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CARLA FREEMAN

Emory University

The “reputation” of neoliberalism

A B S T R A C T et me begin by unpacking the double entendre of my title. In one

L
“Flexibility” has been described as the cornerstone sense, the title sets in relief the significant and growing critique of
of the current neoliberal agenda—embodied in neoliberalism—crudely put, its “bad reputation” as the corrosive
mandates for the fluid movements and restructuring reach of U.S. imperialism and capitalist globalization. In another
of labor, capital, and information and, at the sense, I invoke in the title one dimension of a dominant analytical
individual level, in a supple capacity for creative paradigm within the anthropology of the Caribbean, that of “reputation,”
self-invention and self-mastery. Flexibility is also a which has been associated intriguingly with some of the same qualities and
central quality revered within a realm of oppositional practices that lie at the heart of the current neoliberal agenda. In particular, I
cultural practice known in the analytical paradigm of focus on the primacy of flexibility—at the macrolevel of labor, capital flows,
Caribbean anthropology as “reputation.” What is and markets and also at the microlevel of individual movements, ingenuity,
striking about these different logics of flexibility is performance, and self-invention. In the past decade, many scholarly works
that one (reputational flexibility) is grounded in a have advanced understanding of the particularities of globalization and
set of cultural values of the Caribbean subaltern in modernity, challenging the notion that capitalism enacts itself monolithi-
opposition to bureaucratic hierarchy and cally across a new world order in which the regulatory roles of nation-states
(neo)colonial domination, and the other (neoliberal have been ceded or changed their relationship to the ever-expanding power
flexibility) sits firmly in the center of contemporary of global capital and markets (e.g., Ferguson 1999; Gupta 1998; Miller 1997;
global capitalist orthodoxy. On the basis of fieldwork Ong 1999, 2006; Pred and Watts 1992; Robotham 1998; Rofel 1999; to name
I conducted between 2001 and 2006, I argue that just a few).1
the quest for flexibility among emergent Often considered neoliberalism’s quintessential actor (Bourdieu 1998;
middle-class entrepreneurs in Barbados represents a Harvey 2005), the emerging figure of the entrepreneur focuses a power-
new path of opportunity and upward mobility as well ful lens on the intersections of these two systems of flexibility. By engag-
as a gendered tightrope of respectability. In this ing the ethnographic case of contemporary middle-class entrepreneurs
quest, I argue, these entrepreneurs are redefining in Barbados, a small Caribbean island long enmeshed within the webs
the dialectics of reputation–respectability and class of global capitalism, my goal in this article is not simply to “localize”
in Barbados and the cultural meanings of an understanding of the current embrace of entrepreneurial flexibility
neoliberalism itself. [neoliberalism, flexibility, middle as a key dimension of neoliberalism but also to examine how the con-
class, entrepreneurship, respectability, Barbados, vergence of two different logics of flexibility, one derived from the dis-
Caribbean] course and practices of the world’s capitalist power brokers (neoliberal
flexibility) and the other from the oppositional politics of the Caribbean
subaltern (reputational flexibility), offers an opportunity to discover what
Michel-Rolph Trouillot has called “the particulars hidden by . . . sameness”
(2003:126). Taken in tandem, these two systems of flexibility and their

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 252–267, ISSN 0094-0496, online
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The “reputation” of neoliberalism  American Ethnologist

contemporary convergences elucidate powerful cultural Two logics of flexibility


meanings that are unfolding within a new entrepreneurial
middle class whose practices and identities I explore in this The trope of flexibility is ubiquitous within neoliberal cap-
article. italist discourse, variously seen as “slogan, . . . ideology,
I conducted the research on which this exploration . . . dream, and nightmare” within popular and academic
is based in two stages, the first in 1999 and in 2001–02 as analyses alike (Marquand 1992:61). Indeed, Pierre Bourdieu
part of a comparative, collaborative project with Katherine (1998) described the “essence of neo-liberalism” as an “ab-
Browne and Moira Perez that focused on gendered pat- solute reign of flexibility.”3 From one vantage point, “flexi-
terns of entrepreneurship across the French-, Spanish-, and bility” connotes instability, changes in temporal and spatial
English-speaking Caribbean (Martinique, Puerto Rico, and frameworks, and an erosion of both economic and social
Barbados, respectively). During the second phase (2004–06), commitments and, according to Scott Lash and John Urry,
I expanded the interviews and fieldwork on the Barbadian “the end of organized (bureaucratic) capitalism” (1987:196–
case. Although many fascinating comparisons can be ex- 231). The primacy of the global marketplace and the capacity
amined in the enactment of neoliberalism, flexibility, and for instant exchanges and flows of media, information, and
the gendering of social class across these Caribbean terri- capital made possible by a new digital age of high-speed In-
tories, the focus of this article rests on the specific case of ternet and satellite technology have also generated vulnera-
Barbados. ble conditions of labor for an increasingly disempowered
The socioeconomic structure of Barbados has histori- body of workers, as demonstrated by the footloose qual-
cally been portrayed much like that of its Caribbean neigh- ity of global industries over the past several decades and
bors, as grounded in the plantation-based pyramidal struc- by the current outsourcing of a broadening array of skilled
ture in which the population was stratified along class– services.4 Few if any spheres of life appear exempt from the
color lines, with a small white elite at the apex, a layer of neoliberal demands for flexibility, from the structures of eco-
“browns” occupying the middle class of merchants, teach- nomic markets to the nuances of individuals’ subjectivities
ers, and those who would later become civil servants, and at as citizens, producers, consumers, migrants, tourists, mem-
the bottom, a majority of poor blacks. A strong trade-union bers of families, and so on (e.g., Judith Stacey’s [1990] “flexi-
tradition together with a long-standing Marxist scholarly tra- ble families”; Aihwa Ong’s [1999] “flexible citizenship”; Emily
dition led much of the historical and ethnographic research Martin’s [1994] “flexible bodies”; Valerie Walkerdine’s [2003]
to focus on the primacy of class conflict between the two “flexible subjectivities”; Daniel M. Goldstein’s [2005] “flex-
extremes of the pyramid, leaving the middle stratum less ible justice”; Elizabeth C. Dunn’s [2004:71] capitalist “flexi-
well examined. Cecilia A. Karch (1985) and P. Stafford (2002, bility” and “privatized individuals” vs. state socialism; and
2006), however, have documented that by 1839, an emergent Frances Abrahamer Rothstein’s [2005] question “flexibility
middle class made up of freed blacks and browns resided for whom?” in Mexico). Nowhere are these complex de-
in and owned 25 percent of the property in the expand- mands and expectations more evident than in the contem-
ing urban sphere of Bridgetown. The expansion of the black porary figure of the entrepreneur. In this article, I explore the
middle class in Barbados is most widely attributed to the relationship between flexibility as a facilitator of new possi-
government’s free-education policy, dating from the early bilities and as a system of restraints—as both “opportunity”‘
1960s, when “for the first time in the island’s history, soci- and “threat” (Harvey 1991).5
ety seemed fluid, and working-class families were able to What I am here calling “reputational flexibility” recu-
produce individuals who could be found within all social perates conceptually one of the Caribbean region’s most
groups” (Beckles 1990:207). Today, the Human Development powerful (and controversial) gatekeeping concepts—that of
Index ranks Barbados number one in development in the “reputation–respectability.”6 This concept was first devel-
Caribbean region and 30th worldwide, and the country is oped by anthropologist Peter Wilson, writing in the 1960s
touted for the growth of its middle class.2 Balanced between about the island of Providencia off the Colombian coast.
its “developing” Caribbean neighbors and the postindustrial Wilson (1969; 1973:9) argued that this small island and
power brokers to the north, therefore, Barbados is an espe- the wider Anglophone Caribbean can be understood as
cially powerful site for exploring the dynamics of “middle steeped within the structures and ideologies of two compet-
classness” and the changing parameters and meanings of ing but dialectically related value systems or cultural mod-
reputation–respectability. For, if any of the Caribbean islands els: respectability, the inescapable legacy of colonial depen-
has historically been associated with a heightened sense of dence through which patterns of social hierarchy are up-
respectability, order, propriety, and bureaucracy, it is Barba- held and reproduced, and reputation, a set of responses
dos, known both proudly and mockingly as “Little England” to colonial domination and the elusiveness of respectabil-
for having remained steadfastly in British hands throughout ity, through which people enact creative individualism and
the colonial period (Lewis 1968; Puckrein 1984; Wickham at the same time achieve a social leveling, or “communi-
1975). tas.” Although the reputation–respectability paradigm has

