Taming Jamaica: How Elites and Hoteliers Advertised Blackness for Tourism (1950s–1970s)

• In Event: 50460 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Economics of Empire

Abstract

How do states represent Blackness in tourist advertising? Elite theory, social movements approaches, neo-Gramscian frameworks, and neo-Marxist analyses identify key actors shaping Black representations—elites, activists, intellectuals, and capitalists, respectively. While these perspectives highlight potential alliances, they leave unclear how these coalitions form, evolve, and interact over time. This paper theorizes state-sponsored representations of Blackness in tourist advertising as the product of shifting alliances between state and social actors. Integrating political sociology and global critical race theories, I examine how Black portrayals in tourism shifted over time through the interactions among these key actors. I focus on Jamaica’s state-led tourism advertising between 1950 and 1970, a period of transition from British colonial rule to independence, to show how Brown political elites and White hospitality capitalists collaborated to construct a controlled, “tamed” image of Blackness that aligned with their political and economic interests, despite growing opposition from Black grassroots movements and intellectuals. Tourism advertising strategically reshaped representations of Blackness, shifting from exclusion to carefully curated, selective inclusion through two dominant tropes: romanticized peasantry and domestic labor. By the late 1960s, racial mixing also became central to creole multiracial nationalism, with tourist ads featuring multiracial children and women as symbols of Jamaica’s uniqueness. Using historical methods and archival research, I demonstrate how the creation and restructuring of the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) institutionalized the Brown elite-White hotelier alliance, consolidating control over tourism advertising while marginalizing alternative racial narratives. Despite growing opposition from Black nationalist movements—especially Rastafarians—the elite-hotelier coalition maintained control. This paper contributes to understanding racialized tourism advertising as a contested site, shaped not only by state actors but by multi-actor coalitions that shift over time.

Author

• Johanna Hernandez Perez, University of California-Los Angeles