Making Popular and Solidarity Economies in Dollarized Ecuador PDF Download

Author: Taylor Campbell Nahikian Nelms
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781321846836
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
In Ecuador, state and non-state actors have turned to forms of everyday economic practice and organization for inspiration in conceptualizing and institutionalizing a 0́−post-neoliberal0́+ economic system oriented to 0́−social and solidary0́+ ends: a so-called 0́−popular and solidarity economy0́+ [econom©Ưa popular y solidaria]. Such efforts to reimagine 0́−the social0́+ itself as an alternative to neoliberal capitalism provoke questions that dovetail with those introduced more than a decade before by Ecuador0́9s official adoption of the U.S. dollar. This dissertation examines the intersection of these two projects of state and social transformation with the activities of bureaucrats and experts, market vendors, and members of family and neighborhood savings and credit associations. At stake are not only debates about alternative economic and political imaginaries, state and civil society, or the pasts and futures of liberalism and neoliberalism, but also questions about trust, durability, and form0́4of value, institutions, and collective life itself: What happens when regimes of value are transformed? How do the uses and meanings of money change along with its legal status and material form? How are 0́−economy0́+ and 0́−society0́+ reformatted as local lives and livelihoods are harnessed to state-led efforts to reconstitute state and society? And how can the infrastructures and institutions of associational life that subtend trust0́4in the value of a new currency, in governmental or financial institutions, in one0́9s neighbors and fellow citizens0́4be made durable and lasting? From policy to practice, market stalls and middle-class living rooms to government offices and neighborhood meeting houses, this dissertation explores efforts to imagine and institutionalize this popular and solidarity economy alongside the everyday politics and pragmatics of money and law. The dissertation tracks how the mundane techniques and technologies of money and law0́4cash and coin, account books and Excel files, the rules and regulations of bureaucratic administration and vernacular institution-building0́4are folded into people0́9s everyday efforts to navigate the relational complexities of associational life in the context of dollarization and post-neoliberal state transformation.