Most of us might still be processing 2020, and yet 2025 is just around the corner! As 2024 wraps us, here are some new books on economics that were published this year that you may have missed either because of the identity of the author, or their geographical location, or because the topics are not typically considered interesting to those interested in reading about the economy. We include 10 books that cover a range of topics that we think provide a richer understanding of socioeconomic phenomena and are therefore crucial to understanding economics and the world.
This time we include a new edition of an important book on global labour processes and their manifestation in Dominican history. We have also been reading two new books about childbirth and social reproduction. One looks at the commodification of childbirth and the economic pressures that influence the choices and risks associated with childbirth, while the other one explores interplay between ecological grief and neoliberalism, capitalism and settler colonialism through the author’s own experience of new motherhood. On a related note, we also read two new books on the ecological crisis, one that analyses the evolution of the global oil market and how it has been shaped by global capitalism, and one that explores the relationship between colonialism, capitalism, imperialism and ecological crises. Given the ugliest current outcome of colonialism in the form of the ongoing genocide in Palestine, we have also been reading a new collection of essays on Palestine that highlight the centrality of the Palestinian issue in global struggles against capitalism, imperialism, racism and misogyny. We also include a new book that explores what anti-colonialism means today, and an incredible collection of essays, speeches, poems, stories and reflections from the 60 anniversary commemoration of the 1958 All-African People’s Conference.
We hope you enjoy these books! As always, please let us know if you have any suggestions for our next reading list.
Peasants and Capital: Dominica in the World Economy
By Michel-Rolph Trouillot
This is a new edition of the widely read 1989 book by the world-renowned Haitian anthropologist, historian, and writer, Michel-Rolph Trouillot. The book is highly innovative in its ethnographic study of peasantry in Dominica not as left-over practices from the premodern era but as central for the global capitalism itself. With attention both to the local banana-producing villages in Dominica and the links between them and the global world system, Trouillot shows how Dominican peasant farmers are an important source of profit for multinational corporations. Beyond contributing to novel theorisation about global labour processes, the book is also a highly praised account of Dominican history and society. The methodological ethnographic approach of studying peasantry through a multi-scalar lens is highly relevant for economists trying to understand global value chains as well as people in the general public simply trying to understand global capitalism. Buy the book here.
The political ecology of colonial capitalism
Race, nature, and accumulation
By Bikrum Gill
This book is an exciting exploration of the relationship between colonialism, capitalism, imperialism and ecological crises, that guides the reader to the inherently international nature of these processes. The book situates the phenomenon of the “global land grab” within a historical and theoretical context of the colonial capitalist world system. The author introduces a theoretical framework which highlights how the co-production of race and nature has been crucial in creating the “ecological surplus” necessary for capitalist development. It is an important read for economists, and a broader audience, as it presents arguments for how in order to address contemporary ecological and social crises, we must understand the intertwined histories of race, nature, and capitalism. The book is available in hardcover as well as ebook format here.
Going Into Labour: Childbirth In Capitalism
By Anna Fielder
This book is a Marxist analysis linking together “the powerful physiological and emotional process” of childbirth labour with the “the labour through which people create and produce things, in order to eat, stay warm and survive” (p. 1) as two socially significant areas subsumed under capitalism. The book raises questions around the commodification of birth and the economic pressures that influence the choices and risks associated with childbirth. It examines childbirth as a form of labour, while highlighting how birth workers tend to be undervalued and exploited within a capitalist system. The book also explores political issues around how various forms of oppression, such as colonialism, racism, sexism, cis- and heteronormativity, intersect and create compounded impacts which shape contemporary childbirth practices. The author provides insights into how economic systems shape healthcare practices and the commodification of essential services, while calling for systemic change to create more equitable and just birthing practices. The book is available as a paperback and as an ebook here.
Can Africans Do Economics?
By Grieve Chelwa, Marion Ouma, Redge Nkosi
This inspiring new book redefines development as a process of emancipation rather than simply one of economic growth. It challenges conventional economic theories and practices through an examination of the intimate link between political independence and economic progress. The book explores the intersection of economic development and freedom across the Africa, informed by ideas by African leaders such as Thomas Sankara and Julius Nyerere. The book presents scholarship from a range of economists “[c]ombining historical context with forward-thinking policy proposals … for transformative policies grounded in African realities, and rejecting foreign-led interventions on the continent”. In addition to historical context, the book presents forward-thinking policy proposals aimed at transformative change, addressing issues such as social policy, poverty, and monetary policy in the African context. This reading provides a comprehensive analysis of how economic development can be reimagined to better serve the needs and aspirations of African people. This book is available as a paperback in a number of places, such as 1, 2, 3 and 4.
The Unfinished Business of Liberation and Transformation: Revisiting The 1958 All-African People’s Conference
By Dzodzi Tsikata, Edem Adotey, and Mjiba Frehiwot
This is an incredibly exciting and timely book. The chapters are not simply academic accounts, but rather include essays, speeches, poems, stories and reflections from the 60 anniversary commemoration of the All-African People’s Conference, which originally took place in 1958. A central theme is Pan-African efforts toward and visions of liberation since independence and the importance of acknowledging that the liberation of one person and country is intertwined with that of another. The anniversary was a collaboration between the Institute of African Studies, the Trades Union Congress of Ghana, the Socialist Forum of Ghana, Lincoln University, and the Third World Network Africa and the contributions reflect this diversity of perspectives. The contributions do not simply look backwards and reflect, but rather they look forward and represent a call for action for present and future pan-Africanists. Buy the book here.
