Ontological and epistemological clashes with amefrican women: autonomy and independence in an “informalized” economy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22481/odeere.v7i1.10494Keywords:
Matriarchy, Women, Indigenous Economic Technology, "Informal" economy, Epistemological endogeneityAbstract
The remarkable place of prominence and the central role of women in pre-colonial African societies has been diminished in colonial enterprises of devastation of African ways of being, with particular consequences for women due to the intrusion of the gender hierarchy and the consequent genderification of the job. The mischaracterization and criminalization of autochthonous, matrifocalized socio-economic organizations is expressed by the nomenclature of “informal economies”. In view of this, the present theoretical-empirical article aims to articulate how the category "matriarchy" applies to the logic of socioeconomic organization reinvented in contemporary times, producing women's autonomy and independence. We begin with the ontological and epistemological clash that encourages the resilience of matriarchal family and economic structures in the Americas. Then, in the empirical stage, we found the manifestations of matrifocality based on reports from the leaders of economic and religious organizations of African origin. Such matricentric economic technologies represent a source of generation of individual and collective life and – above all – the ability to reinvent the principles of matriarchy in contemporary Americas.
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