"Don't forget to put this in your book: The employees give it their best and the bosses don't appreciate it." - Melvin, an informant in Producing Power.
Introduction
Ethnicity, gender, and class don't exist in vacuums. Nor do they exist in hierarchies. The context(s) in which ethnicity, gender, and class are given importance and taken together to form particular identities provide sites of compelling social interaction that, when probed by the anthropologist, can reveal ways in which power is produced and practiced. What is realized in these social interactions is a picture of society that consists of an entangling of traits - a complex of characteristics that cannot and should not be separated from each other or ranked in order of importance. These phenomena (gender, class, ethnicity) combine to form complex identities and complex systems of domination. Taken alone, these traits serve to obscure the severity of oppression present in highly stratified complex societies. "The essentially economic nature of real racial-ethnic oppression in the United States makes it difficult to isolate whether peoples of color were subordinated in the emerging U.S economy because of race-ethnicity or their economic class.... Race-ethnicity and class intertwined in the patterns of displacement from land, genocide, forced labor, and recruitment from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. While it is impossible, in our minds, to determine which came first in these instances- race-ethnicity or class- it is clear that they were intertwined and inseparable" (Matthaei 1991: 19, quoted in Yelvington 1995: 235). In the Trinidadian factory of the late twentieth century, Kevin A. Yelvington finds similar convolutions at play. Cocktails of ethnicity, class, and gender are molded, controlled, and dominated by a social-economic group that uses symbolic capital to gain a particular advantage in a particular historical moment - the post-oil boom of mid-1980s Trinidad.
"Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in a Caribbean Workplace" is a masterful ethnographic project that was undertaken by Kevin A. Yelvington as part of his doctoral research in 1986-1987. Yelvington, interested in the culture of domination in Caribbean factories and economies, approached a white, upper-middle class factory owner by the name of Nigel Tiexiera in Diego Martin, a "suburb" of Port-Of-Spain, Trinidad. He asked Nigel Tiexiera if he could come and work in his factory alongside the workers on the assembly floor. The factory, Essential Utensils Ltd. (EUL), produced cheap goods for export to other countries in the Caribbean and North America. Tiexiera informed Yelvington that he wasn't hiring, and Yelvington responded that he wasn't looking to "be hired" but just to work alongside the workers in the factory as part of an anthropological study. Tiexiera agreed. The factory employees consisted mostly of line workers of African and East Indian descent. Of these line workers, fifty-three were women and eleven were men. The eight floor supervisors were all men, five of whom were white and three that were of East Indian descent. Over the next year, Yelvington became embedded in the factory environment and became friends with the line workers both inside and outside the factory. He soon found out that his initial research objectives were too cut-and-dry in the face of the complex interactions that were taking place within the Essential Utensils Ltd. factory.
In the following, I will follow Yelvington's argument through his deconstruction of ethnicity, gender, and class in the Essential Utensils Ltd. factory in Diego Martin, Trinidad. In his analysis, he looks at ethnicity, gender, and class as isolates in the social, political, and economic interactions that occur on the factory floor. In so doing, he demonstrates how these phenomena are inextricably locked. It is in trying to segregate them that he proves that they cannot be segregated. The historical and cultural context within which these phenomena are scrutinized has at its heart a system of domination in which their roles are concomitant with each other. Everyone has an ethnicity, gender, and class, and these traits cannot be divorced from each other and viewed independently. Nor can generalizations be made about them in any universal fashion. In some historical instances, ethnicity or gender may play more fundamental respective roles. In almost all instances, though, class will be an outcome and then a reflection of the importance of ethnicity and gender. Yelvington dances delicately through these phenomena, demonstrating how nuanced issues of ethnicity, class, and gender really are. He begins, however, by looking at the historical, geographical, and cultural context in which his research took place.
Trinidad and the Trinidadian Factory: Historical, Geographical, and Cultural Context
Trinidad (now Trinidad and Tobago) is one of the largest islands of the southern Antilles. It is located off the coast of Venezuela in the southeastern corner of the Caribbean Sea. Ethnically, the island is a conglomerate of groups driven together by multiple historical currents. "The distinguishing features of Trinidadian history have been the ways ethnicity and gender have ordered access to the society's colonial and postcolonial productive arrangements. Trinidadian history is full of cleavages and fault lines running across class distinctions and, especially, ethnic, cultural, religious, sexual, and national boundaries" (Yelvington 1995: 42). The aboriginal population was virtually exterminated when the Spanish arrived in 1498. Then, in 1783, the land was ceded to the French who brought in African slaves that were purchased through the trans-Atlantic slave trade. After the British captured the island, slavery was finally abolished in 1838. But beginning in 1797, the British had already started importing Asian indentured workers, particularly from India. These systems of labor created unique historical currents that define Trinidadian society to this day. According to Yelvington, these same historical-ethnic phenomena can be seen played out on the factory floor.
