Author: 51本色

G20 must end 鈥渙utsourcing鈥� of multilateralism

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By Charles Abugre and C.P. Chandrasekhar

In multiple ways multilateralism, or the coming together of the international community to further global good, is under challenge today. 鈥楥onflicts鈥�, not least among them the genocide in Gaza, are an obvious challenge. But there is in the economic sphere a silent subversion of multilateralism underway that also needs to be stalled and reversed. This is the view that the 鈥渇inancing for development challenge鈥� is so huge and the share of the private sector in the holding and disposal of the world鈥檚 financial surpluses so large, that it is only private initiative that can successfully implement the programmes needed to realise the SDGs and address damaging climate change.

The corollary of that position is that the role of governments is no more to try and move surpluses from private to public hands (through new forms of international tax cooperation, for example) but to use the available public resources as means to unlock private investments and expenditures. The call is to go beyond the recognition that the tasks of realising the SDGs, ensuring the needed carbon transition, and building resilience the world over, are primarily governmental or 鈥榩ublic鈥� responsibilities, and that cooperation among governments (or multilateralism) is the best means to implement those tasks. Pragmatism demands, it is argued, that these tasks and therefore multilateralism, or the conjoint responsibilities of global governments, must be 鈥渙utsourced鈥�.

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So You鈥檙e a Professor? Here鈥檚 What You Can Do to Oppose Genocide

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Feeling helpless does not mean being useless. It is possible to support Palestinians from afar.

College instructors, particularly those in Europe and North America, are generally limited when it comes to meaningful intervention in imperialist horrors afflicting the Global South.  Nevertheless, it is usually their governments either orchestrating or abetting the horror.  They ought to do something, then, even if it seems pyrrhic or inadequate. 

People around the world are now witnessing a particularly gruesome event as the Zionist entity, armed by its U.S. sponsor and enjoying the support of capitalist institutions across the globe, commits one atrocity after the other in the Gaza Strip (along with the West Bank and at times further afield).  The atrocities, anyone with a modicum of integrity agrees, add up to genocide.  The depth of grief and suffering Palestinians now experience is indescribable, immeasurable. 

Do professors and other campus workers have any ability to mitigate the grief and suffering?  Not really.  But we鈥檙e not entirely powerless, either.  Higher education is an important sector for information and activism and an industry where participants like to contemplate the role of both exceptional and ordinary people in making a better world.  Like anybody else, teachers and researchers can be most effective in their own communities, which are not inoculated from the genocide.  Zionist groups have organized hundreds of defamation campaigns against Palestinian students and faculty, often resulting in employment termination and other serious forms of recrimination.  These campaigns don鈥檛 exist in a vacuum.  Targeting Palestinians and anti-Zionists is an extension of the genocide, or at least one of its attendant tactics.  And then, of course, many of the campuses are somehow invested in the Zionist entity鈥攆inancially, politically, or logistically.  It does no good to say that 鈥渨e鈥� aren鈥檛 affected by what happens 鈥渢here.鈥� 

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Hierarchies of Development听podcast: Season 2

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In collaboration with EADI and King鈥檚 College, London, 51本色 has launched Season of the Hierarchies of Development podcast.听The podcast offers long format interviews focusing on enduring global inequalities. Conversations focus on contemporary research projects by critical scholars and help us understand how and why structural hierarchies persist. Join hosts Ingrid Kvangraven (KCL/DE) and Basile Boulay (EADI) for this series of discussions on pressing issues in the social sciences.

The podcast was developed with editing support from Jonas Bauhof. Listen to old episodes and subscribe to get updates on new episodes听(you can choose your preferred platform).

In the first episode is on monetary hierarchies we speak to Karina Patricio Ferreira Lima (University of Leeds, UK) about hierarchies in money and finance, core-periphery dynamics of inflation, the role of the International Monetary Fund in assessing debt sustainability, and much more. Listen on Spotify with the link below.

