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3 Economics tony addison Industrialization and democratization could not be achieved at the same time. When my father became president, this country was in terrible poverty. The first thing he had to do was to save the country through industrialization and from that followed democratization. (South Korean presidential candidate, Park Geun-hye, on her father, Park Chung-hee, who took power in the 1961 military coup, quoted in Financial Times 12 March 2002) The quotation that starts this chapter expresses a sentiment that was common currency in the early days of
Chapter 3 Beyond neoclassical economics Economics as a contested discipline pluralism n. a condition or system in which two or more states, groups, principles, sources of authority, etc., coexist.1 Economics education shapes how its students think about the world. This makes economics powerful, as those who study it often go on to have significant authority. Economics is presented as a unified field and its association with maths and statistics makes it easy to see it as a science. However, this is not the reality. In this chapter we argue that there is a
Today, in many countries what is viewed as ‘credible’ economic knowledge stems from academic economics. The discipline of academic economics is based in universities across the world that employ economists who produce research that is published in academic journals and educate students who then go into government, businesses, and think tanks. Through the book’s authors’ and contributors’ experiences of economics education, and as part of the international student movement Rethinking Economics, it argues that academic economics in its current state does not provide people with the knowledge that we need to build thriving economies that allows everyone to flourish wherever they are from in the world, and whatever their racialised identity, gender or socioeconomic background. The consequences of this inadequate education links to modern economies being a root cause of systemic racism and sexism, socioeconomic inequality, and the ecological crisis. When economies are rooted in a set of principles that values whiteness, maleness and wealth, we should not be surprised by the inequalities that show up. Structural inequalities need systemic change, change that infiltrates through every level of the system, otherwise we risk reproducing and deepening them. This book makes the case that in order to reclaim economics it is necessary to diversify, decolonise and democratise how economics is taught and practised, and by whom. It calls on everyone to do what we can to reclaim economics for racial justice, gender equality and future generations.
Chapter 2 Economics as indoctrination The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else John Maynard Keynes1 I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws, if I can write its economics textbooks Paul Samuelson2 In the space of seventy or eighty years the idea of ‘the economy’ went from non-existent to occupying a central place in our world. As a result of this meteoric ascent, economics – the study of the economy – has gained
Introduction This chapter introduces economics as Keynes encountered it and then how his own work before the General Theory begins to break from orthodoxy. Keynes depicts almost all his predecessors, at least those he considered worth discussing, as ‘classical’ economists. He acknowledges that this stretches the concept, but it allows him to include not just ‘Ricardo and James Mill and their predecessors …[but also] the followers of Ricardo’ ( 1973 : footnote 3). His understanding therefore includes the later marginalist or ‘neo-classical’ writers
Chapter 4 The struggle for the soul of economics Economic thought is today dominated by a single perspective, which seriously limits the ability of economic experts to deal with many of the problems faced by society. The belief in this one perspective goes right to the heart of the profession. For example, the 2014 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Jean Tirole, stated that it is ‘important for the community of academics … and researchers to be endowed with a single scientific assessment standard’.1 Thus, while economists often criticise the existence of
4 Sibling economics It must be remember’d that life consists not of a series of illustrious actions, or of elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in complyance with necessities in the performance of daily duties, in the removal of small inconveniences, in the procurement of petty pleasures; & we are ill or well at ease, as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small obstacles & frequent [como]tion. Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775, extracted by Anne Travell, c.1780s1 On a Monday in
Chapter 6 Economics is for everyone Renewing democracy In the last chapter we set out our vision for how the education of economic experts could be improved, and the temptation might be to end there. However, this would at best be addressing only half of the problem. While we have been following one path to an important set of conclusions, there has been another path running alongside, just out of sight but interwoven with our story; neglecting its ultimate conclusions will only leave us at a dead end. Throughout this book we have shown how economics underpins
8 The economics of dementia Paddy Gillespie and Sheelah Connolly Introduction Dementia describes the group of symptoms caused by the gradual death of brain cells, leading to the progressive decline of functions such as memory, orientation, understanding, judgement, calculation, learning, language and thinking (Luengo-Fernandez et al., 2010). There is no single cause of dementia, with a combination of risk factors, both known and unknown, believed to influence its onset and progression. Within this risk factor profile, increasing age is by far the strongest
Home economics offers an innovative, comparative history of domestic service in southern Africa’s post-colonial cities. Focusing on Lusaka and drawing wider comparisons, it provides the first in-depth study of domestic service in Black households in the region. Drawing on rich oral histories and diverse documentary sources, it develops a new theoretical approach which, for the first time, brings wage and kin-based domestic labour and child and adult workers into a single frame of analysis. In so doing, it challenges the narrow focus of existing scholarship and policymaking and breaks new ground in the theorisation of work. The book traces how Black employers and workers adapted existing models of domestic service rooted in colonial labour relations and African kinship structures, revealing how waged domestic service was gradually undermined by increased reliance on extended family networks and the labour of young female kin. It demonstrates how women and girls pursued employment in and came to dominate both kin-based and waged domestic service. It also explores efforts to regulate and organise these largely informal and intimate forms of work, and the gendered and generational impacts of such interventions. This rich and timely study provides essential insights into the nature of gender, work, and urban economies across southern Africa. It reveals the strategies that children, women, and men have pursued to support themselves and their dependants in the face of economic decline, precarious employment, and stark inequalities, and shows how gender, age, class, and kinship have shaped work within and beyond the home.