By the end the nineteenth of the century, these historical currents had produced what amounted to a "four-tier" system of ethnic-class stratification. At the top were whites of differing European national affiliations, followed by "coloreds" or mulattos including "Chinese," Portugese," and "Syrian" capitalists. The third tier was occupied by the black African masses, and the forth tier was held by the "late-coming" East Indians (Yelvington 1995: 48-49). These tiers also reflected class and occupational distinctions with the owners of capital and colonial administration occupying the top rung followed by professional mulattoes, black African skilled artisans, and finally East Indian agricultural laborers. To this day, these ethnic-class affiliations are recognizable in Trinidadian society.
During World War II, the influence on Trinidad shifted from European nation-states to a gradual Americanization of the island. The United States built military bases on the island and employed thousands of Trinidadians in various sectors associated with the installations. At the same time, fundamental racial categories were called into question when black and East Indian Trinidadians saw white Americans unloading cargo ships and performing manual labor on the bases. This type of encounter typifies the "revision" of structures that Sahlins (1985) describes in his analysis of the colonial encounter between the Hawaiians and the British. Categories that defined the ethnic-class structure of Trinidadian culture must have been exposed as inconsistent with alternative views of social structure in this specific historical moment. World War II also had profound impacts of the division of labor by gender on the island. In general, women moved out of the agricultural fields and into garment factories to help feed an ever-expanding market for clothing associated with the bases. This initiated a long trend of women's employment in factory positions and associations of women with "nimble hands" and efficient factory skills.
When Trinidad gained its independence in 1962 the People's National Movement (PNM), headed by Dr. Eric Williams, was at the helm of the nation of Trinidad. The independence of Trinidad was accompanied by a new national identity that was symbolized by Afro-Trinidadian "culture," including images of calypso, the steel band, and Carnival. "Trinidad and Tobago was depicted as a melting pot, where races `mixed' (sexually as well as socially)- and those that did not were somehow less Trinidadian. The national motto became `Together we aspire, together we achieve.' The national anthem features the line `Where every creed and race finds an equal place,' which, for emphasis, is sung twice" (Yelvington 1995: 59). In many ways, this national discourse was more exclusionary then it was inclusionary. The PNM was essentially an Afro-Trinidadian government that embraced multiethnic rule in discourse but not in practice. With the oil boom of the 1960s the government reaped billions and billions of dollars worth of profit that was redistributed in a patronage system that favored Afro-Trinidadians and Afro-Trinidadian geographic spaces over other groups. During this particular historical moment, many East Indians established entrepreneurial businesses that would survive well after the oil boom and position them for more power in the post-oil boom economy. At the same time, white and mulatto Trinidadians held on to their factories and capital.
When the oil boom ended, Trinidad fell into a deep recession that continues to this day. The expensive tastes of oil boom-era Trinidadians could no longer be sustained and the economy shifted towards manufacturing and exporting. The PNM was ousted from power by the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) and a more neoliberal, free market ideology was embraced in light of demands by the international monetary fund. The historical context of colonialism, neocolonialism, and economic dependency provided the necessary framework and information for Yelvington to analyze the situation at Essential Utensils Ltd. The historical context also provides a social-historical basis for understanding the ethnic and gendered division of labor at the factory.
Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in a Trinidadian Factory
Ethnicity, gender, and class form a complex and "unforgiving web" that provides for an acute awareness of one's position within a social structure. Though this awareness constantly shifts according to historical and social contexts, there is always an awareness of it in any given point in a life history. To the dominant, it is the status quo and a privilege that must be continually reproduced. Practices that reinforce the dominant and dominated roles are inscribed into social interactions, such as those at the Essential Utensils factory. Because these phenomena are intertwined they must be viewed as part of a unitary system and not simply as components such as "capitalism," "patriarchy," and "racism" (Yelvington 1995: 237). For example "a woman is hired to work in the EUL factory at low wages because she is black and a woman, because she has not completed secondary school, because she has no alternative but to sell her labor, and because she is not connected to any trade union or workers' organization" (Yelvington 1995: 39). Ethnicity, gender, and class work together to produce and maintain systems of power and are all forms of social, cultural, and economic capital.
On one of Yelvington's first days working at the EUL factory he heard a woman named Martha singing a Bob Marley song:
Until the color of a man's skin
Is no more significant
Than the color of his eyes
All you'll have is war.
When he asked the woman if this represented ethnic relations in the factory, she responded by telling him "Everybody want to push he race to the top. If you go to a Indian place, it only have Indians working there. Negroes, we would do the same. It natural to help you own people" (Martha, quoted in Yelvington 1995:135). Yelvington claims that ethnic identity in Trinidad represents a sort of fictive kinship in which ethnic groups come to rely on support systems within their defined ethnic groups. Assumptions about the importance and meaning of ethnicity are socially constructed to justify behaviors and explain away inequalities. This is an example where ethnicity and class are fundamentally intertwined - ethnicity is used to reinforce class divisions by favoring certain individuals within an ethnic group.