Top posts of 2022

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Although many commentators hoped 2022 would be a ‘return to normal’, this year has been anything but that. On 51本色, contributors have been grappling with many fundamental issues, ranging from social reproduction, labour exploitation and unrest, the many failuers of contemporary development policies, decolonisation, the food regime, new debt crises and industrialisation. Among the most widely read posts are those that challenge hegemonic thinking about the crises unfolding this year on both the left and right. For example, Farwa Sial’s interview with Max Ajl, Bikrum Gil and Tinashe Nyamnuda challenges the uncritical use of sanctions by the West in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and G眉ney I艧谋kara’s critique of polycrisis challenges what he deems to be superficial and ultimately inadequate efforts on the left to understand the contemporary crisis of capitalism. Amidst all the hype about returning to normal, contributors on DE also recognize both that pre-pandemic times were also deeply unequal, exploitative, and extractive, which calls for a deeper appreciation of critical scholarship that can help us understand the forces that produce this inequality even in allegedly normal times, and that the crisis responses have been highly unequal across the world.

This year we also launched a new podcast where you can listen to critical scholarship on development and economics in a conversational format. Season 1 is now out and you can listen to episodes on environmental issues, mining, labour, and global value chains.

Here are the top 10 most read posts of 2022:

  1. Sanctions and the changing world Order: Some Views from the Global South (Farwa Sial interviews Max Ajl, Bikrum Gil and Tinashe Nyamunda)
  2. Race to the bottom: Competition between Indonesian food delivery platform companies for cheap gig workers (by Arif Novianto)
  3. (After) Neoliberalism? Rethinking the Return of the State (by Ishan Khurana and John Narayan)
  4. Neoliberal capitalism and the commodification of social reproduction, from our home to our classroom (by )
  5. Feminist political economy, land, and decolonisation: Rama Salla Dieng in conversation with Lyn Ossome (by Lyn Ossome and )
  6. Beating around the Bush: Polycrisis, Overlapping Emergencies, and Capitalism (by G眉ney I艧谋kara)
  7. Marx and Colonialism (by Lucia Pradella)
  8. Who鈥檚 in control? Wall Street Consensus, state capitalism, and spatialised industrial policy (by Seth Schindler, Ilias Alami and Nick Jepson)
  9. On the perils of embedded experiments (by Jean Dr猫ze)
  10. Ignorance is Bliss: Why should we study Leontief? (by Thair Ahmad)

This is just a tiny, tiny sample of our around 40 posts on the blog this year, so please have a browse through the rest of the blogs too. You can also follow our active blog series on State Capitalism(s) and Pressure in the City, and delve into all COVID-19 related analysis here, and book reviews here. In 2023, 51本色 will continue to provide much-needed critical perspectives on development and economics. Want to join the conversation?: Become a contributor.

Hierarchies of Development podcast

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In collaboration with EADI and King’s College, London, 51本色 has launched a new podcast on Hierarchies of Development. The podcast offers long format interviews focusing on enduring global inequalities. Conversations focus on contemporary research projects by critical scholars and help us understand how and why structural hierarchies persist. Join hosts Ingrid Kvangraven (KCL/DE) and Basile Boulay (EADI) for this series of discussions on pressing issues in the social sciences.

The first episodes was on environmental hierarchies, with the brilliant guests and :

This podcast was developed with editing support from Jonas Bauhof. Subscribe to get updates on new episodes (you can choose your preferred platform).

Top posts of听2021

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It’s a wrap – the tumultous year of 2021 is almost behind us. As usual, it was a year full of critical anlyses on the blog that can help us make sense of the multiple crises unfolding before our eyes. This year, the most read posts were to a large extent those that explicitly challenge orthodox thinking about economics and development and provide alternative ways of framing the complex problems we face as a society. This may well reflect some important churning that is currently taking place in development economics. The top posts expose the limits to mainstream economics and global development discourses, debunk dominant views of the Washington Consensus and Chile as a ‘Free Market Mirace’, and excavate helpful insights from Marx, Sam Moyo, and scholars of imperialism. They also provide concrete ways of understanding contemporary issues such as intellectual monopoly capitalism and the gig economy.

