This 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. In this volume, fourteen scholars explore the concept of the ¿Black social economy,¿ bringing together innovative research on the lived experience of Afro-descendants in business and society in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, and the United States. The case studies in this book feature horrific legacies of enslavement, colonization, and racism, and they recount the myriad ways that persons of African heritage have built humane alternatives to the dominant market economy that excludes them. Together, they shed necessary light on the ways in which the Black race has been overlooked in the social economy literature.

1. Daring to Conceptualize the Black Social Economy

Caroline Shenaz Hossein

2. Revisiting Ideas and Ideologies in African American Social Economy: From the Past Forward

Sanjukta Banerji Bhattacharya

3. Drawing on the Lived Experience of African Canadians: Using Money Pools to Combat Social and Business Exclusion

Caroline Shenaz Hossein and Ginelle Skerritt

4. The Social Economy in a Jamaican Perspective

K'adamawe K'nife, Edward Dixon, and Michael Marshall

5. Building Economic Solidarity: Caribbean ROSCAs in Jamaica, Guyana and Haiti

Caroline Shenaz Hossein

6. The Everyday Social Economy of Afro-descendants in the Chocó, Colombia

Daniel G. L. Tubb

7. The Social Economy of Afro-Argentines and African Descendants in Buenos Aires

Prisca Gayles and Diane Ghogomu

8. Commerce, Culture, and Community: African Brazilian Women Negotiating Their Social Economies

Tiffany Y. Boyd-Adams

9. The Quilombolas' Refuge in Brazil: Social Economy, Communal Space and Shared Identity

Simone Bohn and Patricia Krieger Grossi

10. Conclusion: Black life in the Americas: Economic Resources, Cultural Endowment, and Communal Solidarity

Carl James

Caroline Shenaz Hossein is Associate Professor of Business & Society in the Department of Social Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. She holds a PhD in Political Science (University of Toronto), an MPA (Cornell University), an LL.B (University of Kent at Canterbury), and BA (Saint Mary's University, Halifax). She is the author of
Politicized Microfinance: Money, Power and Violence in the Black Americas
and co-editor of
Business & Society: A Critical Introduction.