Being Anti-Colonial
By Jayan Nayar
At a moment when confusion regarding what anti-colonial, decolonial, and decolonisation actually means, this book is a very welcome intervention. It lays out a clear argument for what it means to be anti-colonial and how this differs from decolonial interventions. Nayar makes a radical call to re-engage with what he calls the anti-colonial ethos, which emphasizes the need to confront enduring global colonial architectures. At the same time, Nayar shows how contemporary calls for decoloniality tend to overlook the praxiological foundations of anti-colonial struggle, removing itself from the politics of resistance. As such, this book is an invitation to challenge the academic community using the colonial/decolonial terminology to revisit and critically re-engage in conversations about radical anti-colonial theory and praxis. It will be a useful contribution both for scholars and students already engaging with these debates as and for readers that are new to these debates. Buy the book here.
Palestine in a World on Fire
By Katherine Natanel and Ilan Pappé
Natanel and Pappé’s collection of interviews is poignant and timely, demonstrating the centrality of the Palestinian cause to global struggles against capitalism, imperialism, racism and misogyny. Establishing Palestine as not just a lens, but a crucial point of entry for analysing and understanding global crises, ‘Palestine in a World on Fire’ illustrates how dialogues, strategies and tactics engaged in by Palestinians and supporters can be (and have been) utilised in resistance movements across the world. Featuring influential activists, these interviews transcend time, resolutely opposing narratives situating 7th October 2023 as the genesis of violence. Natanel and Pappé draw out the complex nature of struggle, positing people as both victims and agents through solidarity which confronts colonial conditions. Building narratives around shared concerns, they argue, can become power in itself: but in this pursuit, we are challenged to critically rethink the boundaries of our imaginations, the implications of our language, and our understanding of complacency. Buy the book here.
Hot Mess: Mothering Through a Code Red Climate Emergency
By Sarah Marie Wiebe
‘Hot Mess’ is rooted in Wiebe’s experience of new parenthood amid climate crisis, after record-breaking heat waves in British Columbia hospitalised and separated her from her nursing baby. She uncovers the interplay between ecological grief and neoliberalism, capitalism and settler colonialism through a book that weaves her own difficult transition to motherhood with her academic work on the structures surrounding and reproducing climate emergency. Organised through colour-coded chapters, based on Wiebe’s repeated spells in hospital, she guides readers through diverse terrain: from climate anxiety, to caesareans, to circular economies of care, the ‘collapsing boundaries’ between the personal, political and planetary are highlighted. As a critical ecofeminist scholar, Wiebe details alternative ways of organising, including circular economies and indigenous land structures, accompanied by a vision of radical care between humans and the planet, rejecting capitalism’s extractivist nature, that can help us achieve this. The book can be bought here.
Crude Capitalism: Oil Corporate Power and the Making of the World Market
By Adam Hanieh
This excellent new book traces the history of how a “simple sticky goo” came to be at the core of the global economy and our energy systems. It also shows how the discovery and use of oil has shaped global markets, extreme wealth, global institutions, and the development of global capitalism. One of the most striking features of this book is the demonstration of the centrality of oil in our daily lives, not just in the form of energy, but also in the form of plastics and other petrochemicals that are almost ubiquitous. Therefore, it moves beyond just the focus on the “upstream” segment of oil exploration and extraction, and discusses what oil becomes once it is out of the ground. Hanieh provides an in-depth yet accessible analysis of the key players in the oil market, not just in the United States, but also in other parts of the world, and the relationship with production of other goods and finance. As he points out, this is crucial as we cannot see key players in oil production merely as case studies, but part of the larger world market with “reciprocal interdependencies”, which has many implications for US hegemony today. Importantly, by discussing what the energy transition looked like from coal to oil, and critically analyzing what in fact is an energy transition, Hanieh provides crucial insight for whether a non-fossil fuel economy is possible and how it can be achieved. An absolute must read as we come to the end of the hottest year on record in human history.
Beyond Liberalism
By Parabhat Patnaik
This new book provides a Marxist critique of liberalism from one of the most important Marxist economists today. With incredible clarity, Patnaik lays out the key features of classical liberalism and the central importance of individual freedom within it. Essentially, classical liberalism, which Patnaik associates with liberal democracies, sees individual freedom as something that is often threatened by specific agents, like other individuals, or the state, or economic agglomerations like monopolies. However, it does not see individual freedom as something that is threatened by the normal functioning of the system as a whole. He contrasts this with the formulation of “new” liberalism, associated with social democratic systems, which does recognize that individual freedom is constrained by the operation of the system itself. This is because laissez-faire capitalism systemically produces large-scale unemployment, and that this requires intervention by the state to protect individual freedom. Patnaik argues that both classical and new liberalism are limited because the operation of the system of capitalism limits the ability and willingness of the state to intervene to protect individual freedoms within its jurisdictions. Furthermore, he argues that this problem is exacerbated by globalization. This book is a fascinating new treatise on liberalism, and weaves together economics, political philosophy, and an agenda for action, which Patnaik argues, are deeply integrated.
This list was compiled for D-Econ by Alex Arnsten, Devika Dutt, Maya Fitchett, and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven