The Black Social Economy in the Americas: Exploring Diverse Community-Based Markets

Chapter 6 – The Everyday Black Social Economy of Afro-Descendents in the Chocó, Colombia

By Daniel Tubb

Palgrave 2018

This chapter is part of the first ever in-depth exploration of the Black social economy in the Americas. It is one of ten case studies from Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America. Caroline Shenaz Hossein’s pioneering book explores the meaning of the term “Black social economy,” a self-help sector that remains autonomous from the state and business sectors. With the Western Hemisphere’s ignoble history of enslavement and violence towards African peoples and the strong anti-black racism that still pervades society, the African diaspora in the Americas has turned to alternative practices of socio-economic organization. Conscientious and collective organizing is thus a means of creating meaningful livelihoods. The chapter by Daniel Tubb (Anthropology, UNB Fredericton), explores the tension between the politics of Black communities in the Colombian Pacific and, by extension, formal group economic cooperation, and the everyday strategies of group economic activity. Recognizing the tension, however, does not preclude taking up the call to study informal and quotidian forms of group economic activity. This chapter assembles everyday diverse forms of economic practice, unmediated either by social movement politics or the private sector, to explore the Black social economy through the ways rural Black peasants work together in the Colombian Pacific province of the Chocó.

https://www.palgrave.com/br/book/9781137602787