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been widely critiqued by scholars of the Caribbean, most sider the provision grounds of slavery” (2003:42), the locus
also find it impossible to dispense entirely with the idea in which slaves carved both economic liberties and islands’
of a central cultural dialectic (Barrow 1998; Besson 1993; robust internal marketing systems out of the rigid system
Freeman 2000; Maurer 1997; Miller 1994; Olwig 1993; Pyde of plantation slavery. Echoing Sidney Mintz (1978), he adds,
1990; Sampath 1997; Sobo 1993; Sutton 1974; Thomas 2004; “What started as an economic bonus for planters turned
Yelvington 1995). Critical debate has questioned the con- out to be a field of opportunities for individual slaves,” crit-
tours and boundaries of respectability and reputation as op- ical not only materially but also as “symbolic fields for the
positional domains, and at the same time there has been a production of individual selves by way of the production of
strong retention of reputation as the locus or expression of material goods” (Trouillot 2003:42). Charles Carnegie (1987)
Caribbean cultural authenticity (e.g., Abrahams 1983; Brana- has argued that a proclivity for “strategic flexibility” op-
Shute 1979; Burton 1997; Wardle 2000). My goal is to recu- erates as a general cultural model with which West Indi-
perate the framework as an evocative heuristic for analyzing ans approach most aspects of life. This logic of flexibility
the Barbadian “particulars” of neoliberal “sameness” and, and the production of individual selves is rooted in a his-
more generally, for engaging the dialectics of economic and tory of movement and expressed structurally in numerous
cultural spheres in the contemporary context. ways across the life course, for instance, in circuits of la-
Wilson understands respectability first and foremost bor migration; the dispersed networks of kin and child fos-
as a set of colonially defined values and mores that be- tering, regional as well as transnational; shifting household
came an ideological framework subscribed to largely by constellations;9 the formally recognized “visiting union”;10
the middle class (women, in particular, and old or married the preponderance of female-headed households;11 and in
men as well). It encodes ideals of social order, propriety, the economic realm, the salience of “occupational multi-
monogamy, and domesticity enacted through institutions plicity,” by which people proudly demonstrate their ability
of formal marriage, schools, and the church, and it sanc- to generate creative survival strategies.12 The fisherman who
tions the nuclear patriarchal family over the more fluid “vis- keeps a rum-shop storefront that also rents videotapes, of-
iting union” and casual sexual relations and the white Chris- fice workers who spend their weekends buying fashions and
tian church over other nascent syncretic denominations.7 household wares in Miami for resale in living-room markets,
Respectability, Wilson says, “is a moral force behind the co- and even the successful Cambridge-educated medical doc-
ercive power of colonialism and neocolonialism” (1973:233), tor who also keeps a kitchen garden and raises pigs are all
and its stranglehold on Caribbean societies remains in the prized examples of resourceful multiplicity in Barbados and
postindependence spheres of the growing tourism industry the wider Caribbean.13 As Trouillot has said, “Caribbean peo-
and government, which he sees as thoroughly dominated by ples seem to have fewer problems than most in recognizing
Euro-American political and cultural forces, especially artic- the fuzziness and overlap of categories and multiplicity is
ulated in the hierarchical forms and structures of capitalist not confined to the economic realm or to the poor” (1992:33).
bureaucracy. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that reputational flex-
The essence of reputation, by contrast, is a kind of im- ibility in the Caribbean has historically been most pow-
provisational adaptability8 —or flexibility—associated pri- erfully associated with those most challenged to “cut and
marily with a lower-class and masculine public sphere of per- contrive,” that is, be economically creative, and that the re-
formance and sociality encompassing such venues as street sulting practices and their ideological associations are gen-
corners, the political platform, the rum shop, the market, and dered. Women who have enacted this proud tradition over
the musical stage and with such attributes as sexual prowess, time, such as the country higglers, or market women whose
verbal wit, musical flair, and economic guile. Whereas re- hard work has won them recognition for economic tenacity
spectability in Barbados has historically been attained ide- and grit, have also suffered the loss of some coveted aspects
ally through the path of education, leading to a place in the of respectability.14 As one witnesses the growing interest in
secure hierarchy of the civil service or to the crowning profes- and esteem associated with entrepreneurship among white
sional achievement of a career in law or medicine, the qual- as well as black Barbadians, its embeddedness within the
ities that Wilson describes as central to reputation can be frame of flexibility invites closer scrutiny not only of its rep-
thought of as the embodiment of an entrepreneurial esprit— utational qualities but also, concomitantly, of its gendered
always adaptive, self-defined, and resistant. permutations. What symbolic trade-offs and realignments
The emphasis on flexibility and adaptability as a of respectability are involved as middle-class women and
paramount feature of Caribbean experience, especially men are drawn into the entrepreneurial fervor?
within the lower classes, is widely acknowledged within aca- Respectability continues to be sought and romanticized
demic and popular realms. Movement and change, rather in the realms of marriage and church. This is powerfully
than stasis, have defined the Caribbean as a social and cul- demonstrated among the male and female entrepreneurs
tural field. And as Trouillot reminds scholars, cultural prac- I have interviewed. Of this group (n = 75), 45 (60 per-
tice in the Caribbean “takes firmer contours when we con- cent) are married, and only 11 (15 percent) are female

