It’s time for D-Econ’s alternative reading list. We have picked 11 books that we believe are of particular importance to provide an alternative and richer understanding of the socioeconomic world we live in, that what the mainstream media provides. We include books that we hope not only present a wider selection of books in terms of who writes them, but also in terms of the topic and/or perspective. As you can see from the list, we consider economics to be about more than just money and finance, to also be about race, imperialism, and climate justice.
Reflecting the ongoing conversation about structural racism, which became a global one after the murder of George Floyd last year, it is only fitting that we include reflections on how this time the resurgent Black Lives Matters movement is different. We situate this in a historical context by including an exploration of the histories of racial capitalism. Any discussion of structural racism is incomplete without a discussion of imperialism and colonialism, and therefore we cannot leave out new books that analyze how capitalism and imperialism have and continue to shape the world.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is not only a public health crisis that has exposed fissures in the global health system but is also creating related crises of rising private and public debt and homelessness in many countries. Therefore, we include books that looks at these related crises from a decolonial and feminist lens, which we find quite refreshing and insightful.
The D-Econ blog series is a collective initiative to bring together contributions from academics and activists who share the vision of decolonisation and diversification of economics. The blog seeks to facilitate conversations that explore and emphasize how varied axes of power relations, such as gender, class, race, caste, colonialism, religion, and sexuality among others, affect participation in the academy, limit knowledge production, and contribute to its colonisation. Through this engagement, it seeks to enrich the economic study of society with a plurality of perspectives and methods rooted in objective realities of marginalised and oppressed communities.
We are happy to receive contributions in the form of articles, opinions, and rich media content (photographic, and audio and video material). We welcome original contributions of up to 1500-2000 words and short commentaries and book reviews up to 1000 words.
Entries can be addressed to members of the editorial team at blog@d-econ.org.
EDITORIAL TEAM
Aditi Dixit is a historianwith an interest in social and economic history, development, andglobal histories of labour and capital.
Surbhi Kesar is an economist with an interest in political economy, development economics, applied microeconometrics, specifically informality, capitalist transition in labour surplus economies, and issues of growth and exclusion.
Deepak Kumar is an economist with an interest in political economy, development, philosophy, and social justice.
This month D-Econ Steering Group member Carolina Alves curated two very exciting panels on decolonising Economics at the Bristol Festival of Ideas. First up, there was the panel Why Diversifying and Decolonising Economics Matters to Everyone, which was a lively discussion featuring Keston Perry, Imran Rasul and Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe. The following panel, Decolonising Economics: What does it mean and how is it done? featured Fadekemi Abiru, Surbhi Kesar, Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven and Farwa Sia. Both of the sessions were chaired by Romesh Vaitilingam. You can view the recordings below.
As the Summer draws to a close, we bring together our list of the best and most interesting books from the first half of this year. Most Economics reading lists that one typically sees from the usual sources are usually stocked with books written predominantly by white men, or those that focus on the US or Western Europe, or approach questions from a mainstream perspective. We include books that we hope not only present a wider selection of books in terms of who writes them, but also in terms of the topic and/or perspective.
Typically we release our list in the Summer, but unfortunately this pandemic has delayed us on several fronts as well. Hopefully, our Pandemic Reading List kept you busy. And we hope that after six months of COVID-19 related lockdowns, your schedules have become more predictable so that you have some time to peruse some or all of these books. In this list we included books that re-examine digitalization of finance, mass consumption of chocolate, the role of corruption in development, the production of data, modern slavery, and neoliberalism. It reflects our belief that structural racism, sexism, and imperialism shape our lives, and any understanding of economic phenomenon is incomplete without an understanding of structural power.
This is important interdisciplinary book ties together the political economy of digital financial inclusion with socio-legal, feminist, financial and political analysis in a very fruitful manner. It critically interrogates how Kenya’s pathbreaking mobile money platform M-Pesa has been built on narratives and institutional arrangements that present M-Pesa as a success, while it is premised on a logic of opportunity rather than distribution. Bringing in a feminist lens to the study of financial inclusion is particularly important and timely as it is becoming increasingly clear that such efforts have gendered implications. Natile also connects the case of M-Pesa to broader development debates about social entrepreneurship and philanthrocapitalism, which makes the book relevant for anyone interested in understanding social policy in development today.
