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Creole Economics : Caribbean Cunning under the French Flag / Katherine E. Browne.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Austin : University of Texas Press, [2021]Copyright date: ©2004Description: 1 online resource (291 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780292797345
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 330 22
LOC classification:
  • HD2346.M37B76 2005
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part one: Groundings -- Chapter 1 Elements -- Chapter 2 Social Histories: The Weight of France in Martinique -- Part two: Frameworks -- Chapter 3 Cultural Economies: Relating Social Values to Economic Theory in Martinique -- Chapter 4 Afro-Caribbean Identities: Postcolonial Tensions and Martinique’s Creole Débrouillard -- Part three: Practices -- Chapter 5 Adaptations of Cunning: The Changing Forms of Débrouillardism -- Chapter 6 Opportunism by Class: The Profit and Status of Undeclared Work -- Chapter 7 Women, Men, and Economic Practice: Different Routes to Autonomy and Status -- Epilogue Imagining the Future of Creole Economics -- Notes -- Glossary -- References Cited -- Index
Summary: What do the trickster Rabbit, slave descendants, off-the-books economies, and French citizens have to do with each other? Plenty, says Katherine Browne in her anthropological investigation of the informal economy in the Caribbean island of Martinique. She begins with a question: Why, after more than three hundred years as colonial subjects of France, did the residents of Martinique opt in 1946 to integrate fully with France, the very nation that had enslaved their ancestors? The author suggests that the choice to decline sovereignty reflects the same clear-headed opportunism that defines successful, crafty, and illicit entrepreneurs who work off the books in Martinique today. Browne draws on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork and interview data from all socioeconomic sectors to question the common understanding of informal economies as culture-free, survival strategies of the poor. Anchoring her own insights to longer historical and literary views, the author shows how adaptations of cunning have been reinforced since the days of plantation slavery. These adaptations occur, not in spite of French economic and political control, but rather because of it. Powered by the "essential tensions" of maintaining French and Creole identities, the practice of creole economics provides both assertion of and refuge from the difficulties of being dark-skinned and French. This powerful ethnographic study shows how local economic meanings and plural identities help explain work off the books. Like creole language and music, creole economics expresses an irreducibly complex blend of historical, contemporary, and cultural influences.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780292797345

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part one: Groundings -- Chapter 1 Elements -- Chapter 2 Social Histories: The Weight of France in Martinique -- Part two: Frameworks -- Chapter 3 Cultural Economies: Relating Social Values to Economic Theory in Martinique -- Chapter 4 Afro-Caribbean Identities: Postcolonial Tensions and Martinique’s Creole Débrouillard -- Part three: Practices -- Chapter 5 Adaptations of Cunning: The Changing Forms of Débrouillardism -- Chapter 6 Opportunism by Class: The Profit and Status of Undeclared Work -- Chapter 7 Women, Men, and Economic Practice: Different Routes to Autonomy and Status -- Epilogue Imagining the Future of Creole Economics -- Notes -- Glossary -- References Cited -- Index

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http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

What do the trickster Rabbit, slave descendants, off-the-books economies, and French citizens have to do with each other? Plenty, says Katherine Browne in her anthropological investigation of the informal economy in the Caribbean island of Martinique. She begins with a question: Why, after more than three hundred years as colonial subjects of France, did the residents of Martinique opt in 1946 to integrate fully with France, the very nation that had enslaved their ancestors? The author suggests that the choice to decline sovereignty reflects the same clear-headed opportunism that defines successful, crafty, and illicit entrepreneurs who work off the books in Martinique today. Browne draws on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork and interview data from all socioeconomic sectors to question the common understanding of informal economies as culture-free, survival strategies of the poor. Anchoring her own insights to longer historical and literary views, the author shows how adaptations of cunning have been reinforced since the days of plantation slavery. These adaptations occur, not in spite of French economic and political control, but rather because of it. Powered by the "essential tensions" of maintaining French and Creole identities, the practice of creole economics provides both assertion of and refuge from the difficulties of being dark-skinned and French. This powerful ethnographic study shows how local economic meanings and plural identities help explain work off the books. Like creole language and music, creole economics expresses an irreducibly complex blend of historical, contemporary, and cultural influences.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Apr 2022)