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heads of households. By contrast, Barbados’s most recent along with the powerful aspirations associated with busi-
census (in 2000) found only 23 percent of the adult pop- ness, appear to be making business ownership a goal for
ulation was married and 46 percent of the island’s house- more and more women, black as well as white.17 Flexibility,
holds were female headed. Notably, religion and churchgo- and the talent for improvisation, has always been in dialec-
ing figure prominently in the entrepreneurs’ testimonies. tical tension, as Wilson argued, with powerful institutional
The forms of marriages and religious practices, however, interests that stress conformity and stasis. The emphasis laid
and their relationship to entrepreneurial endeavors have im- by Mintz and Trouillot on the provision ground of the slave
bued these institutions of respectability with elements of and freedman retains its analytical primacy within the larger
reputational flexibility. For instance, women and men en- context of plantation agriculture as a hegemonic force. My
trepreneurs use the language of “partnership” to describe goal here is to track how the logic of reputational flexibility
their marriages and enact these relationships in new ways derived from a tradition of wily, subversive opposition to the
that prioritize the couple over traditional single-sex social totalizing power of the plantation economy turns out to be
groups of friends and crews and in a new range of associated well adapted to the demands and orthodoxy of neoliberal
activities meant to enhance romantic and emotional com- globalization. Meanwhile, respectability, as defined by the
patibility, all of which they describe as less typical among institutions of church, civil service, and bureaucratic order
their parents’ generation (Freeman 2000; Greenfield 1966).15 is simultaneously being eroded and showing itself to be ideo-
In the realm of religion, many entrepreneurs eschew formal logically resilient in policing and renegotiating the contours
church attendance and active participation in the religious of gender.
institutions of their childhoods in favor of a range of new spir- What is intriguing about the contemporary moment is
itual activities and “new age” churches. They are, in growing not merely the convergence of local cultural practice and ide-
numbers, attending U.S.-style charismatic churches whose ology with that generated externally by the global capitalist
congregations are middle class and whose style departs from system, but that reputational flexibility and neoliberal flexi-
the “stiffness” and “formality” of the traditional, mainline bility are grounded in oppositional logics. Although reputa-
churches.16 Thus, not only is the global mandate for neolib- tion shares with neoliberalism a positive evaluation of such
eral flexibility in convergence with an upward mobility of the qualities as inventiveness and adaptability, it has long been
local cultural logic of reputation but, at the same time, the seen as part of an “indigenous” Afro-centered resistance to
contours of other institutions of respectability are also being the power of metropolitan authority, rather than its facili-
reformulated in the vein of reputation. tator. These logics have now come together in such a way
Various scholars have aimed to demonstrate the height- as to broaden the local parameters of the Barbadian middle
ened Caribbean dynamic through which the structures and class and, as such, redefine the contours of respectability–
expressions of local culture are not only refashioned by but reputation as a value complex. Although some scholars have
also, in turn, change the very shape of capitalism within demonstrated a strong impulse to interpret reputation and
the region (Freeman 2000, 2001; Miller 1994, 1997; see also respectability in a narrow, binary sense, my goal here is to re-
Sheller 2003), and that reputation and respectability as a deploy these concepts not as pure types but as a dialectical
dialectic unfold over time with new permutations (Browne lens through which to interpret the powerful draw of en-
2004; Freeman 2000; Miller 1994; Olwig 1993; Thomas 2004). trepreneurship within contemporary neoliberal capitalism.
What I aim to explore here are the ways in which these mu- By engaging these two logics of flexibility—one histor-
tually redefining convergences are being enacted through ically grounded in a cultural-economic system of opposi-
flexibility and reputation, and, in so doing, I raise questions tion to the hegemonic structure, the other articulated as
about the very nature of reputation’s character as opposi- the very engine driving global capitalism—I hope to disrupt
tional (to hegemonic colonial and neocolonial forces) and the sense of “sameness” of neoliberal globalization, through
fundamentally steeped in self-affirmation and equality over the particulars of a small Caribbean island and its legacy of
self-restraint and hierarchy. the reputation–respectability value complex. Whereas the
Whereas the Human Development Index recently cultural logic of reputation has been thought to embody
ranked Barbados first in its Gender Empowerment Measure what is most authentic and most admirable in Caribbean
because women represent 71 percent of those employed in culture—its potential to reject colonial domination and so-
professional and technical jobs and because of an equiva- cial hierarchy in favor of social equity, or communitas—
lent proportional representation of male and female work- respectability has been seen as the essence of false con-
ers in the public and private sectors, it is particularly notable sciousness and the reproduction of colonial and neocolonial
that in the realm of entrepreneurship, men are the registered oppression. If respectability lay at the heart of the British
owners of more than double the number of companies that colonial model, imposed as a set of foreign values and their
women own, according to the latest census (in 2000). The at- associated bureaucratic hierarchies, reputation represents
tractiveness of entrepreneurship as a way of flexibly balanc- its antithesis, as “indigenous” as any aspect of Caribbean cul-
ing needs for income and demands of family life, however, ture could be and, most importantly, a potentially liberating

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force with which to confront neocolonialism. Indeed, Wilson continue to be important, but their vulnerability to price
(1973:235) envisioned reputation not simply as an analyti- fluctuations on the world market has made them erratic
cal framework but as an urgent (and admittedly polemical) engines of economic growth. In the place of these tradi-
paradigm for postcolonial social change.18 tional industries, the Caribbean, Barbados in particular, has
The puzzle before scholars, then, is how to interpret become increasingly reliant on services, most importantly
what I argue is the current “upward mobility” of reputa- tourism but also an expanding array of offshore banking, in-
tion, whereby the qualities once oppositional to the cultural surance, and information-processing services. These newer
and economic establishment are now increasingly central service industries rely less on government bureaucracies
to the official mandates of the national and global neolib- for marketing and trade negotiation in the manner of the
eral economy and are simultaneously being embraced by older industries and, instead, orchestrate these functions
a broader array of cultural actors—in particular, middle- independently. Many are owned by or partnered with for-
class entrepreneurs. As this occurs, the contours of mid- eign companies and have also spurred the development of
dle classness are being redrawn both demographically and an array of locally owned ancillary services that privilege en-
symbolically, and gender, I will show, is central to these trepreneurial flexibility in contrast to bureaucratic skills and
reformulations.19 structure.
At the time of Wilson’s fieldwork, Caribbean economies
were centered on commodity production for metropolitan
Official discourses of flexibility
consumption. Many of the commodities were agricultural
goods such as bananas, sugar, rice, and cocoa, but there were Within the national and regional levels of official discourse
also products of extractive industries, for example, bauxite and policy, flexibility is among the most frequent catch
and oil. These industries were oriented to an export mar- terms of the day. Certainly the most ambitious illustra-
ket in the metropolis and controlled by multinational cor- tion of a regionwide effort to create economic flexibility
porations, which often exercised quasi-governmental func- is the recently ratified Caribbean Single Market and Econ-
tions. Corresponding to these private-sector entities were omy (CSME). Owen Arthur, prime minister of Barbados,
large, well-organized labor unions with powerful political outlined the CSME rationale in a speech delivered recently
influence and state bureaucracies that directed the individ- in Jamaica. Modeled directly on the European Union, the
ual economies. What each of these sectors—the corporate, “CSME brings together 14 separate and distinct markets and
the state, and the union—shared was a pronounced bureau- economies, each governed by their own rules and divided
cratic form of organization. The industries were highly in- from each other by formidable barriers, to be organized and
tegrated ones that controlled each step of the productive to be made to operate in the future effectively as one mar-
process, from the growing of the crop or the extraction of ket and one economy, free of restrictive barriers, and gov-
the ore to its disposal on the international market, and they erned by common rules, policies and institutions.”20 Arthur’s
were able to count on powerful political support both in the regional free-market mantra departs intriguingly from the
metropolis and in the Caribbean region. Conforming to this Marxist-inspired dependency critiques of the postindepen-
model, the labor unions of the Caribbean grew vigorously dence era, which were often tied to the nationalization of
after the Great Depression to the point at which they, like- major industries (e.g., bauxite, sugar). The creation of a re-
wise, assumed a monopoly control over the labor market gional market, Arthur argues, provides such little island na-
and adopted a highly bureaucratic management structure. tions as Barbados a “larger market and a wider set of op-
The civil service grew in much the same way, with robust tions.” He adds, the “liberalizing of services especially offers
establishments to manage the large industries and to de- us an opportunity for expanded productivity that can com-
liver services on the basis of revenues derived from these in- pensate for any loss in commodity production.” Arthur’s ref-
dustries. These bureaucratic state and corporate structures erent here is the dramatic decline in manufacturing indus-
generated an “organizational man” of the Caribbean remi- tries as well as in sugar production, the island’s historical
niscent of William H. Whyte’s (1956) post–WWII portrayal of economic base, which has in recent years been taken over
bureaucratic conformity, an emphasis on security over in- by foreign interests and yielded to tourism and off-shore
novative, rugged individualism, a set of attitudes and values services as the island’s economic linchpin. The language of
that prized security and respectability, as noted by Wilson. neoliberalism encoded in the prime minister’s speech—the
Recent years, however, have seen the disintegration of reign of free-market flexibility—has become so mainstream
the older imperial trade networks and the gradual displace- in Barbados that the association of sugar and protection-
ment of traditional industries. Sugar, which once dominated ism with an old and outmoded model of globalization has
the economic landscape, has shrunk to a small fraction of been squarely replaced by an assumed equation of services
its former scale, and its relative importance as an earner and new entrepreneurial enterprises with the rationality and
of foreign exchange and an employer has diminished even flexibility of a new global era.21 The rigid hierarchy of gov-
more. Oil and bauxite in Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica ernment offices, the slow rate of promotions, and the sense