In this new book, Arboleda discusses several contemporary phenomenon like mechanization of mining, the emergence of Global Value Chains, especially in East Asia, and the use of state violence to weave an interesting and compelling story of extraction and exploitation of natural resources. However, this is not just a book about the political economy of research extraction in Chile in particular and Latin America, generally, but it uses resource extraction as an analytical entry point to theorize uneven geographical development. This is done in this book in the tradition of the World Systems approach, though it claims to break with the tradition of dependency theory and uneven exchange, especially insofar as Arboleda emphasizes that the processes outlined transcend national economies and are based on a global class antagonism. This book presents an understanding of imperialism as one of the forms in which global value relations assert themselves. Planetary Mines is a must-read for a fresh examination of the global inequality and the asymmetric relationships along the global production assembly line.
This new book tells the story of how chocolate came to be the product that so many of us love today, while centering its colonial origins and its current structures of production that are dominated by US and European multinational corporations. Fattacciu brings us the uncomfortable truth of how production of chocolate has long been tainted with coerced and unethically sourced labour, by taking us on a journey of how cocoa became the first seed to cross the Atlantic from ex-Spanish colonies to Africa in an attempt by the Spanish colonizers to regain control over colonial trade, and journeying further to Western European consumers. She investigates the key moments of intersection between the various actors involved in chocolate’s successful trajectory over the years to explain the subsequent boom in chocolate consumption at the end of the 18th century. It gives us a great insight into colonial extraction, monopoly capitalism, and the democratization of a formerly exotic and luxury product.
This book debunks one of the most popular and strong assumptions about economic development: that corruption hurts economic growth. Therefore, eradicating corruption in the government is generally thought of as a precondition of sustained economic development. However, the Chinese economy that has been one of the fastest growing economies in the past three decades is plagued with widespread corruption. Ang breaks down conventional wisdom about corruption and argues that not all corruption is the same, and that in all instances corruption does not hamper growth. Ang argues that corruption is a fundamental feature of capitalism, and some types of corruption that involves elite political actors and high monetary stakes and the allocation of valuable resources such as land and legislations can actually spur investment, and thereby economic development. However, corruption has other implications for resource allocation, systemic risks, and inequality.
A persistent feature of some contemporary economic history is the fragmented study of nation-states as atomistic entities and the ontological premise of inherent, traditional features of societies as teleological explanations for their relative historical success or failure in economic modernisation. Andrew B. Liu in Tea Wars offers an important remedy. He explores the case of the British-Indian and Chinese tea industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, focusing on competitive interdependent ties forged by trade and the historically contingent outcomes. The emergent production systems in India and China came to be based on intensive, unfree forms of çoolie and peasant labour that contributed to immense fortunes for the British and Chinese traders alike and were central to capitalist accumulation. This contrasts with the more euro-centric accounts that placed mechanised production and free labour within the West as the primary mode and site of capitalist accumulation; and the persistence of unfree labour in the South as a cause for its historical backwardness. Replete with interesting historical anecdotes, this book offers a lucid and original contribution to the debate on historical economic divergence and global history of capitalism.
The current juncture has exposed and magnified the several existing cracks in our social and economic system, particularly those along the lines of gender, race, caste, sexuality, religion. The Black Lives Movement that recently gained momentum is a representation of the discontent with the current unjust economic order. In this context, this book is a timely and powerful intervention that makes a case for economic reparations for the US descendants of slavery. The authors provide a detailed historical evaluation of inequality that is ‘born of slavery’, and examine the intergenerational impact of the racial hierarchy in the social and political sphere on the economic well-being of the black population in the US. They assign a monetary value to these historical injustices and make a compelling case for a reparation program for the US descendants of slavery.
This is an important book that explores the contradiction of multinational corporations, such as Coca Cola, Amazon, Apple and Unilever, positioning themselves as fighters of modern slavery. It goes beyond the study of exploitative labor relations on the ground to trace how they are legitimized through a complex governance network centered in the Global North, despite the involvement of anti-slavery networks and ethical certification schemes. Indeed, the book details how severe labor exploitation is legitimized precisely through futile attempts to implement ‘corporate social responsibility’. LeBaron also presents an alternative way of confronting modern slavery which addresses the prevalent business models head on to enforce the necessary labor standards.
