Category: Economic Development

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Blog Decolonizing Economics Dependency theory Economic Development Publications

Inverted Eurocentrism: The Consumption of Decolonization in the Global North (new blog post)

At a moment when the United States has recently kidnapped the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, assassinated the Iranian supreme leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, is plotting regime change in Cuba, and is continuing to support genocide and colonial oppression in Palestine, the question of how to understand empire, capitalism, and possibilities for resistance is as pressing as ever. In a new article, I argue that any radical decolonization agenda must be aligned with critique of and resistance to contemporary oppression. I also posit that the most dominant form of decolonial theory – the one that is now pervasive across global North universities as well as many institutions across the global South – does not lend itself to such radical critique and resistance.

Today, “Eurocentrism” tends to be equated with the study of Europe or studies by Europeans, and the process of intellectual decolonization tends to be equated with elevating indigenous or global South voices and perspectives as well as the inclusion of case studies from the global South. When liberal institutions use the term ‘decolonization’, a very particular, arguably essentialising and epistemic-oriented, worldview is often underlying the approach taken. When academics use it, a particular understanding of a decolonial framework is very often assumed, if not explicit. In fact, the decolonial framework has become so prominent and dominant that it is difficult to present arguments about decolonization and Eurocentrism without being automatically associated with this specific decolonial tradition. The consumption of decolonial theory in the global North and beyond thus serves to water down the radical core of decolonization and anti-imperialist projects.

It was in the early 2000s that a large and diverse group of Latin American scholars formally organized themselves into the Modernity-Coloniality-Decoloniality (MCD) group. By the 2010s that tradition had started to become a misinterpreted artifact of consumption in Northern academia. This is not the first time global North audiences misinterpret, flatten and distort traditions that have primarily emerged in the global South. Just as the original debate about dependency theory became distorted to fit a global North audience’s worldview, rendering dependency theory ‘a strawman easy to destroy’, the debates about decolonisation and decoloniality have been shoehorned into the frameworks and politics of global North academia. As André Gunder Frank became the representative of dependency theory in the global North – papering over rich discussions and nuance within Latin America and beyond – the decolonial scholar Walter Mignolo has, arguably, to a large degree become the spokesperson for decolonisation efforts, representing a similar kind of distortion and simplification. And as with dependency theory, decolonial theory was also twisted to serve a political function for global North academia, which became increasingly concerned with discrimination, identity, epistemology, and critiques of grand structural narratives in the 2010s.

Read more on the EADI blog.

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Decolonizing Economics Economic Development Imperialism Marx Methodology Publications

Inverted Eurocentrism: The Consumption of Decolonization in the Global North and a Radical Decolonization Agenda (new article)

I have a new article out in Development and Change‘s new Forum on decoloniality. The abstract:

In the Global North and elite spaces in the Global South, the concepts of Eurocentrism and decolonization have come to be associated primarily with identity and location rather than with capitalism and political economy. This article argues that the reason for this can be traced to what Samir Amin calls ‘inverted Eurocentrism’, which entails a romanticization of specific identities or social formations in the Global South that tends to accompany Eurocentric ideology. This has become the dominant discourse on decolonization, leading to the displacement of broader, more radical decolonization efforts. Moreover, this discourse reflects a partial engagement with the original Modernity-Coloniality-Decoloniality (MCD) debates in Latin America that it claims as its origin. The article argues that a radical decolonization agenda entails the critique of political economy and it evaluates the extent to which the original MCD tradition reflects such an agenda. It shows that, despite allowing for a more critical understanding of knowledge, decolonization and capitalism than today’s dominant decolonial strand, the original MCD tradition is nonetheless limited by its departure from the critique of political economy. Finally, the implications of the dominant understanding of decolonization for universities and beyond are considered and the article concludes that this understanding of decolonization hinders a structural critique of capitalism and imperialism.

Read the full article here – it’s open access.

Categories
Africa Critique of Mainstream Economics Decolonizing Economics Economic Development Ghana Imperialism Mining

New article: The Eurocentrism of mining in development economics

This new article in World Development interrogates how Eurocentrism is reflected in the Economics discipline’s approach to mining as well as in global mining policy. It then puts forward an alternative, South-centered understanding of mining, which is explored through a historical view of the Obuasi mine, which has been mined by AngloGold Ashanti in Ghana since 1897. The article is part of a special issue I’m co-editing on Decolonising Economic Development with Surbhi Kesar.