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of “time-serving” jobs under the surveillance of controlling these assertions is creative as well as industrious, indepen-
bosses were all aspects associated with the bureaucratic re- dent, and keenly attuned to a growing and changing market.
spectability of an older order that the contemporary Barba- These official invocations of flexibility through the encour-
dians I have interviewed describe and aim to transcend. agement of a neoliberal vision of regional trade and support
The neoliberal vision has given rise not only to regional for local entrepreneurship have several unspoken referents:
free-trade initiatives but also, at the national level, to a host of a retrenchment in the nation’s public sector, the decline
both private-sector and government-sponsored programs, of the island’s once-dominant sugar industry, the flight of
such as the Small Business Development Center and the global industries in search of cheaper labor, and a gradual
Youth Entrepreneurial Scheme, and to a subtly changing pro- erosion of the power of trade unions, not to mention the
file for upward mobility in contemporary Barbados. Senator stranglehold of traditional respectability that threatens to
Lynette Eastmond, minister of Commerce, Consumer Affairs choke the creative imagination and drive of today’s youth.24
and Business Development, summarized this new emphasis Entrepreneurs echo in their testimonies this changing
on a postcolonial order of flexibility and self-invention in a aspirational ethic in which self-determination is increas-
speech in honor of the launching of the National Innovation ingly prized over a long-standing official valuation of bu-
Competition of the Enterprise Growth Fund Ltd.22 Asserting reaucratic security and entrepreneurship is seen as a path to
the need for innovation and creativity and the hampering be sought rather than a path of last resort.25 As many have
effect of the rigid, old-order tradition of respectability and expressed the shift to me, business as either the nepotistic
bureaucratic conservatism, Senator Eastmond said, preserve of a small number of white elite families or “the
path for dummies” is currently ceding to a new esprit.26 Like
What I urge in this context is a maximum degree of flex- the senator, the entrepreneurs I have interviewed quote fa-
ibility . . . the strength of a new economy must be in a miliar U.S. business gurus like the late Peter Drucker and the
structure where there are more opportunities . . . and Microsoft giant, Bill Gates; they make contact with U.S. firms
. . . more flexibility. . . . I often wonder if there is not a to source materials and supplies, and they view U.S. business
Bill Gates or Michael Dell in Gall Hill that does not have
culture as a goal to be achieved. Nevertheless, they simulta-
access to a computer, a Venus Williams somewhere in
neously employ social networks and cultural resources that
St. Patrick’s that does not have access to a tennis court,
a Tiger Woods somewhere in St. Martin’s that does not must be understood within a national and regional frame.
have access to a golf course . . . an Oprah Winfrey in Bax- Entrepreneurship, for them, represents a new promise of
ter’s Road or Bathsheba that never got the opportunity to upward mobility and social esteem once perceived to be
dream just a little. . . . This initiative should signal . . . the the preserve of other more “respectable” occupations. En-
liberation of a mindset that restricts us to a sameness trepreneurial pursuits are motivated frequently by the goal
and a dullness. . . . There must be a change in attitude. We of creative self-invention, dispensing with hierarchy, bosses,
must believe that we are an innovative people . . . a cre- and the “establishment” in ways that are reminiscent of rep-
ative people and we must show support for creativity— utation’s long-standing oppositional qualities. Middle-class
we must not stifle it. . . . And it starts in the home—it is entrepreneurship is often taken up in ways deeply reminis-
still the wish of most parents that their children should
cent of lower-class, reputational ingenuity, whereby individ-
get a job—and if they are lucky a Government job—no
uals create two or more businesses in an effort to manage
matter the ability of the child or the inclination—unless
of course their child could become a lawyer or a doctor. risk, sometimes in consonant enterprises and sometimes in
[Ministry of Commerce, Consumer Affairs and Business completely unconnected fields. Entrepreneurship also al-
Development, Barbados 2002] lows for middle-class women to enter fields (manufactur-
ing, transportation, etc.) that would otherwise be viewed as
Whereas reputation has long been seen as a set of strate- unsuitable for “respectable ladies.” For these entrepreneurs,
gies with which the lower classes have managed the risks increasingly, reputational flexibility is being decoupled from
and precariousness of life, Senator Eastmond emphasizes its lower-class associations and is being harnessed for the
many of its central qualities (individualism, creativity, and goals of class mobility, economic security, and middle-class
flexibility) as vehicles for individual achievement and suc- self-invention in the context of the contemporary neoliberal
cess in the current neoliberal regime. But the reputational economy. And this decoupling is fostered within a dynamic
referent is not restricted only to the practice of flexibility and in which the two logics of flexibility are converging.
individualism. It resounds as well in the senator’s selection From my sample of 75 middle-class entrepreneurs
of icons of U.S. success, heroes of the new economy, many of (40 women, 35 men), designed to include the broadest
whom are African American performers and athletes known demographic range (gender, race, and age) as well as
also for their public sociality and generosity. In her examples, a range of entrepreneurial enterprises, these convergent
she signals a pointed shift away from a tradition of British notions of flexibility emerged as one of the most con-
colonial order to one of U.S.-led neoliberal ingenuity and sonant themes, with individuals mentioning or alluding
self-invention.23 The modern Barbadian citizen conjured in to them as among the primary motivations behind their