Edited by Philip Mirowski, Dieter Plehwe, and Quinn Slobodian
Given the criticality of the current economic and political juncture, this collection of articles on neoliberalism provides a rather timely intervention. The collection explores the heterogeneities and the various aspects that encompass the ‘neoliberal thought style’. It examines how the project of neoliberalism goes beyond the commonly (mis)understood reasoning of market fundamentalism and homoeconomicus, and encompasses various political, ideological, and other ‘extra-economic’ processes that create and sustain the neoliberal order. The volume, through an evaluation of these different processes, explores the complexity of this project and how it has evolved historically.
Edited by by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Siphamandla Zondi
This is an exciting book edited by two giants in the field of decolonial studies, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Siphamandla Zondi. It is particularly timely as the questions of what it means to ‘decolonize’ science has started to emerge in mainstream debates. The editors provide an accessible introduction to what coloniality of knowledge means, how African universities have become Westernized, and ways in which it is possible for African universities to ‘de-link’ from Eurocentric knowledge systems. Through 13 diverse chapters, the book delves into the roles of power, epistemology, methodology and ideology in creating and reproducing these Westernized knowledge systems across disciplines. Crucially, as the book makes clear that coloniality of knowledge is in itself a technology for suppression of alternative discourses and new imagination, the editors argue for ‘epistemic disobedience’.
While there is much debate around the biases that underpin theories and tools that we employ in social sciences, this book extends this discussion to lay bare the biases that plague data as well. Using an intersectional feminist lens, the book explores how power shapes the way data is collected, classified, and interpreted. The book focuses on two specific aspects: how the standard practices in data science tend to exacerbate the existing inequalities and benefit the privileged social groups, and how data itself can be used to challenge these hierarchies and inequalities. Recognizing the importance of data in shaping policies, the book recommends concrete ways in which these biases can be challenged. A timely, important, and powerful intervention to expose and reform one of the several biases that plague the process of knowledge production.
This book presents a novel approach to histories of colonial urbanisation and to the study of the cities of the Global South by historically tracing the making of the Bombay slums. It delineates the official discourse on city development which emerged and ossified during times of intense crisis – the recurrent famines and later the bubonic plague – that gripped the surrounding hinterlands and the city and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Comprising seven chapters, the book sifts through detailed archival records to argue that these crises were the central moments around which the politics of inclusion and exclusion was shaped through a confluence of interests of the colonial administration and those of the local city elites. The project of city making in a colonial underdeveloped context thus became one of defining what the city was by defining what it wasn’t, thus placing the city itself above those who created it. These official classifications problematised and excluded not just a vast majority of the city’s working class but also categorised and excluded industrial, spatial, architectural features that were perceived as “not quite city like”. Through the process of official categorisations and classifications, inclusions and exclusions, the official project of city-making created its “internal other” – the Bombay slums. This, in turn, ensured a poorer working class and higher capital accumulation for the elites. This book is an interesting read for not just those interested specifically in the colonial history of Bombay, but even those who want to understand the “deviant” development of the cities of the Global South.
This list was compiled for D-Econ by Aditi Dixit, Devika Dutt, Surbhi Kesar, and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven
Since many countries are now emerging from self-imposed lockdowns, the question arises how academic institutions deal with the unequal workload during the lockdowns. Female academics have faced a multitude of challenges in the past months: a sudden increase in housework or care (including in a single parent or both-parent family), a higher workload due to the move to online teaching and a rising demand on pastoral care, a burden which tends to fall on women academics, given that students are more likely to go to women with their pastoral issues. It may thus be unsurprising that research outputs by women clearly slowed down in contrast to men, who have been able to advance with their research, with paper submissions even increasing up to 50%. Whilst women have had less time to work, paid work opportunities are also diminishing, reflected in a significant decrease in contingent contractsoften taken up by women in the faculty. At the same time, women’s visibility in COVID-19 related discussions in the media have been marginal compared to their male peers. This is particularly worrying for areas such as economics, which are crucial in designing policies to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.
However, this is not a new phenomenon but a reflection of the persistent sexism that permeates academic work and higher education. Not only are women generally underrepresented in leading positions in academia, but they also disproportionately face the double burden of paid and unpaid work. Women still conduct the majority of caring dutieswithout a sufficient support system in place which in turn translates into less research output in comparison to their male colleagues. Another factor relates to the invisibility of women. Women are quoted less in comparison to their male peers, and just one third of all academic research in the UK lists women as authors. Barriers in academia are even further intensified when being a woman of colour, who are more scrutinised, progress less, have higher workloads and lack institutional support. These adversarial impacts on women’s performances measured by the current research evaluation system exacerbate gender inequality in promotion rounds.
