| Dr. Carla Freeman
Anthropology, Women’s Studies
Associated Faculty in Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Senior Fellow in the Center for Humanistic Inquiry this year (2004-2005)
carla.freeman@emory.edu
Project Title:
Respectability and the Making of an Entrepreneurial Middle Class
I am working on a book entitled "Respectability and the Making of an
Entrepreneurial Middle Class" which will analyze the powerful ideological
construct of "respectability," both historically and in the
contemporary context of the Caribbean island of Barbados.
By examining the Barbadian middle class, this work aims to advance
a conceptualization of class that takes the middle seriously, and
an understanding of gender that foregrounds its integral relationship
to class. I examine the work and family lives of middle class entrepreneurs
and explore the changing divisions of labor, ideologies of gender,
and articulations of class as manifested in conceptualizations of
work, professionalism, consumption, and religious practice.
The book will be based on data collected over three years, including
115 interviews I conducted with Barbadian middle-class entrepreneurs,
ethnographic and archival data about changing occupational categories,
business and property ownership in Barbados, and archival as well
as contemporary popular images, calypsos, and literary commentary
about what it is to be "middle class" and "respectable"
in this part of the world.
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