Oddly enough though, in Trinidad black and East Indian workers are content in having white managers, because they believe a member of their own ethnic group would practice unfair treatment and create an uncomfortable work environment if given power. Apparently, the workers believe that a member of the opposite ethnic group will take undue advantage whenever possible (Yelvington 1995: 137). A survey conducted in "1987 showed that blue collar agricultural workers preferred white bosses more than other occupational groups did; the lower down the class scale, the more preference for a white boss" (Ryan 1988 quoted in Yelvington 1995: 138). Behind much of this, there lies an underlying fear of the capability of these large yet marginalized groups of enacting "historical revenge" on the other ethnic group. Given Trinidad's political history, this fear is completely understandable.
Trinidadians also construct ethnic identities and narratives that are based partially on their experience in the New World and partially based on knowledge of their "ethnic history" and narrative. According to Stephen Cornell narrative lies at the heart of many ethnic identities, becomes particularly poignant during times of rupture, and is intimately bound up in power relations (Cornell 2000: 41-42). Yelvington's ethnographic research lends much credence to Cornell's hypothesis in that Afro-Trinidadians purport to carry on "true" traditions of African heritage during the Carnival celebrations while simultaneously fulfilling stereotypes that other ethnic groups use against them in more typical social settings. At the same time, though, the Afro-Trinidadian ethnic narrative tells of a tragic "loss of culture" that other ethnic groups may have retained. The assertion that other groups have "retained" their culture becomes intimately bound up in these narratives of the African diaspora: "Look at Indians in Trinidad. They still keep they Hindu, Muslim ting. Know why? Whites molded the Negroes, they took they and took they away from they religion, and wouldn't let they sing and ting.... Indians mainly stick to their ways, while Negroes changed. They adopted white man's ways. To me that is all. Each can stic up for their own. Negroes, I wouldn't have a place with they at all - I might go bankrupt!" (Martha quoted in Yelvington 1995: 140). This quote comes from the same Afro-Trinidadian woman who Yelvington heard singing the Bob Marley song.
The complexity of the web of ethnicity, gender, and class can be demonstrated in the relationship between ethnicity and class in the EUL factory. In narrative and discourse, East Indians and blacks in the EUL factory talk of severe mistrust among each other, but on the factory floor and on breaks they laugh and get along as well with members of other ethnic groups as with "their own kind." The situation isn't similar when viewing ethnic differences vertically among factory workers, supervisors, and the factory managers and owners. In these relationships, superiors use ethnicity as social capital. The difference between these two scenarios is class, but it is difficult to know whether it is class or ethnicity that is the driving force. Furthermore, ethnicity and gender seem to have a powerful determining bond. Women at the factory were shown to get along across ethnic lines - with their groups being comprised of members of all ethnic groups present in the factory. Among the men, however, blacks tended to socialize with other blacks and East Indians tended to socialize with other East Indians. Again, it is difficult to unpack these phenomena and know what is the real driving force behind these relationships.
Gender is a powerful force at work in the EUL factory. Women tolerate incessant harassment from male supervisors, managers, and co-workers. "In general, the women realize that they are in a disempowered position relative to the supervisors and, as such, are generally willing to accommodate when it means `playing along' with them by flirting and insinuating the possibility of future sexual relations in order to maintain a modicum of good workplace relations and to not jeopardize their employment. But this accommodation stops short of actual sexual relations" (Yelvington 1995: 160). In the context of Trinidadian culture and culture in the workplace there is a stereotype of female "respectability" and male "reputation." Women in Trinidad are seen as symbols of their ethnic groups, and are thus supposed to behave in a more reserved, respectable manner than men. They are expected to embody more domestic qualities, such as child rearing, faithfulness, and decent language. Men, however, are expected to have strong "reputations" that involve heavy drinking, strong and wide-spanning sexual appetites, and their statuses are guaranteed to be as high as the number of children that they have fathered (Yelvington 1995: 164).
Another more obvious dimension of gender in the factory is the reproductive capabilities and potentials of women. In colonial Trinidadian history, male slaves and indentured servants were desired over women because they could be counted on as a consistent source of labor throughout the year. Women, on the other hand, had the capability to become pregnant and less productive because of pregnancy and the need to give birth to and raise their children. In the context of agriculture, this was seen as a huge potential obstacle. But in the context of a factory workplace, women can work on the assembly line up to six weeks before they give birth. Under Trinidadian law, women must be compensated for twelve weeks worth of wages, half of which are reserved for the six weeks leading up to birth and half of which are reserved for the six weeks after birth. Children are a sign of status in Trinidadian culture, and many women strive to have as many children as possible. But children are also expensive and can become potentially disastrous economically. "So if children are a valued asset for women, they can also be seen as a liability for working mothers. There is a concern that people who cannot afford them should not have them, but that people who can afford the expense financially should have many more" (Yelvington 1995: 166).