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entrepreneurial quests. The particular meanings ascribed A reorientation of middle-class ideologies away from re-
to “flexibility” varied—from the desire to eschew the struc- spectability to reputation is exemplified as well by Colleen’s
tural constraints of bureaucratic institutions and ease the move away from the Anglican Church (that bastion of re-
schedule demands of work and family life to the subtler de- spectability in Wilson’s model) of her husband’s solidly
sires to move outside expected social parameters, to claim a middle-class family to seek more individualized spirituality.
more distinctive, more visible, more creative identity as well Like many other young entrepreneurs I encountered, she in-
as a more solid economic base. Although these convergent vokes God and the sense of divine guidance as central to her
logics of flexibility were shared across gender, race, and age life and her entrepreneurial quest: “I just felt like God was
groups as a broadly defined set of goals, their fault lines were pulling me into this,” she explained. But her faith and com-
especially pronounced in the life stories of women in their mitment to God are enacted personally, through individual
thirties and forties (24 of 40 women, or 60 percent). I have, discussions with a new pastor, and on and in her own spiri-
therefore, selected for discussion here several of the cases I tual terms, which often involve nature and rigorous physical
have followed since 2001 to illustrate some of the complex exercise. Combining a love of sport, adventure, nature, and
articulations and frictions. Although census figures and per- what David Brooks (2005) has recently called “aspirational
centages reveal the expansion of self-employment and the capital”—the “fire in the belly” determination to prove her-
growth of registered companies, and speeches and treaties self to her absent father and to the highly stratified society
speak to official exhortations of flexibility, they cannot, on in which she was raised—together with $12,000 in personal
their own, provide the insight into the associated motiva- savings, a $5,000 loan from a government program to spur
tions, ideological and practical challenges, dreams, failures, youth entrepreneurship, six employees, and the help of a
and subtle convergences in underlying logics that the expe- supportive mate, she had grossed $200,000 the year I met
riences and reflections of the social actors themselves can. her, a figure that has increased substantially since.28 Barba-
Only by bringing together these analytical scales can one dian entrepreneurs like Colleen vigorously embrace “flexi-
fully understand how neoliberalism is played out in specific bility” and “autonomy,” using these terms often as well as
cultural fields and, in turn, how neoliberal ideals take shape highlighting their various meanings. They articulate a pas-
in specific guises. sionate desire to break out of and move beyond the limits set
for them by bosses and by bureaucratic institutional frame-
works, seeking self-realization, greater economic rewards,
Narratives of entrepreneurial reputation:
and, in the case of women, the pressing goal of managing
Convergences and fault lines of flexibility
competing demands of work and family life.
Colleen (her pseudonym of choice) is the youngest of three Some men and women enter the risky reputation-
sisters raised alone by their mother, a domestic worker. oriented waters of entrepreneurship while maintaining con-
Her father had abandoned the family by the time of her ventionally gendered spheres—trucking and construction
birth. Raised to value education, go to church, and strive businesses for men, catering, flower arranging, and fashion
for a secure job, all central markers of respectability, Colleen design–boutique ownership for women. For others, how-
achieved her mother’s dream by landing a position in a bank ever, it is not merely entering the world of entrepreneurship
on completion of secondary school. Like many of those I but the particular kind of venture that signals “reputation.”
have studied, however, Colleen, left the security of her re- And for women, in particular, the pursuit of business in un-
spectable job at the bank in favor of other dreams. Dis- conventionally gendered realms, especially in physically de-
heartened by the malaise of fellow workers in the bank, manding domains associated with manufacturing and the
and inspired by experiences she had traveling in the United outdoors, in areas involving public visibility onstage, or in
States, at 19 she started the island’s first motivational Out- activities demanding frequent travel, is especially notable
ward Bound–like operation—offering “wellness weekends” for its risky association with reputation.
and “team-building” expeditions on the island’s undevel- Dawn is an especially striking example of a risk taker.
oped and rugged east coast for companies and government A former Barbados beauty queen, she started a manufac-
divisions as well as tourists. She describes her business as turing business in which she employed half a dozen strong
a way of combating the “conservative and homebodyish” young men in the production of heavy structural equipment.
Barbadian sensibility, which she says has never generated Determined to work “shoulder to shoulder” with her em-
“much of a culture for exploration of the outdoors.” Trad- ployees, Dawn hauled heavy poles, sewed industrial-weight
ing “skirt suits” for climbing gear, shorts, and head wrap, canvas, and sweated alongside the others—the men shirt-
she honed new skills of physical fitness and turned her less and Dawn in skimpy tank tops that closely resembled
energies to converting 26 acres of rab (uncultivated) land those in the Victoria’s Secret catalogues displayed on her
into an operating wellness retreat and to growing herbs reception-area coffee table. She vigilantly maintains her
and vegetables “on the side” for sale to local groceries and beauty-queen physique with hours of early-morning exer-
supermarkets.27 cise along with meditation and prayer. She has turned away

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from the Catholic Church of her childhood for an individ- edges of this middle-class respectability, as Sheila’s father
ual spirituality she holds firmly but privately. Irritated by left the family when she was young and has maintained only
the slowdowns in production and by having to subcontract tenuous ties and intermittent support. Sheila is the only en-
portions of the work to another firm, Dawn took it on her- trepreneur in her family. While traveling across the region
self to learn to weld so that she could control the whole of marketing software for hotels, she came to realize how the
the production process, and she now moves easily between vagaries of travel and poor service can deter repeat tourism,
an air-conditioned office in which she negotiates sales and and she turned this observation into the basis for a thriving
the hot and dusty production areas. Several years into the new business.
business, Dawn turned her energies to another enterprise, Unlike the numerous registered tour operators in
researching and writing a business plan to operate a restau- Barbados, required by airport regulations to abide by cer-
rant, which she opened in town. Unable to secure a bank tain rules and regulations, Sheila’s company has a special
loan, she diverted resources from her manufacturing firm arrangement that exempts VIP guests from some of the red
into the new restaurant. As was the case for many others tape related to arrival and departure. Having secured con-
I encountered, her business diversification was a matter of tracts with all of the island’s most exclusive hotels, utilizing
turning profits from one endeavor into another enterprise, excellent self-promotion skills, she has cracked a normally
with the hope of both generating greater profits and reduc- dense and notoriously rigid bureaucracy. She is also gross-
ing the risks entailed in a single operation. In her case, the ing $10,000 a month (more than a well-paid doctor would
restaurant took attention and resources away from her man- earn). Her overhead is $1,500 a month for her two full-time
ufacturing business and ultimately failed, leaving Dawn to employees and her cell-phone bills.
downsize and concentrate her efforts on her original manu- Sheila is an attractive and vivacious Afro-Barbadian
facturing endeavor. “Ultimately,” she said, “it was a blessing woman. Signaling her explicit enactment of reputation, she
in disguise. It forced me to focus.” Unfazed by her failure admits that she uses her good looks and flirting acumen
in one undertaking, she focused her energies on another, to her advantage, saying, “I didn’t have a hard time getting
which has grown steadily. In many ways, entrepreneurs like myself through the door when it came to men but I had
Dawn and Colleen express the ideals of rugged individualism a very hard time keeping it above board.” Her entry into
and the capacity for self-invention so often associated with entrepreneurial work and its relation to the rest of her life,
modernity, especially in its contemporary neoliberal guises. family background, and modes of femininity are full of con-
Like the Martiniquais across classes who perform “cre- tradiction; at every turn, Sheila signals her negotiation of the
ole economics,” as described by Browne (2004), these Barba- boundaries of respectability and reputation. Even her list of
dian entrepreneurs embrace goals long associated with rep- VIP clients signifies the intriguing appeal of reputation—
utation. Whereas Browne concludes that, for contemporary Mariah Carey and Mick Jagger are pinnacles of its success-
Martiniquais, “creole economics provides a way to express ful enactment, and Prince Andrew, in many ways, walks the
personal autonomy from the parent’s (France’s) rules with- tightrope of royal respectability and adventurous reputation.
out leaving home . . . opposition within complicity . . . [the Like many others I interviewed (men and women alike), she
ability] to assert their creole difference, oppose French describes herself as a maverick—a rebel of sorts in the con-
power, and all the while remain proudly French” (2004:213), servative Barbadian context in which “education is empha-
the grounds of opposition on the Barbadian stage have sized above and beyond all else” en route to a profession or
shifted. Whereas flexible, reputation-oriented practices of government job.
occupational multiplicity and entrepreneurship once stood Unlike Colleen and Dawn, and the many others who
in opposition to the dominant bureaucratically driven eco- have propelled themselves into the middle class, Sheila’s
nomic system, they are increasingly becoming central man- middle-class upbringing offered her opportunities that she
dates of the mainstream neoliberal economy. acknowledges as integral to her entrepreneurial success—
A case in point is that of Sheila, the 25-year-old owner of even as it also registers her failures in the conventionally val-
Red Carpet Express, a small company she started in 1999 af- ued realm of academic achievement. Sheila started the busi-
ter having worked as a marketing manager of a business soft- ness as a way of creating flexible hours to care for her young
ware company. Like most of the women I interviewed, Sheila daughter and a nephew she is raising as her own. Now that
describes her mother’s reaction to her leaving a “good”—that the business has grown, she employs a nanny–housekeeper
is, secure—job in a private, foreign-owned marketing firm in and enlists the occasional help of her mother to juggle her
favor of self-employment as one of bemusement and cha- busy work schedule with school pickups, dinner, and other
grin. Her family is steeped in some of the most valued signs of family responsibilities. In fact, she describes her business as
respectability, especially education—her father is a doctor, the best form of birth control—the long hours and the attrac-
her mother a secretary in the Ministry of Education; one aunt tive (sexy) and professional impression she must convey pre-
is a university professor, another a secretary in the prime cluding another pregnancy. Her active social life has helped
minister’s office. Nevertheless, reputation lurks around the her to gain the contacts she has needed to make her way,

