not consistently articulated as embodied cultural forms. Here, culture is not conceptualized as static or embodied, but can be claimed and shared. In sum, the paper speaks to the ways in which whiteness read through a historical lens becomes remade in a contemporary context.