Community Economies in the Global South: Case Studies of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations and Economic Cooperation

People across the globe engage in social and solidarity economics to help themselves, their community, and society on their own terms. Community Economies in the Global South examines how people who conscientiously organize rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) bring positive changes to their own lives as well as others. ROSCAs are a long-established and well documented practice, especially those organized by women of colour. Members make regular deposits to a fund as a savings that is then given in whole or in part to each member in turn based on group economics. This book spotlights women in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia who organize and use these associations, composed of ordinary people belonging to similar class origins who decide jointly on the rules to suit the interests of their members. The case studies show how they vary greatly across countries in the Global South, demonstrating that ROSCAs are living proof that diverse community economies do exist and have been around for a very long time. The contributors recount stories of the self-help, activism, and perseverance of racialized people in order to push for ethical, community-focused business, and to hold onto local knowledge, grounded theory, and lived experience, reducing the need to rely on external funding as people find ways to finance sustainable, debt-free business ventures. The first collection on this topic edited by two women of colour with roots in the Global South, this volume is a rallying call to other scholar-activists to study and report on how racialized people come together, pool goods, and diversify business in the Global South.

Table of Contents:
Preface Naila Kabeer: Foreword 1: Caroline Shenaz Hossein and Christabell P.J.: An Introduction: ROSCAs as Living Proof of Diverse Community Economies I Latin America and the Caribbean 2: Belinda Román, Samiré Adam, and Ana Paula Saravia: Learning about Money Cooperatives: The Modern Juntas in Peru 3: Caroline Shenaz Hossein: Caribbean Women s Use of Susu, Partner, Sol and Box-hand as Quiet Resistance II Africa 4: Salewa Olawoye-Mann: Alajo Shomolu: Money, Credit and Banking the Nigerian Ajo Way 5: Samuel Kwaku Bonsu: Mother, Here Is Your Stone: The Story of Susu in Ghana 6: Ann Armstrong: Stokvels: A South African Innovation in Economic Justice for Women 7: Haddy Njie: Community Building and Ubuntu: Using Osusu in the Kangbeng-Kafoo Women s Group in The Gambia III South East Asia and India 8: Istvan Rado and Seri Thongmak: A Quiet Resistance: Karen Woman Entrepreneurs Leading Savings Groups in Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand 9: Ririn Haryani and Kelly Dombroski: Arisan: Producing Economies of Care in Yogyakarta, Indonesia 10: Nga Dao: Money Pool (Hụi/Họ) in the Mekong Delta: An Old Way of Doing Finance in Rural Vietnam 11: Christabell P.J.: Keralite Women s Collective Finance in South India: The Kudumbashree Movement and Indigenous Finance 12: Caroline Shenaz Hossein and Mary Njeri Kinyanjui: Conclusion: Indigeneity, Politicized Consciousness and Lived Experience in Community Economies

About the Author :
Caroline Shenaz Hossein is Associate Professor of Global Development and Political Science at the Department of Global Development Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough. She is the author of the award winning Politicized Microfinance: Money, Power, and Violence in the Black Americas (University of Toronto Press, 2016). She is the editor of The Black Social Economy: Exploring Community-Based Diverse Markets (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). She is the Founder of the Diverse Solidarity Economies Collective. Christabell P.J. is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Kerala. She has held faculty positions at a number of institutions in India and at the University of Gondar, Ethiopia. She is the author of Women Empowerment Through Capacity Building: The Role of Micro-Finance (Concept, 2009) and Inclusive Growth Through Social Capital Formation: Is Microfinance an Effective Tool for Targeting Women? (Concept, 2016), and has contributed chapters to edited volumes, published research papers in academic journals, and written popular articles in magazines.

Review :
The volume masterfully attends to a multiplicity of power and social difference, yielding only to the fecund and prolific heterogeneity of practice and demonstrating by example a more ethical practice of scholarship. Community Economies in the Global South is a volume of empirical and narrative-based studies of the varied ways people, specifically women in Latin America, Africa and Asia organize themselves collectively into indigenous finance popularly known as Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs)...This work is an important methodological intervention into, and contribution to, knowledge production relating to the Global South. The book is a success in prompting the reader to rethink multiple forms of community economies...The book enables the imagination of the emergence of 'dual power', a condition when these organic peoples' institutions come together and expand into new political structures and spaces of new consciousness. The book is a success in prompting the reader to rethink multiple forms of community economies...The book enables the imagination of the emergence of 'dual power', a condition when these organic peoples' institutions come together and expand into new political structures and spaces of new consciousness. The book is a success in prompting the reader to rethink multiple forms of community economies...The book enables the imagination of the emergence of 'dual power', a condition when these organic peoples' institutions come together and expand into new political structures and spaces of new consciousness.