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inventing from scratch a new entrepreneurial niche within with tension over maternal duty and a model of compan-
the tourism sector. They, in turn, have earned her privileged ionship and intimacy that eluded her. When her marriage
access in this sector and speak to her reputation—garnered no longer conformed to the partnership she desired, Sheila
during long nights in the public space of the airport. chose separation, which she described in emotionless terms
Having married young, having subsequently had one as she would a business deal gone bad, and then divorce and
child, and by employing a domestic worker, Sheila upholds shared custody as the logical solution. That she was not be-
some key indicators of respectability that were delicately holden to her husband as a primary breadwinner gave her
balanced in her own upbringing. Although, in the profes- the flexibility to end her marriage and pursue other romantic
sional realm, education and occupational status brought and business relations while continuing to rely on the paid
respectability to her mother and aunts, her absent father, services of nannies and maids and on her extended family
like Colleen’s, diminished her family’s claims on respectabil- to sustain her single household headship and business.29
ity. Entrepreneurship, in particular, the public nature of her For Sheila and for several other divorced or single en-
business, places Sheila firmly in the realm of reputation. She trepreneurial mothers I interviewed, and like the lower-class
is now separated from her husband and enjoys the less for- women described by Olive Senior (1991) and Y. T. Moses
mal “friendship” of an older man but is careful not to let peo- (1981), a “traditional” or patriarchal husband may offer fi-
ple know about the relationship. She described, with tremen- nancial support but still be seen as an impediment to the
dous emotion, the process of going to two banks to apply for flexible livelihood, sentiment, and partnered relationship
a mortgage for a house, to be financed entirely by herself, they seek. For middle-class entrepreneurial women, risk tak-
another of the primary signs of middle-class respectability. ing, innovation, travel, adapting to changing market niche
specializations, and other aspects of flexibility become inte-
We were still living under one roof but we knew we were grally connected to those practices more frequently associ-
going to separate so the plan was that when I bought ated with conventional respectability (saving, reinvesting in
the house, I would just move out and go into my new the company, relying on family networks and support, and,
home. He signed the document saying he has no claim in the household realm, assuming responsibility for all of
on the house . . . he has not contributed anything to the the domestic and child-care duties). They utilize modes of
house, he doesn’t want the house, whatever, and they reputation to gain economic resources with which to pro-
[the banks] would not accept it [my mortgage applica- cure some of the key markers of respectability, but, as both
tion]. They would not accept it. . . . I gave them my con-
Sheila and Colleen demonstrate, this can require a delicate
tracts from my hotels . . . my hotels are very good hotels,
balancing act. To leave the secure and respectable worlds of
well known hotels, and the [female bank manager] says,
“you know what . . . we will feel safer if your husband conventional employment and marriage and embrace en-
was guarantor.” Fine, I said, all right. They went through. trepreneurial reputation entails a new model of upward mo-
And then, to find out when the mortgage papers came bility and self-definition.
through that they had on [only] . . . my husband’s name. And the path is not a seamless one, as women confront
. . . My name was not even on the damn mortgage. I got wary arbiters of respectability. Colleen recounts a recent ex-
my lawyer to write them . . . but up to this day when I go perience on top of one of her adventure-business’s climbing
to pay my mortgage, it is not even in my name. poles “behind God’s back” on the island’s remote east coast.
Her self-confident and graceful climb to the top of the pole
With her repeated attempt to claim respectability in her demonstrates to her clients both a physical and a capitalist
own name, Sheila embodies a struggle that is at once about adventuring into new territory, quite literally manifested in
changing configurations of gender, class, marriage, and local the attainment of new heights.30 But her ascent is not with-
capitalist relations. Her story highlights the dialectical strug- out its critics, as she recalled: “This guy came up the gap
gle between reputation and respectability and the lengths to and he said to me, ‘What are you . . . what are you doing up
which entrepreneurs, women in particular, must go to off- there?! Don’t you know . . . you women . . . you always got a
set their participation in the realm of reputation with the problem . . . you don’t know your place. . . . ’ ‘You should be on
signs and symbols of respectability. She has utilized her well- the ground, you should be wearing a skirt!!’ I mean, he was
honed reputation to generate contacts, enhance her busi- livid, he was mad! And I said, ‘Don’t you think that those days
ness, and secure her own economic base with the respectable are gone!?’ ” As Wilson foreshadowed, “You have a barrel of
goals of home ownership and both economic and emotional crab and they start to climb. The one that climbs highest, all
security for her children. Her encounters with not one but the others are pulling him back. If he ever reached the top,
two female bank managers—themselves iconic gatekeep- he’d have to be a big, strong crab” (1973:back cover).
ers of respectability—are reminders, however, of the com- For Colleen and Sheila, like most of the women en-
plex ways in which the moral codes and boundaries of re- trepreneurs I have studied, this climb requires a careful em-
spectability can be enforced to serve the interest of an older brace of reputation polished with a veneer of respectabil-
patriarchal order. Her struggle over her marriage was fraught ity. As Senator Eastmond and other official proponents of

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neoliberalism pronounce, and as the entrepreneurs them- ganization. He or she is himself or herself and that per-
selves are quick to testify, business itself has become more son becomes a site for resource accumulation, education,
respectable, signaling reputation’s move from oppositional savings, . . . children . . . whatever. . . . People begin to think of
margins to the center. And this upward mobility of reputa- themselves as entrepreneurs” (Kirshner 1999:265). Whereas
tion is paralleled for some by their own class mobility, making self-invention and upward mobility are celebrated aspects
the enactment of a new entrepreneurial middle classness es- of these transformations, their enactments in the present
pecially notable. These boundaries, however, are in tension, era of neoliberalism are also burdens borne in large part by
and the fault lines are gendered, as is apparent for Colleen the individual. As critics have noted, the “reflexive project
and for Sheila. The female bank manager’s capacity to deny of the self” (Giddens 1991) or the “entrepreneur of the self”
Sheila her hard-won economic independence without the (du Guy 1996) increasingly mandated by “late-modernity”
sanction of marital status is powerfully expressed through demands
a denial of her very name. As Wilson himself cautioned, “A
concern for respect, for one’s good name, is always smol- the flexible and autonomous subject . . . to be able
dering. . . . ‘He who steals my purse steals trash, but he who to cope with constant change in work, income, and
steals my good name steals everything’ ” (1973:19). lifestyle and with constant insecurity. It is the flexible
and autonomous subject who negotiates, chooses, suc-
Flexibility, therefore, is not a smooth and open set
ceeds in the array of education and retraining that forms
of opportunities. As Ong has noted, it has simultaneously
the new “lifelong learning” and the “multiple career tra-
creative and repressive manifestations in the Pacific Rim, jectories” that have replaced the linear hierarchies . . . of
whereby contemporary globalization allows for freer move- the old economy. [Walkerdine 2003:240; see also
ment, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, for strict Kirshner 1999; Martin 1994]
state interventions through which “political rationality and
cultural mechanisms continue to deploy, discipline, regu- An intricate complex of psychological services, accord-
late, or civilize subjects in place or on the move” (1999:19). ing to Walkerdine (2003), now plays a central role in “prop-
In the convergent flexibilities of reputation and neoliber- ping up” this neoliberal, self-invented subject in contem-
alism, the constraints are gendered. For many Barbadian porary England. Interestingly, in the Barbadian context, one
women entrepreneurs, like Colleen and Sheila, the upward can trace similar reliance among middle-class entrepreneurs
mobility of reputation and the embrace of flexibility en- on very new services intended to salve the stresses and strug-
abled by entrepreneurship have certain limits. To join the gles of contemporary neoliberal life. New offices of “holistic”
entrepreneurial dance of reputation, the women must keep healing, “iridology,” nutritional counseling, psychological
one foot solidly in respectability—itself a changing field. and spiritual counseling, and couples therapy; yoga stu-
Indeed, the widespread participation in a range of al- dios, spas, gyms, personal trainers, and spiritual bookshops;
ternative “new age” and “livingroom” churches and spiri- and a rising popularity in self-help books for personal ful-
tual activities outside the conventional denominations is an fillment and success are all evidence of the increasing em-
intriguing dimension of these new entrepreneurs’ lives and phasis on self-mastery in the face of the uncertainties that
of the changing contours of respectability and reputation. come with global economic flexibility. They operate simul-
For some, the quest for a spiritual community in which they taneously as services provided to the middle classes to stave
can also establish business contacts leads them to choose off the burdens of flexibility and as a growth field of new
smaller and more intimate groups in which to pray, socialize entrepreneurial niches.
children, and derive concrete support for their new ventures. Middle-class entrepreneurs in Barbados today mark
Jeremy, one young entrepreneur specializing in graphic de- intriguing historical shifts in both the demographics of
sign and public information, is active as a parishioner in his and ideologies about business. On the one hand, a stigma
church and also designs PowerPoint sermons for his pastor, has been associated with business as a “nonrespectable”
who finds them powerful visual and spiritual tools for reach- path for the Afro-Barbadian majority, who have historically
ing his congregation. Whereas the “white Christian church” favored higher education as the route to upward mobility
was understood as a cornerstone for the maintenance of through the professions and an extensive civil service.31 On
respectability, reformulations of religious practices and in- the other hand, business has been viewed as the privileged
stitutions into more individualized, entrepreneurial forms preserve of a small, white family elite who were long seen
are indications of reputation’s reach into spheres once con- as nepotistic and impenetrable (Barrow and Greene 1979;
strued as outside its grasp. Beckles 1990; Karch 1982; Ryan and Barclay 1992). Whereas
The entrepreneurial aspiration is not just a structural petty traders, higglers, and hawkers are well-established
one related to business creation but also underlies the cre- historical icons of the lower classes, the opposite end of the
ation of entrepreneurial selves. In the contemporary neolib- spectrum—the corporate elite—has been a resilient symbol
eral era, Martin says, the middle-class individual ceases to of white domination within Barbadian society. Arguably, as
be a “cog in the machine, he’s not a bureaucrat in an or- a result of this polarization, the middle-class entrepreneur

