DIVERSIDADE ECONÔMICA E GEOGRAFIA NEGRA

Abstract

This article results from eighteen months of participatory ethnography research in political spaces of the Movement of Solidarity Economy, and from interviews I conducted with participants of this movement between 2015 and 2017 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In this work, I shed light on a fundamental contradiction between the discourse the movement puts forth and actual political and organizational practices I observed on the ground. Such contradiction refers to the lack of attention to processes of racialization embedded in socioeconomic and spatial hierarchies in the city, as well as the way that such racialized hierarchies get reproduced within the movement dynamics despite the movement’s discourse around racial inclusion and racial diversity. Looking at racialization within the Movement of Solidarity Economy in Rio, and drawing on decolonial studies, post-development theories and Black geographies, this article addresses issues of race and space in political organizing as axis around which racial capitalism is epistemologically and politically articulated. I argue that in order to decenter capitalocentrism and to create alternatives to racial capitalism it is necessary to change lenses to see, name and make visible not only diverse economies, but also Black geographies. I conclude by offering some suggestions of spatial interventions that might facilitate more inclusive and effective political participation of the bases of the movement, the majority of which are black women residents in favelas and peripheral areas.