Research summary
Around the world, lived experiences of racism drive Black people to organize mutual aid, collectives and rotating savings and credit associations to counteract the fact that they are often excluded from the business world. Cooperatives and other solidarity economies (which prioritize social profitability over purely financial profits) thrive among Black and other marginalized communities because these communities are often not fully integrated into the modern capitalist economy.
As Canada Research Chair in Africana Development and Feminist Political Economy, Dr. Caroline Hossein is influencing how we “do” international development by drawing on the lived experiences of co-operators in the African diaspora to provoke a radical paradigm shift in mainstream political economy. She and her research team are working with an international collective to design principles, create new knowledge, and build support for Black-led informal institutions rooted in mutuality and reciprocity.