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has been a shadowy figure in the cultural imagination, and respectability, is proving more resistant to capitalist global-
it is this growing fraction of society that occupies a space of ization than is the hitherto subaltern cultural counterpart of
increasing political optimism and of scholarly attention.32 reputation. And its resilience remains, as Wilson might well
As this group grows, it is taking on greater cultural salience, have predicted, in the symbolic domain of femininity and
and in so doing, blurring the traditional dichotomies. in the form of what he so provocatively called “crab antics.”
The new entrepreneurs I study are demonstrating that, As reputation becomes upwardly mobile, the mandate for
increasingly, reputation-oriented practices of flexibility are respectability periodically yanks some adventurous young
vital to middle-class livelihoods and a growing middle-class women back into what has long been understood to be their
idealization of economic autonomy and individuality in “proper place.” So, although women are overwhelmingly
Barbados, where middle-class domesticity and middle-class drawn to entrepreneurship in search of the gendered flex-
occupations were long thought to embody the quintessential ibility they desire, there are also limits to the flexibility they
signs of bureaucratic order and to be relatively impermeable may enact along gender lines. Their ability to achieve neolib-
to the forces of creolization or local cultural reformulation. eral flexibility is circumscribed by the gendered rigidity of
respectability—reinforcing the class–gender matrix in which
reputational flexibility is deemed permissible.33 In essence,
Dialectics of flexibility: Conclusions
women enact gendered expressions of what is perhaps a
and questions
more generalizable erosion of the communitas of reputa-
Flexibility lies at the heart of the Barbadian–Caribbean cul- tion as it moves from margins to center, from lower to middle
tural model of reputation, which was throughout the colo- classes, from survival mechanism to tool of capital accumu-
nial and new independence period a terrain of opposition. lation. The perpetual quest for “respect” amid the “corrosion
As a complex of tactics for articulating creativity, adventure of character” wrought by the flexibility of the new capitalism,
and performance, and self-worth and social cohesion, flex- according to Richard Sennett (1998, 2003), thus, has a par-
ibility’s relationship to state and global powers has shifted. ticular pathos in the neoliberal Caribbean context. The Bar-
And with this shift, the flexibility of reputation continues badian case simultaneously demonstrates that there is no
to broaden its locus of expression from the lower to the “absolute reign” of flexibility disengaged from the particu-
middle classes, just as the reputation of flexibility is exalted lars of culture. The efforts of the women entrepreneurs I have
(co-opted) among both national and global proponents described to achieve entrepreneurial flexibility are generat-
of neoliberal capitalism. The resiliency of respectability as ing both liberating and constraining effects and, in so doing,
a powerful gatekeeping force, however, especially within are redefining the dialectics of reputation–respectability in
Barbadian middle-class life, makes the pursuit of en- Barbados and the cultural meanings of neoliberalism itself.
trepreneurship a challenging tightrope, especially for
women who attempt to blend these logics of flexibility. Notes
Reputation–respectability was primarily a cultural
Acknowledgments. The fieldwork that forms the basis for this
model framed in response to what Wilson saw as an unfor-
article was conducted between 1999 and 2006. Interviews were con-
tunate dominance of economic analysis of Caribbean social ducted in 1999 and in 2001 in collaboration with Katherine Browne
life, but Wilson also envisioned this model as offering tan- as part of a comparative study of gender and entrepreneurship in
gible direction for social and economic planning. What he Martinique, Barbados, and Puerto Rico, with the support of the Na-
imagined was a Caribbean future in which the authentic- tional Science Foundation (NSF). Ongoing interviews and research
have been supported by Emory University’s Center on Myth and
ity of reputation would reign in social and economic are-
Ritual in American Life (MARIAL), supported by the Alfred P. Sloan
nas. Ironically, perhaps, the case I describe, of Barbadian Foundation, and the Institute for Comparative and International
middle-class entrepreneurs, could be interpreted as a real- Studies (ICIS) at Emory University. I thank Katherine Browne, NSF,
ization of Wilson’s dream—the ascendance of reputation. ICIS, Bradd Shore, and the MARIAL Center for their generous sup-
But this ascendancy contains a notable paradox—the lib- port and input. I wish to thank, as well, several generous colleagues
whose close readings and spirited discussion of these arguments
erating power of reputation has been dragooned into the
and cases have enhanced this work and are greatly appreciated.
service of global capitalism. One is, therefore, left to wonder Many thanks to Joanna Davidson, Virginia Dominguez, Robert God-
if, in its new neoliberal guise, entrepreneurial reputation is dard, Carla Jones, Csilla Kalocsai, Cory Kratz, Ivan Karp, Aisha Khan,
also becoming unmoored from its purported ethic of com- Bruce Knauft, Viranjini Munasinghe, David Nugent, Gul Ozyegin,
munitas. In this case, the middle classes are adopting en- and Michael Peletz.
1. David Harvey has recently said,
trepreneurial tactics and mobilizing what were understood
to be counterhegemonic cultural practices to adapt to the The process of proletarianization . . . entails a mix of co-
demands of the latest wave of capitalist globalization, the ercions and appropriations of pre-capitalist skills, social
relations, knowledges, habits of mind, and beliefs on the
neoliberal revolution of the last few decades. By a curious part of those being proletarianized. Kinship structures, fa-
inversion, what Wilson took to be the privileged instrument milial and household arrangements, gender and author-
of metropolitan ideological control, the value orientation of ity relations (including those exercised through religion