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Decolonizing Economics Economic Development Publications

Decolonising economic development: the role of development sector (new report)

At a time when ‘decolonisation’ has become a buzzword in the international development industry and beyond, it is an opportune moment to assess what a decolonisation framework for the international non-governmental organisation (INGO) sector would entail. In this new report, Surbhi Kesar and I discuss what Eurocentrism is and how it can help us critically interrogate the role of INGOs in the development industry. You can read some reporting about our research here:

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Africa Dependency theory Economic Development Publications

New article: Local Currency Bond Markets in Africa: Resilience and Subordination

I wrote a new article with Florence Dafe, Annina Kaltenbrunner and Iván Weigandi in Development and Change‘s Forum issue on “Negotiating the Current Debt Crisis in Developing Countries”. Our article was on local currency bond markets in Africa and we drew on both quantitative data and interviews conducted. Here is the abstract:

This article examines the development and implications of local currency bond markets (LCBMs) in African countries in the context of international financial subordination (IFS). Despite the promotion of LCBMs as a solution to debt vulnerability, there is a dearth of research that offers a systematic empirical examination of their actual benefits along with conceptual explanations as to when and why such benefits may or may not materialize. This is especially true for countries at the bottom of the global economic hierarchy. To explore how the subordination in global production and financial systems shapes LCBM development, the article offers an empirical analysis of selected African countries that combines interviews with policy makers, officials and experts with statistical data. The findings suggest that while LCBMs offer some benefits, such as mitigating risks associated with foreign currency debt, their potential is limited by the structural processes created by IFS, such as their dependence on the global financial cycle, the relatively higher costs of this debt and the sustained constraint on macroeconomic policy making. However, there are also domestic factors which shape how these structural constraints are mediated in the context of LCBM development — in particular, historically developed financial structures of developing countries, the political economy of the state and the structure of production. This study thus contributes to the debate about the developmental benefits of domestic debt market development and the emerging research agenda on IFS.

Read the full article here.

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Critique of Mainstream Economics Development Finance Economic Development Publications

The Hierarchies of Global Finance: An Anti-Disciplinary Research Agenda (new article)

I recently published a new open access article – The Hierarchies of Global Finance: An Anti-Disciplinary Research Agenda – with my friend and collaborator Maria Dyveke Styve, in Review of Political Economy.

Here is the abstract:

This article critically assesses the economics discipline’s capacity to capture the structural features and political economy implications of contemporary financial processes in the global South, with a particular focus on South Africa. Delving into the complexities of financial processes in South Africa, the article proposes an alternative, anti-disciplinary framework for understanding drivers and impacts of financial processes. We show how such an approach cannot simply be about adding social or political perspectives to mainstream economics, but rather about interrogating how we think about economic systems themselves, drawing on a variety of theoretical and disciplinary insights. This is about taking an open and holistic approach that centers history, power, structures, and social relations. With an issue such as finance, critical political economy approaches from a variety of disciplines allow us to see that finance cannot be separated from the wider economy or from the social relations it forms part of today and historically. This becomes particularly clear when considering how racial, gender and class relations both impact and are impacted by financial processes in South Africa. We conclude with recommendations for studies of changing financial processes globally and in the global South.

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Africa Decolonizing Economics Economic Development

Reconfiguring African Studies, reconfiguring economics (new symposium)

I recently contributed to a very interesting symposium curated by Stefan Ouma and Christine Vogt-William: Reconfiguring African Studies, reconfiguring economics: centring intersectionality and social stratification in the journal Critical African Studies. It centered on a discussion of Franklin Obeng-Odoom’s book Property, Institutions and Social Stratification in Africa and includes contributions by Obeng-Odoom himself, the curators, Abena D. Oduro, Tanita J. Lewis, Lebohang Liepollo Pheko, Sara Stevano, and myself.

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Dependency theory Economic Development Publications

New book chapter: Dependency in a world system of global value chains led by transnational corporations

I had the pleasure of contributing a chapter to this exciting book edited by Cristina Fróes de Borja Reis and Tatiana Berringer on South-North Dialogues on Democracy, Development and Sustainability. Each chapter consists of a dialogue between one scholar based in the global South and one in the global North. My conversation was with Cristina Reis on dependency, GVCs and TNCs.

Check out the book here.

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
Book review Dependency theory Economic Development Publications

The world that Latin America created. The United Nations economic commission for Latin America in the development era (new book review)

I really enjoyed reading & reviewing Margarita Fajardo’s The world that Latin America created with Felipe Antunes de Oliveira. We argue the book makes a major contribution by taking Latin American development debates seriously, but leaves key political questions unresolved. Read the full review here.