Visibility as concealment: Informal football matches and wealth disparities in rural Jamaica (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Every weekday evening men from Black River (a coastal Jamaican town) and the nearby communities of New Town, Logwood, and Spring Park play ‘pick‐up ball’ (informal football matches) together. Some of the players are wealthy and well educated and are respected in the communities. Others are unemployed, dependent upon relatives, wives, girlfriends, or cash‐in hand employment opportunities for subsistence. My presentation proceeds from the question: why do these groups play football together? I argue that men of higher socioeconomic status aim to counteract disparities in the economic sphere with competition in the social sphere. By visibly mixing and competing with men of different socioeconomic statuses, wealthier men aim to conceal these disparities. My work proceeds from an understanding of Jamaica as a country with significant and growing inequalities of wealth and class. By looking at the social lives of higher class men in Black River, I argue that these men aim to negotiate potentially volatile socioeconomic conditions through competition and ‘strategic socializing.’ In a sense, these men aim to conceal socioeconomic disparities by making themselves visible as individuals.     

ESR dating of the Neanderthal site, Kebara Cave, Israel

In 1985 a Neanderthal skeleton was found in the cave of Kebara in southern Mt. Carmel. Electron spin resonance (ESR) dates have been obtained on tooth enamel of gazelles found in layer X, just overlying the layer in which the skeleton was found. Assuming early uptake of uranium by the teeth, they yield an age of 60 ± 6 ka; assuming gradual, linear uptake of uranium yields an age of 64 ± 6 ka. Both age estimates are consistent with a previous estimate for the skeleton, based on TL dating of burnt flint, of 60 ± 4 ka.