Doing 'What Wisdom Dictates': Localized Forms of Citizenship, 'Livity', and the Use of Violence in the 'Commons'

Abstract

Threats to national and sub-national security remain a significant challenge for Jamaica. Most studies which seek to understand this phenomenon have focussed on Kingston's garrison constituencies. This article examines the construction of security at the local level using interviews which were conducted in Bucknor - a small community in Clarendon - which most residents have come to define as a 'garrison'. The article demonstrates how localised ideas of citizenship and political identity shape attitudes towards violence, individualism and policing. The community has become an important site for contesting, resisting and reinforcing established power as well as for re-narrating dominant discourses in Jamaican society. While the state has sought to assert its legitimacy in the community through 'social intervention', there is still a need to address, in a more sustainable way, the social and structural issues which affect the well-being of members of the community, threaten law and order, and pose a direct challenge to rational-legal authority through the Jamaican state.