Creole Economics: Caribbean Cunning Under The French Flag Ethnohistory Project Muse Upcc Books

creole economics xvi allow curious minds to rest. Their encouragement of my work is especially meaningful. Reading chapters or drafts of manuscripts is a heroic act of kindness, and one for which I have many people to thank. A number of people read complete drafts of my manuscript, including Rhoda Halperin, Blane Harding, Victoria Lockwood, Richard Price, Estellie Smith, and Rick Wilk. I also wish to thank Dennis Cordell, Carla Freeman, Ellen Schnepel, and Jeff Snodgrass for reading portions of this manuscript. Their comments, and those of the outside reviewers for the University of Texas Press, have contributed substantively to the fi nal book. In addition, I want to thank my outstanding student readers, Andy Read and Chris Weeber, who helped me clarify concepts and keep the language accessible. Two other exceptional students, Jill Lange and Nicole Mallette, proofread the manuscript. I am especially grateful to my parents, Donna and Leland Browne, who reviewed a draft of the manuscript as educated general readers. Their questions and insights helped me fi gure out how to better present certain parts of my argument. I also wish to thank Theresa May and her tremendous team at the University of Texas Press, who made my fi rst book publication a blessedly smooth experience. Allison Faust, Leslie Tingle, and Ellen Mackie all contributed impressive professionalism and welcome reassurances. Sue Carter is the most thorough and talented copyeditor any author could hope for. To her, I extend my warmest appreciation. I owe very special thanks to my illustrator, Rod Salter, who is a gifted wildlife painter fi rst, but who agreed to draw pencil sketches because they "help my painting." Mostly, I believe, he simply wanted to be nice. His work contributes substantially to the life of the book. I also wish to thank Dave Santillanes, the talented digital artist whose creative and technical expertise produced the beautiful Caribbean map. Thanks also to Michèle Nelson for her invaluable tutoring as I sought to comprehend the nuances of French law, institutions, and seven-course meals.

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.

Aisha Khan, New York University - American Anthropologist

Persuasive and engagingly written, Creole Economics should be required reading in anthropology, economics, and Caribbean Studies courses.

Katherine E. Browne ; Line Drawings By Rod Salter. A Portion Of This Work Previously Appeared As 'creole Economics And The Débrouillard: From Slave-based Adaptations To The Informal . . .' In Ethnohistory, Vol. 49, No. 2, Pp. 373-403--t.p. Verso. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.