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.

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.

Reviews
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. * James Patriquin, Carleton University, Canadian Journal of Nonprofit and Social Economy Research *
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. * Swetarani Tripathy, Jahawar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi, LSE Review of Books *
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. * Ananyo Mukherjee, The Journal of Development Studies *
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. * Ananyo Mukherjee, The Journal of Development Studies *
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. * Ananyo Mukherjee, The Journal of Development Studies *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198865629
Author Caroline Shenaz Hossein
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 562g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 160mm * 20mm