This research project aims to develop a ‘new’ critical and post-colonial theory on consumption, through the analysis of alternative forms of consumption and economic organization that highlights a ‘new’ relation with different temporalities and knowledges. The project is expected to answer two main questions: (1) Can consumption, as a social phenomenon, establish itself as an emancipatory experience, outstripping an “axiomatic perspective of interest”? (2) Might there be intercultural translation between different consumption and economic-exchange experiences? In order to achieve these goals, the current research is a comparative study, developed in three countries (Brazil, Portugal and Bolivia) which attempts to identify the ‘intelligibility’ conditions between exchange trade systems (in the scope of solidarity economy and consumption) and the urban Andean markets – the so-called qhathu (in the scope of Andean Indigenous Economies).
In sum, this research project intends to evaluate if it is possible that such experiences constitute a kind of ‘new’ ecology: ecology of exchanges. Simultaneously, after discussing the ‘translatability’ conditions between these economic and non-capitalist exchange mechanisms, the investigation is expected to assess whether this intercultural translation might strengthen the battles for effective economic justice.