Categories
Decolonizing Economics Dependency theory Imperialism Publications

Back to Dakar: Decolonizing international political economy through dependency theory (new article)

I published a new article in the Review of International Political Economy with my co-author Felipe Antunes de Oliveira. The abstract:

Whereas the field of International Political Economy (IPE) included a diversity of voices at its outset, histories of the field tend to marginalize certain contributions – particularly those from the Global South. The endeavor to decolonize IPE offers an opportunity to look back at IPE’s history, re-discover the marginalized voices, and imagine new possible futures. This article engages with contemporary calls to decolonize IPE and proposes an alternative route to do so by recovering dependency theory. We argue that dependency theory can be conceptualized as a peripheral IPE perspective that was committed to thinking from the Global South and to producing politically engaged scholarship just as the field was being formed. The article elaborates on the key tenets of dependency theory, contrasting it with mainstream IPE, and putting it in dialogue with decolonial approaches. To demonstrate the simultaneous non-Eurocentric, anti-colonial, and policy-oriented potential of dependency theory, we recover a foundational moment that disciplinary histories of IPE have forgotten: the 1972 Dakar conference, organized by Samir Amin, with the participation of leading Latin American and African dependency scholars.

Categories
Blog Critique of Mainstream Economics Decolonizing Economics Dependency theory Economic Development

What’s wrong with Development Studies and how can we change it? (blog)

I was recently on a plenary sponsored by the Development Studies Association (DSA) in Manchester with Kamna Patel, Sara Stevano and Indrajit Roy, where we were each asked to answer the above question. Along with the organizers, Pritish Behuria and Tom Goodfellow, we have now published the plenary discussion on the DSA blog:

Download the full set of conference responses.

Categories
Decolonizing Economics Publications Teaching

Standing in the way of rigor? Economics’ meeting with the decolonization agenda (new article)

I wrote a new article on decolonizing economics teaching with my collaborator Surbhi Kesar. It’s now open access in Review of International Political Economy, check it out: Standing in the way of rigor? Economics’ meeting with the decolonization agenda.

Here’s the abstract:

This article critically discusses the scope for decolonizing economics teaching. It scrutinizes what it would entail in terms of theory, methods, and pedagogy, and its implications for scholars grappling with issues related to economics teaching. Based on a survey of 498 respondents, it explores how economists across different types of departments (economics/heterodox/non-economics), geographical locations, and identities assess challenges to economics teaching, how they understand the relevance of calls for decolonization, and how they believe economics teaching should be reformed. Based on the survey findings, the article concludes that the field’s emphasis on advancing economics as an objective social science free from political contestations, based on narrow theoretical and methodological frameworks and a privileging of technical training associated with a limited understanding of rigor, likely stands in the way of the decolonization of economics. Indeed, key concepts of the decolonization agenda—centering structural power relations, critically examining the vantage point from which theorization takes place and unpacking the politics of knowledge production—stand in sharp contrast to the current priorities of the economics field as well as key strands of IPE. Finally, the article charts out the challenges that decolonizing economics teaching entails and identifies potential for change.

Categories
Blog Decolonizing Economics Teaching

Two blog posts on decolonizing teaching

What does it mean to decolonize teaching? This is one of the many questions we’re grappling with in Diversifying and Decolonising Economics (D-Econ). Along with Ariane Agunsoye and Michelle Groenewald, I recently put down some thoughts in a two-part blog:

It’s the start of a new blog series by the great D-Econ blog team called Decolonising Economics: Teaching and Pedagogy.

Categories
Blog Decolonizing Economics Dependency theory Economic Development Heterodox Economics Imperialism Marx

Beyond Eurocentrism (essay)

I recently wrote an essay about Samir Amin for the popular magainze, Aeon. In it, I go through what I think are major lessons from Samir Amin that can help us understand imperialism, Eurocentrism, uneven development, and ideology better. I contrast his structural and materialist analysis of capitalism and imperialism with the culturalist views of Edward Said, as Said has received much more attention in both academia and in the public sphere. Read the essay here.

Read a Spanish translation of the article here (Letras Libres).

Categories
Blog Decolonizing Economics

Galileo and neoliberal academia: a critical assessment of UK higher education (blog post)

Along with my colleaborator Surbhi Kesar I recently wrote a blog post for Diversifying and Decolonising Economics (D-Econ) on the ongoing industrial dispute in UK higher education, linking it the to wider structural problems of marketisation, privatisation, commodification, and decolonisation.

 

Categories
Africa Book review Decolonizing Economics Imperialism Marx Publications

Colonial legacies and racial hierarchies in the global economy (review essay)

I had the privelege of publishing a review essay of two books in the most recent issue of Race and Class (2022). I review the important contributions and radical potential of Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire (2019) and Franklin Obeng-Odoom’s Property, Institutions, and Social Stratification in Africa (2020), and outline some ways in which their analyses and frameworks could be expanded along anti-colonial Marxist lines.

Read the full review here.

Categories
Book review Decolonizing Economics Dependency theory Development Finance

Money Power and Financial Capital from a Decolonial Perspective (book review)

I reviewed Ilias Alami’s book Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging Markets for a book symposium organized by Afronomicslaw. In the review, I link the book’s approach to debates about dependency theory and decolonizing economics. Read the review here.

Categories
Critique of Mainstream Economics Decolonizing Economics Heterodox Economics Publications

Standing in the Way of Rigor? Economics’ Meeting with the Decolonizing Agenda (working paper)

I have a new paper out with Surbhi Kesar in the New School Department of Economics’ Working Paper series: Standing in the Way of Rigor? Economics’ Meeting with the Decolonizing Agenda.

The abstract:

This paper critically engages with various aspects of the decolonization movement in economics and its implications for the discipline. We operationalize the insights from this engagement using a survey of 498 economists that explores how faculty across different kinds of departments, disciplines, geographies, and identities perceive the problems of economics teaching, how they think economics pedagogy should be reformed, if at all, and how they relate to decolonial critiques of economics pedagogy. Based on the survey findings, we conclude that the mainstream of the field’s emphasis on technical training and rigor, within a narrow theoretical and methodological framework, likely stands in the way of the very possibility for decolonizing economics, given its strong contrast to key ideas associated with the decolonization agenda, such as positionality, centering power relations, exposing underlying politics of defining theoretical categories, and unpacking the politics of knowledge production. Nonetheless, the survey responses clearly chart out the challenges that the field faces in terms of decolonizing pedagogy, which is a first step towards debate and change.

Categories
Blog Critique of Mainstream Economics Decolonizing Economics Discrimination in Economics

Does economics need to be ‘decolonised’? (blog post)

Happy to contribute to the interesting initiative The Economics Observatory with the blog post “#economicsfest: Does economics need to be ‘decolonised’?” In it, Carolina Alves and I reflect on the two roundtable discussions that D-Econ curated at the Bristol Festival of Economics last year (see here). We discuss historical efforts to decolonise economics, what we mean by the ‘colonisation’ of economics, the impact of colonisation on the discipline, and decolonisation of both teaching and research.