In Black and Green, Kiran Asher provides a powerful framework for reconceptualizing the relationship between neoliberal development and social movements. Moving beyond the notion that development is a hegemonic, homogenizing force that victimizes local communities, Asher argues that development processes and social movements shape each other in uneven and paradoxical ways. She bases her argument on ethnographic analysis of the black social movements that emerged in Colombia's Pacific lowlands region during the 1990s, before the region was overrun by drug traffickers, guerrillas, and paramilitary forces, but after the passage of laws promising ethnic and cultural rights, collective land ownership, and socioeconomic development to Afro-Colombian communities. At the time, the Pacific region was best known as the largest area of black culture in the country (90 percent of the region's population is Afro-Colombian); as a supplier of natural resources, including timber, gold, platinum, and silver; and as one of the world's biodiversity hot spots. Asher explores the juxtaposition of black rights, economic development, and conservation initiatives, and she analyzes the various meanings attached to "culture," "nature," and "development" by the Colombian state and Afro-Colombian social movements, including women's groups.