Abstract
E. Christie. Resisting Economies Of Oppression: Invoking Experience, Imagination, and Identity for Addressing Issues of Eco-Social Exploitation and Harm in the Post-Colonial State, 147 pages, 1 table, 22 figures, 2025, APA style guide used.
This dissertation examines the exploitation of bodies through what I identify as the trifecta of oppression that constitutes white heterosexist and homogenizing economies. The trifecta includes systems of capitalism, colonization and enslavement and operates through process of assimilation, social stratification and marginalization. A postcolonial approach was used to discuss the rights and freedoms that are missing from governance frameworks (broadly understood), and thus what cultures exist through the direct or diffused support of legal frameworks which serve to delegitimize the existence of peoples whose peculiarities aren’t captured within such frameworks. Across three manuscripts, identity is used as the primary frame to understand how politicization and weaponization of attributes toward the goal of achieving social order marginalizes and disenfranchises those who are seen as ‘the other’ and is therefore understood the central location of conflict involving visibly differentiated bodies. The first manuscript frames social determinants of transgender health in Jamaica as a direct outcome of the sociolegal contexts which have created a culture of homophobia and its associated anti-trans ideologies impacting health seeking behaviors and outcomes of trans peoples. The second manuscript shows how anti-Black legislation passed over the course of Jamaica’s colonial history has been used to disenfranchise the Maroon Jamaicans and has created the situation where there is currently no legal recognition of Maroon Indigeneity in Jamaica. The third manuscript provides, through the development of an energy centrality theorem (ECT), an additional frame for understanding the exploitation of fossil fuel and overproduction of greenhouse gases as an assault on the Earth, who, by virtue of her stateless status, has very little opportunities for redress. With this theorem, climate change is therefore understood as extreme form of resistance to economic oppression.
Keywords: resistance, climate change, Jamaica, Maroon, transgender, healthcare