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Sensing Difference: Whiteness, National Identity, and Belonging in the Dominican Republic
Author(s) -
Hazel Yadira Perez
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
transforming anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.325
H-Index - 9
eISSN - 1548-7466
pISSN - 1051-0559
DOI - 10.1111/traa.12033
Subject(s) - citizenship , sociology , gender studies , national identity , state (computer science) , power (physics) , identity (music) , ethnography , relation (database) , duty , law , aesthetics , political science , politics , anthropology , philosophy , physics , database , computer science , algorithm , quantum mechanics
This article examines local conversations and practice of using the senses—sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing—to detect difference and establish belonging and non‐belonging on streets and private spaces in the Dominican Republic. The physiological capacity for Dominicans to sense difference is culturally and politically filled by national, regional, and often under researched local understandings and practices that attempt to define “ambiguous notions of” national identity and whiteness. Drawing on 10 years of ethnographic data and personal encounters in the field and situating them within Post‐September 2013 Constitutional Court ruling, I argue that through an examinations of these moments of negotiable belonging a nuanced understanding of Dominican national identity and its relation to whiteness, race, class, and gender emerges, one that goes beyond questions of citizenship rights and civil duty—matters that lie within the state and its institutions—to encounters in the streets among individuals whose actions at times consolidate and naturalize state power and national discourse, and at other times, contradict and challenge it .