Ignoring the impact of the pandemic and its concomitant lockdowns on women means that gender inequality will continue to rise in a post-COVID-19 world, with men being promoted faster and women taking longer than during usual times. We support a collective approach to this issue, rather than shifting the burden to individual academics to find the solution. Higher education institutions, research associations, journal editorial boards and funding bodies have a responsibility to tackle gender inequality in academia on a continuous basis. We therefore suggest the following non-exhaustive action points: Continue reading →
The article originally appeared on openDemocracy as a part of their `Decolonising the Economy’ series.
To understand the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19, it is necessary to draw on insights from a broad range of disciplines and geographies. To this end, D-Econ has put together a list of readings to help you decolonize your reading list about the pandemic. Included in this list you’ll find research based on the West African experience with Ebola, China’s experience with SARS and Zimbabwe’s experience with Cholera, which is all relevant for understanding the present crisis. Furthermore, we’ve included books that unpack the racial inequalities underpinning the American health system, how the World Trade Organization as well as international financial institutions impact and interact with domestic health institutions, and how pandemics historically have shaped all aspects of society. You’ll also find books that present a feminist lens on understanding economies and useful background reading for understanding the risk of new debt crises in Africa.
D-Econ will be hosing a workshop at Exploring Economics’ Summer Academy August 10-16th 2020. The summer academy’s title is “Mainstream Economics Sold Out? Exploring Ways into Sustainable Futures.” This is how the purpose of the Academy is described:
On the one hand, we want to debate whether mainstream economics has indeed sold out or whether there is an increasing acknowledgement of unorthodox, non-neoclassical thinking. On the other hand, we want to explore the transformative potential of the coronavirus crisis not only with regard to the global economic system but also to the discipline of economics. What kind of economic thinking is needed to lay down pathways towards sustainability and international solidarity, instead of ecological destruction and xenophobic nationalism? We are convinced that this can only be done from a pluralist perspective. Indeed, there is not a single path towards one shared future but multiple ways to a plurality of possible futures. However, such a perspective challenges us to overcome Eurocentric thinking and to take into account the diverse voices of the so-called global south.
The registration period for the Online Summer Academy is open until the 24th of June.
Read about all the workshops here. Information about D-Econ’s workshop is below. Continue reading →
D-Econ members have been asked to talk about D-Econ in different forums this year. Here are two interviews with D-Econ members in the form of podcasts. We hope you enjoy them!
Economia Decolonial(in Portuguese)
On the 10th June 2020, Por uma questão de classe podcast invited D-econ member Carolina Alves to talk about “Economia Decolonial” and introduce the D-econ initiative to the Brazilian audience. In a sequence of stimulating and pertinent questions by economists Joelson Carvalho and Jadir Eduardo Corrêa Junior, the conversation also included issues related to ‘the Cambridge School’ of economics, heterodox economics, Marxism and Brazil’s current government.
Women in Science(in English)
On February 27th 2020, the “Women in Science” project invited D-Econ member Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven to talk about diversifying and decolonising economics. This was a part of the Great Speaker Series campaign in Portugal in partnership with the British-born co-working space Second Home Lisbon. Ingrid outlines how D-Econ came to be, how she came to be interested in heterodox economics, and why and how the missions of diversifying and decolonising economics are so essential.
Three deficits: representation, accessibility, time
Academia suffers from three deficits that result in creating and maintaining unequal structures. First, women are largely underrepresented in academia, as shown in the latest report on gender equality in academia from the European Commission. In spite of an increase in female doctoral graduates in the European Union, culminating in a near gender-balance (47.9 percent of doctoral graduates were women in 2016), their career trajectories remain highly unequal. Occupying 41.3 percent of all academic positions, the share of women in senior-level positions lies only at 24 percent. Perhaps most importantly to note here is that while female doctoral graduates and academics increased by 10 percentage points since 2000, the change of women academics hired at professorial level rose only by one percentage point (from 6.4 percent in 2000 to 7.4 percent in 2016). Moreover, only a third of researchers are female (with no change since 2000). The lack of representation is even more alarming in the case of minority women. With only 25 female black professors (out of 21,000 professors), white women and black men are six times more likely to become full professors in the UK.
