Throughout the post-slavery Caribbean, former slaves and masters fought to determine the shape of the new free societies. Urban areas - with their growing populations and vibrant Afro-creole culture - were often the sites of these struggles. In Order and Place in a Colonial City Juanita De Barros explores the conflicting visions of public areas held by local political and economic elites and by non-white urban poor in Georgetown, British Guiana, demonstrating that the period of study was marked by class and racial tensions as the social and political landscape of the city changed significantly.

The elites saw the city's markets and streets as dirty, filled with dangerous non-white crowds. The poor saw these public places as sites of play and livelihood. De Barros shows how these opposing views set the stage for a series of petty disputes and large-scale riots. The "little traditions" of Georgetown's multi-racial and multi-ethnic urban poor helped create a creole view of public spaces, articulated in the course of struggle. By uncovering the popular cultural patterns that underlay much of this unrest, De Barros demonstrates both their place within a larger West Indian cultural paradigm and the emergence of a peculiarly Guianese ritual of protest.