Brand Jamaica

Reimagining a National Image and Identity

Hume Johnson, Kamille Gentles-Peart

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781496217486
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Brand Jamaica is an empirical look at the postindependence national image and branding project of Jamaica within the context of nation-branding practices at large. Although a tiny Caribbean island inhabited by only 2.8 million people, Jamaica commands a remarkably large presence on the world stage. Formerly a colony of Britain and shaped by centuries of slavery, violence, and plunder, today Jamaica owes its popular global standing to a massively successful troika of brands: music, sports, and destination tourism. At the same time, extensive media attention focused on its internal political civil war, mushrooming violent crime, inflation, unemployment, poverty, and abuse ofhuman rights have led to perceptions of the country as unsafe. Brand Jamaica explores the current practices of branding Jamaica, particularly within the context of postcoloniality, reconciles the lived realities of Jamaicans with the contemporary image of Jamaica projected to the world, and deconstructs the current tourism model of sun, sand, and sea. Hume Johnson and Kamille Gentles-Peart bring together multidisciplinary perspectives that interrogate various aspects of Jamaican national identity and the dominant paradigm by which it has been shaped.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Between Fame and Infamy
• 2. Branding the Nation
• 3. Women of “Paradise”
• 4. Brand Jamaica and the Economic Cost of Homophobia
• 5. An (Un)easy Sell
• 6. Brand Kingston
• 7. Hold On to What You Got
• Final Thoughts
• References
• List of Contributors
• Index
• About Hume Johnson
• About Kamille Gentles-Peart