Second, women’s access to the institutions of knowledge dissemination is highly unequal. When considering that internationally recognised publications are taken as an indicator for promotion, it is alarming that on average, men publish twice as much as women. This appears to be prevalent more in some disciplines (e.g. economics) than in others (e.g. educational studies). In the top four economics journals, the share of women authors per paper is on average 15 percent. Meanwhile, only eight percent of the papers are authored principally by women, and only four percent solely written by women. More generally within the social sciences, men cite other men more than they cite women.
Third, women face an imbalance in terms of workload. Women still conduct the majority of care work often without an appropriate support system. Strikingly, the UK fares the worst among developed countries with regards to sharing of responsibilities within households: UK women conduct on average 60 percent more unpaid work than men. This double work burden has a negative impact on promotion due to reduced publications (two children result in a loss of 2.5 years’ research output), but also due to expectations of being constantly available, joining evening seminars, and conducting numerous research collaborations. If universities are serious about tackling gender inequality, these three deficits in academia need to be addressed.
Can mentoring help overcome these deficits?
To promote gender equality, numerous studies have outlined the benefits of establishing a productivementoring relationship. By sharing their knowledge more experienced scholars, it is argued, can help early career researchers to build self-confidence, increase competence, and avoid isolation (which is a risk deemed particularly prevalent in academia). While having a support system is important, I doubt that mentoring programmes can overcome the three deficits: the representation deficit based on the number of women in senior positions, the accessibility deficit based on a lack of diversity in terms of knowledge production, and the time deficit based on unequal workloads.
Sure, a mentor could be helpful in reducing the representation deficit by taking up the role of a sponsor and collaborator. Not only has it been proven that being mentored increases confidence, but also that a mentor can introduce early career researchers to their own networks and co-develop research projects. This, in turn, would enhance the profile of the junior academic and increase visibility, both of which are conducive for promotions. Yet, these initiatives do not tackle any systemic issues in the form of gendered perceptions within promotion panels. When having achieved similar or even more qualifications than men, the evidence shows that women are not promoted equally (which is intensified by a minority ethnic background). Mentoring does not address these systemic issues, but instead places the responsibility on the individual to develop career strategies within a dysfunctional system, thereby indirectly reinforcing it.
It is also questionable whether mentoring can reduce the accessibility deficit. Yes, formal mentoring has been found to be conducive to an enhanced publication record but this process in itself is problematic. Academic promotions are to a large degree dependent on publications where journals work as gatekeepers of knowledge. The mentor can teach the mentee the “particular kind of knowledge” requested by academic journals. However, the theories, methodologies, and geographical locations considered acceptable by journals not only downplay power imbalances based on gender and ethnicity, but also deepen them. At the same time, a mentor cannot influence gender bias in the publishing process, even when teaching the right kind of knowledge or collaborating with mentee. To name a few: women face higher publishing standards, are less likely to be given credit for their work and face a lengthier peer review process which in turn is detrimental for promotion.
Against this backdrop and the existing time deficit, it should not be surprising that there “have been negligible number of submissions by women” since the lockdown. Those with fewer care and domestic duties are able to use the lockdown to produce more articles and improve their publishing profile, while those with care duties – mostly women – are left behind. Carers now have to find time before or after the children are awake to record online lectures and manage student activities and then use a few hours during the day to work on research. Since the lockdown, journal editors have noticed that women have submitted fewer papers than usual at this time of the year in contrast to men who have submitted 50 percent more papers in some disciplines. While a mentor could give advice on how to manage time, they cannot make up for the fact that academia suffers from a substantial support deficit, often assuming uninterrupted working lives when evaluating career trajectories for promotion.
Given that these sexist practices continue to exist in the workplace and at home, a focus on mentoring as the solution props up this current system without challenging the underlying structures. Instead, the solution relies on helping “women build their skills and capacity” to succeed in a male dominated environment, placing the responsibility onto women. We at D-Econ have recently argued that career mentoring cannot be a panacea to overcome systemic limitations, but that a holistic approach is needed. Rather than mentoring programmes, we need clear-cut promotion categories which do not give too much leeway for interpretation. We need more emphasis on publication practices, highlighting inequalities and tackling these, for instance through measures as suggested by womenalsoknowstuff. These include, amongst others, journal editors checking the gender composition of references and encouraging authors to achieve a balanced citation practice. Finally, we need to reduce home inequality while acknowledging different life trajectories when evaluating promotions.
Ariane Agunsoye is a Lecturer in Economics at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is also on the steering committee of D-Econ, a network of economists who aim to promote inclusiveness in economics.
D-Econ will be hosing a workshop at 
