First Name:
David
Last Name:
Valder
Major Department:
Anthropology
Thesis Director:
Dana Powell
Date of Thesis:
Jul 2014
In this paper I will critically examine popular assumptions about what constitutes "The Economy." All over the world, people create livelihoods in complex ways that defy many of the boundaries placed on economic activities and actors in mainstream economic theory. The formation and enforcement in theory and in practice of strict boundaries that determine what is good and necessary for economies (and what is not) result in the invalidation of many existing ways of creating livelihood. New ways of looking at economics are needed. Additionally, through new economic discourse, new ideas, new possibilities, and new realities can be built. Using a new framework, I will examine the current complex assemblage of economic activity within a small region in the Dominican Republic's province of Monte Plata.
The Dominican Republic as a whole has undergone an economic revolution in the last three decades, transitioning from heavy dependence on the sugar industry to a more diversified economy with a high-growth manufacturing sector featuring Export Processing Zones (EPZ). In the geographic area that I will present, however, there are no EPZs near enough to contribute to local livelihoods. Families who relied entirely on the sugar industry for a half century have been forced to create new types of livelihoods.
Using methods of ethnography and Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), I will attempt to create an inventory of economic activities and actors in this small region. I hope to demonstrate that its current economic state can and should be defined by what is present and thriving rather than what it lacks or the areas in which it "fails." The hope we are left with is that through this reimagining of what we call "The Economy," we can begin to conceive of livelihood possibilities that we might never have known were possible.