Medium Post
How might paying attention to sound/soundscapes help us think about all of the ways that capitalism destroys our relationships with each other, as well as about how people continue to form new relationships with each other? Think about this question by engaging Goffe’s concept of extra-coloniality. How might our understanding of Honolulu’s Chinatown change if we engaged this question of sound?
There are two elements that sound/soundscapesthe sound system and the China Shop which has contributed to how aspects of capitalism either destroys or builds relationships between parties. In context to China’s relations with Jamaica, the sound system resulted in the cultivation of reggae music culture and radio which in combination with sonic technology and retail, spreads through the region in the form of the China Shop. At the same, it is the eventual nature of the China Shop, a lesser-known element but still significant all the same, which also caused Jamaica to fall into debt to China, resulting in tension between the two states. Thus, creates this complicated strained symbiotic partnership.
In terms of Jamaica’s association with capitalism, the people were already placed at a disadvantage, being enslaved by imperial nations such as Britain and United States along with other individuals of African decent. Commonly, the Chinese were similar in terms of racialized labor or buffer when slavery was banned (Goffe, 100). This is an example of capitalism destroying relations. The very nature of imperial nations and colonialism is through capitalism where anything or anyone tangible has value. In addition to the western mentality of racial superiority, any that these nations deemed foreign or not of their general understanding will be treated like commodity. China, in context to this situation, played both roles of being in advantage and disadvantage in aspect to colonialism and capitalism.
China’s case in racial inferiority is no different to Jamaica having experience similar treatment of labor due to being racially inferior in perspective to imperial western nations. However, it is the very aspect of this shared aspect of inferiority between Jamaica and China that allowed the two to develop a partnership in aspect to the sound system and China Shop. Jamaica develops a homegrown sound system technology and engineering. China promotes with retailed marketing that has spread across regions of Jamaica, in the form of the China Shop. As a result, as said before, the love child that is the reggae music and musical luxury (125). The China Shop becomes a network of common labor practices, one of familial dependence, that helps form the entertainment industry within Jamaica.
However, China is no immune to capital flagging. Considering political unrest between the early 1920s to mid-1960s, China’s China Shop infrastructure has been the target of unfair profiting off the Jamaican people, like a lover’s spat. Much of the suspicion directed to China’s infrastructure was due to the exploitation of Jamaica’s natural resources which lead to the nation owing a large sum of debt to the Chinese government, extra-colonialism (126). As a result, many questions regarding the relationship between culture and capitalism. One of the main questions regards the legitimacy of culture when capital and infrastructure fundamentally funds it to continue its influence and who should fund it.
When applying this understanding to that of Honolulu’s Chinatown, the process, and things regarding such plays no difference. The aspect of China’s infrastructure, Chinatown, is a networking element much like that of Jamaica’s China Shop. The networking of Chinatown plays a part in spreading and expanding an aspect of Honolulu’s culture-political system. In this case, it is to address the declining native population and the affect of war in context of the kingdom. However, considering such the Chinese government was once more in the position where relations are strained between the natives and themselves due to resource exploitation to continue infrastructure.
In other words, China while sharing aspects of being racially inferior and being a buffer that replaces original exploits of imperial nations and colonial aftermath, also has extra-colonial advantage through retail networking that results in this dependency between the colonized region and China. Additionally, China is also an imperial country itself, therefore it has shared elements of colonialism such as those of the west. The reason China does not entirely share the seat with west is due to racial inferiority compared to the west, especially in political conflicts and tensions. As a result, China has this complicated relationship with the colonizers and colonies. It is both a colonizer and the colonized in aspect to capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism.