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and its institutions), all have their part to play. In some Marital or union flexibility, and the ability to “shift” or move chil-
instances the pre-existing structures have to be violently re- dren to different households for their upbringing, like occupational
pressed as inconsistent with labour under capitalism, but flexibility, has been a critical dimension of lower-class Caribbean
multiple accounts now exist to suggest that they are just as life.
likely to be co-opted in an attempt to forge some consensual 11. As some have noted, this historical characterization of the
as opposed to coercive basis for working-class formation. Caribbean family as female headed referred exclusively to the Afro-
[2005:147, emphasis added] Caribbean populations and tended to leave unexamined other
The expansion of entrepreneurship within the Barba- groups (e.g., Indo-Caribbean, Chinese, whites, etc.; Barrow 1996;
dian middle class, and the upward mobility of reputation, Reddock 1994). See also Barriteau 1998.
I would argue, demonstrates that this process is not re- 12. For discussions of occupational multiplicity and economic
stricted to the proletariat and that its transformative pro- flexibility, see Comitas 1964, Carnegie 1987, Katzin 1959, Mintz 1971,
cess is not a generic one. and Trouillot 1992.
13. Browne’s (2004) recent work on the informal sector in Mar-
2. Its GDP per capita is $15,720, just below that of the Czech tinique, and what is locally referred to as the “debrouillard” or “de-
Republic. brouillardism,” that is, the range of informal economic activities
3. Harvey (2005:2) similarly notes the inextricable connections enacted “off the books,” powerfully demonstrates that these activi-
between entrepreneurship and neoliberalism in his recent history ties are not confined to the poor and are not restricted to economic
of neoliberalism. “survival” but, for many, are proud expressions of creole life.
4. Indeed, the almost complete erasure of the low-level data- 14. The country higgler is a key figure in the Caribbean: a market
processing industry I studied in Barbados between 1989 and 1993 intermediary, usually a woman, who buys produce and foodstuffs
at a once-bustling facility in Bridgetown, and before it, the rise and from multiple growers in the country and resells them in town,
fall of computer-chip assembly for INTEL in the same location are bringing back and forth not only goods but also news and gossip
visible local reminders of the costs of neoliberal flexibility. between rural and urban spheres (Katzin 1959; Mintz 1955).
5. As Ong (1999:19) has observed, flexibility and movement, once The higgler was not the only powerful image of autonomous fem-
coerced and resisted, are now, under global capitalism, goals pur- ininity in the realm of reputation in Barbados and the West Indies.
sued among the Chinese elites. For many in Barbados, flexibility is Anthony Trollope wrote in 1860 that “hotels in the British west In-
both a goal and a vehicle through which to achieve class mobility. In dies are always kept by fat coloured ladies who have no husbands”
Ong’s case, class privilege facilitates the capacity to enjoy flexibility, (1860:206), and in Barbados, few historical images are as well-known
whereas in the Barbadian case, reputational flexibility is a tool with and revered as the engraving by English artist Thomas Rowlandson
which to garner upward mobility. Many have noted a growing em- of “Rachel Pringle of Barbadoes,” the first known freedwoman to
phasis on flexibility as a key dimension of expanding entrepreneur- hold proprietorship over a hotel in Bridgetown. The image remains
ship in other parts of the world (Ong 1999; Sloane 1999). Again, an iconic referent to women’s entrepreneurial past—in which they
Trouillot’s urging to examine the “particulars hidden by sameness” were notable for their buxom prowess and feisty business acumen
inspires this effort to explore historical and cultural underpinnings as well as for transgressing the lines of respectability, as hotels often
such that the otherwise hidden manifestations of similarities, in this doubled as houses of prostitution (Carrington et al. 2003:158).
Barbadian case, for instance, the gendered minefield of reputation– 15. Indeed, it was precisely the lack of intimate partnership that
respectability, can be elucidated. led several of the women entrepreneurs I interviewed (including
6. Daniel Miller (1994) and Karen F. Olwig (1993) have offered Sheila) to end their marriages.
refinements to the paradigm that also demonstrate the dynamic 16. Although the scope of this article does not permit a length-
development of respectability as well as reputation within the cre- ier discussion here, these new middle-class churches demonstrate
olization process. Olwig has offered the most dramatic reworking new articulations of reputation–respectability in a range of forms
of Wilson’s paradigm for the case of Nevis, historically rooting rep- and practices that depart from those of the mainline churches, for
utation in the traditions “brought by English small farmers to the example, informal dress, popular music, the occurrence of spirit
early colonial society of the seventeenth century” and respectability possession and speaking in tongues, and so on.
in the “institutions which English missionaries established on the 17. The experience of white women in Barbados represents an
island in the late eighteenth century” (1993:133). especially intriguing gap in the scholarly record, and its examination
7. Wilson (1973:104–105) distinguishes the pernicious force of the would focus a powerful lens on the intersections and contradictions
white Christian churches, especially those brought by U.S. mission- of race, gender, and class, a theme I explore in the larger project.
aries, from the more synchretized, black churches, which he de- 18. Wilson concludes by saying,
scribes as more sacred, more male, and with more potential to serve
as vehicles for political force, as exemplified by the Rastafarian sect There exists in Caribbean societies an egalitarian value
in Jamaica. system [reputation] which has hitherto remained subor-
8. The cultural value system of reputation is not understood to be dinate to a class system but which has come into existence
exclusive to the Caribbean but, as Wilson put it, is “most typical of and has maintained itself by opposition to that class sys-
small colonial or quasi-colonial societies” (1973:235). tem. With the demise of colonial society . . . the egalitar-
9. See Olwig 2002 for recent research tracing transnational ian system now has the opportunity to emerge into social
Caribbean kin networks. self-consciousness and social dominance. . . . I urge that
10. Visiting union refers to a fluid romantic union in which part- Caribbean societies become conscious of their true, their
ners do not share a permanent residence. Their relationship is rec- own social nature [reputation], for it is surely this that they
ognized, however, and they often have offspring. Flexibility in sexual must develop. [1973:235]
relationships has been bemoaned but endured by women caught in
a sexual double standard that permits men “outside” relations and 19. The Barbadian middle class has seldom been the focus of ex-
has led lower-class women to employ their own model of “flexibil- tensive historical or contemporary study. For works on Caribbean
ity” through which they gamble for economic and loving support middle classes, see Alexander 1977, 1984; Austin 1984; Douglass
from different fathers for their children (Barrow 1996; Senior 1991). 1992; Karch 1982, 1985; Martinez-Alier 1989; Olwig 1990, 1993; Smith

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1956, 1988; and for acknowledgement of their absence from ade- cess of Barbados, he asserts that this prosperity is predicated on
quate study, see James 1984. For other historical, ethnographic, and a “racial contract” in which “white Barbadians and foreign whites
theoretical works that have offered me critical analytical frameworks dominate the corporate economy” (Robotham 2000:7–8). In other
for analyzing the middle classes, see Davidoff and Hall 1987, Florida words, like the Jamaican case, although business ownership in small
2002, Mills 1956, Ortner 1998, Simmel 1971, Veblen 1953, and Weber and medium-sized firms has increased considerably, the control of
1958. the large corporations is still in white or brown (local and foreign)
20. Guyana, Suriname, Belize, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados hands (Robotham 2000:14). See also Beckles 1990 and Barriteau
launched the single market in January, with the goal of facilitating 2001.
the free movement of goods, services, and skilled workers between 33. Of course, race enters this matrix as well. Nevertheless, among
CSME members. black and white women entrepreneurs in Barbados, I found the ide-
21. Dunn 2004 provides a rich description of the shifting ideolo- ological and practical negotiations of reputation and respectability
gies of stability to flexibility with the expansion of capitalism within to be remarkably similar and surmise that gender (femininity) is es-
socialist Poland. pecially critical and analytically not well examined in framing the
22. The Barbados government provided support to the Enterprise entrepreneurial experience.
Growth Fund Ltd. in conjunction with contributions from the pri-
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