"Black and Green," I argue that Afro-Colombians are neither neglected victims of development, nor heroes of a cultural, “environmentally friendly” alternative to development. Eschewing the many binaries—tradition vs. modernity, progress vs. underdevelopment, exploitation vs. resistance, local vs. global, theory vs. practice—that plague and limit thinking about third world development and environmental movements, my book disrupts the notion that development is a hegemonic, homogenizing force of western rationality. Through an ethnographic and historical account of black organizing in the Pacific lowlands, I show how struggles for positive social and environmental change are shaped differentially by and against local, national and global influences.
