On ‘Bad Mind’

Abstract

In this chapter, the author listens to a cry of exasperation heard anywhere and everywhere on the ‘street’ and in the ‘yard’ in Jamaica. Not just ‘bad mind’, but ‘sympathy’, ‘love’ and ‘righteousness’ are everyday words in the language of moral sentiment for Jamaicans deployed to value people’s intentions. Here, then, is a chance to open a conversation between contemporary Jamaican street life and Adam Smith’s theory of sentiment. The author reconsiders, the puzzle Adam Smith bequeathed contemporary anthropology with his Theory of Moral Sentiments, by exploring the schemas and moments of self and sentiment that form an imaginative background to the ‘sympathy’, ‘righteousness’ and ‘bad mind’ foregrounded in Jamaican street speech. As concepts, ‘sympathy’ and ‘bad mind’ correspond to knowledge and potentials those individuals possess which they can deploy to create effects on, between and in, others.