Finally, gender and ethnicity are fiercely intertwined in notions of masculinity in Trinidad. Black men are regarded by many Trinidadians as "more masculine" than men of other ethnic groups. This particular rivalry is most pronounced between black Trinidadian males and East Indian Trinidadian males (Yelvington 1995: 184). Perhaps most threatening is the capability of masculine "sweet men" and "hot boys" to seduce and conquer women from other ethnic groups. In the factory, black men often flirt with East Indian women on the factory floor while black women rarely flirt with East Indian men. Unwittingly, this flirtation among factory floor workers serves to objectify the lower-class factory floor women and define them as sexually available and subordinate. In this sense, such behavior upholds the dominant position of superiors and managers to take sexual advantage of women.
Class cuts across ethnicity and gender in every possible way. It exemplifies Yelvington's hypothesis that the phenomena of ethnicity, class, and gender are inextricably locked. It is also the most easily recognized trait in a workplace environment. "What domain could be more rife with contradictions and ironies and the workings of power and resistance than the workplace, where ethnicity, class, and gender identities become part of the `contested terrain'" (Yelvington 1995: 186)? Class is the most contested of all attributes at the EUL factory. Though inseparable from gender and ethnicity, class manifests itself in specific forms of resistance in the factory. These instances of resistance define the boundaries of class and the power that is sustains. They also exemplify the practice of power that consists of a performance between classes - both the dominant supervisor and resistant floor worker act as agents in producing power. Instead of following the Foucaultian adage of "where there is power, there is resistance," Yelvington proposes a reverse logic: "where there is resistance, there is power" (Yelvington 1995: 191). In other words, resistance becomes a diagnostic of power. These forms of resistance include "slow goes" - purposeful, concerted efforts to slow down production on the factory floor so as to not increase the demands of the management and to simultaneously "get back at them." Another major form of resistance is stealing parts of products so as to go home and assemble them into a black market product to be sold on the informal market.
Perhaps the most powerful form of resistance in the EUL factory is the threat to unionize. In Trinidadian history, unionization has been a dominant force in the improvement of working conditions, pay, and benefits. In post oil-boom Trinidad the achievements of the unions became a "heavy burden" on the Trinidadian economy and caused a shift towards neoliberal thinking. Factory owners could not afford to pay their workers the salaries they had "won" during strikes that took place during the oil boom. The surplus that the boom had generated had dried up and the government had no more money to pump into the economy. As a result, unions became demonized in the private sector and were portrayed as "bad for business" in much the same way they are in the contemporary political economy of the United States. At the EUL factory, any suspicion of unionizing activity would lead to the immediate termination of any and all employees. The owner of the factory would rather fire everyone on staff and hire a whole new line up than have to deal with unionizing. "During my fieldwork, workers certainly complained about their conditions, especially forced overtime and low wages, but they were reluctant to publicly advocate brining in a union" (Yelvington 1995: 208).
Ethnicity, gender, and class are inextricably locked. One variable cannot be shown to be more powerful than the rest - a more useful way of looking at these aspects of identity is to perceive them as economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital. Yelvington's incredibly clever singular discussion of each of these elements is both ironic and poignant. By attempting to disentangle ethnicity, gender, and class he demonstrates that such a practice accomplishes the central intention of his text - to demonstrate that ethnicity, gender, and class form a unitary system that is negotiated through symbolic capital. The EUL factory is a contested space that is interminably imbued with cultural practices that don't merely reflect dominant relations but enact dominant relations. Displays of power through gender and ethnicity must be produced and reproduced to reinforce the status quo. The very terms of domination used against floor workers by supervisors and managers are also used against supervisors and managers by floor workers. Specific forms of resistance are anticipated and tolerated while other forms of resistance are condemned and quelled. Yelvington successfully illuminates a practice theory of social identity that utilizes a more sophisticated and nuanced view of identity. This social identity consists of all of the complex workings of ethnicity, gender, and class. Yelvington does something that is quite admirable - he steps into a Caribbean workplace and weaves in and out through the threads of an incredibly complex social system and refrains from trying to oversimplify it.
Bibliography
Cornell, Stephen. 2000. That's The Story of Out Life. In We Are a People: Narrative and Multiplicity in Constructing Ethnic Identity, eds. Paul Spikcard and W. Jeffrey Burroughs. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities. In The New Social Theory Reader, eds. Steven Seidman and Jeffrey C. Alexander. London: Routledge
Yelvington, Kevin A. 1995. Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in a Caribbean Workplace. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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