Here are the top 10 most read posts of 2021:

  1. We Need to Talk about听Economics (by听Paulo L. dos Santos听and听No茅 Wiener)
  2. Rethinking the Social Sciences with Sam听Moyo (by Praveen Jha,听Paris Yeros听and听Walter Chambati)
  3. The Washington Counterfactual: don鈥檛 believe the Washington Consensus听resurrection (by听Carolina Alves,听Daniela Gabor听and听Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven).
  4. Debunking the 鈥楩ree Market Miracle鈥�: How industrial policy enabled Chile鈥檚 export听diversification (by Amir Lebdioui)
  5. The Changing Face of Imperialism: Colonialism to Contemporary听Capitalism (by听Sunanda Sen听and听)
  6. Monetary policy is ultimately based on a theory of money: A Marxist critique of MMT (by 听and听Nicol谩s Aguila)
  7. Intellectual monopoly capitalism and its effects on听development (by Cecilia Rikap)
  8. The Uncomfortable Opportunism of Global Development听Discourses (by Pritish Behuria)
  9. The partnership trap in the Indonesian gig听economy (by Arif Novianto)
  10. From Post-Marxism back to听Marxism? (by Lucia Pradella)

This is just a tiny, tiny sample of the over eighty posts on the blog this year. You can also follow our active blog series on State Capitalism(s) and Pressure in the City, and delve into all COVID-19 related analysis here, and book reviews here (see also our book symposum on Max Ajl’s new book A People’s Green New Deal here).

In 2022, 51本色 will continue to provide much-needed critical perspectives on development and economics. Want to join the conversation?: Become a contributor.

听A People鈥檚 Green New Deal: A Symposium

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Max Ajl鈥檚听A People鈥檚 Green New Deal听intervenes in current debates regarding green planning, green future, green stimuli, and eco-socialism. It surveys a wide range of existing literature on the ecological and social crisis, ranging from ruling-class 鈥済reat transitions,鈥� to eco-modernist听elixirs听of听the听right and听the听left which bank on technological solutions to today鈥檚 social and ecological problems. It then considers and听critiques an array of liberal, left-liberal, and social democratic proposals, some of them going under the eco-socialist moniker, and shows how they rest on continued exploitation and primitive accumulation of the periphery.听

A People鈥檚 Green New Deal contributions lie in, first, using frameworks of dependency theory, accumulation on a world scale, and ecologically uneven exchange to illuminate the costs and consequences of distinct approaches to the climate crisis, left and right. Second, the book鈥檚 emphasis on agriculture, land use, and agro-ecology makes it unique amongst books on the Green New Deal and parallel debates. Its emphasis on decolonization, national sovereignty, anti-imperialism, and climate debt repayments from the North to the South is a third contribution. A fourth is how it deals with technology. 

This review forum assesses the contribution of听A People鈥檚 Green New Deal.听Sakshi situates听APGND听in terms of a counter-epistemology to Eurocentric and empire-blind resolutions, if not really solutions, to the social and ecological crises to which mainstream Green New Deals are addressed.听Sheetal Chhabria assesses听APGND鈥檚 contribution to thinking on a planetary scale about appropriate planning for a just transition, while criticizing the book鈥檚 uncritical embrace of certain Indian nationalist tropes. G眉ney I艧谋kara raises questions regarding political agency and organization, the role of national-level planning in any form of national-level green transition, and how to approach anti-imperialism on a world scale.听听

Read the contributions:

The D-Econ Database: A response to the most common excuse

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The Economics profession has long been too white, too male, too Western-centric, and too hostile to non-mainstream approaches. Today, a new tool 鈥� the D-Econ Database 鈥� is being launched to address this. 

鈥淎ll the women were busy.鈥� 鈥淭here are no people of color working on this topic.鈥� 鈥淚t鈥檚 the male-dominated field that鈥檚 the problem, not this particular panel.鈥� We needed big names and all the big names just happen to be white men based in the Global North.鈥�

We鈥檝e all heard these excuses many times over. Women, minorities, and scholars from the Global South are severely underrepresented in the field of Economics 鈥� and that makes putting together panels that do not simply reproduce the dominant identities in the field a challenge. The high concentration of a few dominant identities in the Economics field has rightly led to outrage against all-white and all-male panels .  

It is becoming increasingly accepted that this underrepresentation is not simply an issue of fewer women, minorities, and scholars from the Global South听choosing听not to be a part of the field. On the contrary, research shows that there are systemic biases that make it more difficult for economists who are not white, not male, and not based in the Global North, to be heard. An additional layer of discrimination has to do with approach. Indeed, Economics is 鈥渦nique among the social sciences in having a single monolithic mainstream, which is either unaware of or actively hostile to alternative approaches鈥� (: 17).

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