MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

The global trade of coffee, the second most valuable legal commodity on earth after oil, (Pendergast, 1999; Ponte, 2002), and the relationship between the market of laborers (rural) to the trade industry (urban)specifically on the livelihoods of small-scale coffee farmers in Meru, Kenya drawn from the research that I conducted in Kenya in January 2013 investigating the current state of the small-scale farmers and looking for ways to increase their livelihoods. I ask that we imagine what a diverse economy and alternative modes to development- having both diverse capitalist and non-capitalist economic forms- might look like (Gibson-Graham & Roelvink, 2010). While access to the global market is vital for the farmers in Meru and to the Kenyan economy, the community economies must be simultaneously fostered and recognized in order for there to be any long-term, local and sustainable development. Rethinking economic development in relation to the diverse economy undermines the uniform logic of development that we saw in export base theory, in which capitalist economic growth offers the one true path to social well-being. The interaction of women in self-help groups, which is the focus of much of this paper, is vital for community survival and development, though, Abwunza (1995) asserts that success is relative, measured by identifying common group needs, some of which appear fulfilled even without individual economic gains. Connecting the rural farmers or laborers to the urban industry and global trade is often the prescription I argue that building the community economies and the self-help savings groups within the rural may prove to be a more effective remedy for the disease that is global poverty.