What does decolonisation entail in the context of economics and economic development? This question has become increasingly urgent for the economics discipline as it grapples with its inadequacy in dealing with the enormous global challenges that we face today, such as uneven development, environmental breakdown, racial injustice, and vaccine apartheid, to mention a few.
These challenges, and the difficulty economists have in dealing with them satisfactorily, have in recent decades raised questions about the methodology, theoretical foundations, and politics of knowledge production in the economics discipline (e.g. Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela, 2004; Milonakis and Fine, 2009; Patnaik, 2022; Kvangraven and Kesar, 2023; Dutt et al. 2024). Similarly, more and more questions are being raised about the extent to which the discipline can adequately theorise how the history and legacies of colonialism, the development of capitalism, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade impact our everyday lives. However, these are crucial issues to theorise in order to understand the inner workings of our institutions and our economy. Consider for example the question of how a just green transition can be achieved in a global economy that is premised on extraction and depletion of natural resources in the Global South. This question can arguably not be well understood without a structural understanding of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and racialisation. Much of the discipline falls short of providing such an understanding.
Economics, with its long-term ambition to be precise, neutral, and objective, often prioritises a type of economic theory and analysis that aims to simplify and model reality in ways that make it impossible to address concerns related to structural power inequalities, such as those relating to caste, race, gender, and states, or systems shaping exploitation, extraction, and institutions more generally. (Alves and Kvangraven, 2020). Equally concerning, this ambition also imposes a perspective that regards the modernity, progress, and rationality commonly associated with the development of capitalism in Western Europe as a reference and as a superior ideal against which all economic phenomena can be compared. In this setting, not only do structural processes of oppression, including forms of imperialism and neo/colonialism, fall outside the domain of the discipline, but a Eurocentric perspective also makes it acceptable to consider all phenomena (behaviors, institutions, cultures) that do not fit this ideal as non-rational, traditional or inefficient. Even when the discipline tries to incorporate what it sees as 鈥榓nomalous鈥�, 鈥榰nfamiliar鈥� of 鈥榖ackwards鈥� (e.g. Rodrik, 2021), it does so in a way that reinforces the Eurocentric core of the discipline given that what is seen as anomalous never leads economists to challenge the theoretical foundations of the discipline itself, but rather leads them to incorporate such insights at the margins of existing theory (Dutt et al. 2024).
Within such a narrative, capitalism is seen as a rational force that will unfold across the globe in a manner similar to what is (wrongly) assumed to have happened in Western Europe (Amin, 1988). This narrative ignores and thereby normalises the violent and exploitative processes that accompanied the emergence of capitalism. The Eurocentrism in social sciences that distorts scholarly understanding of the turbulent development of capitalism has long been identified by radical scholars (Amin, 1988; Kay, 1989), but these critiques are largely ignored in the canon of contemporary economics. Instead, the Eurocentric characteristics of the discipline have deepened in recent decades, and the discipline has become increasingly intransigent (Dutt et al., 2024). The discipline鈥檚 deafening silence on the genocide Israel is committing in Palestine suggests that it is not only conceptually unable, but also politically unwilling, to deal with forces of structural oppression (with a few notable exceptions from heterodox corners of the economics discipline, such as , and ).
In this blog series, we wish to open a forum for a discussion about what Eurocentrism and decolonisation means for Economics as a discipline as well as the contemporary policy challenges that the economics discipline attempts to tackle. We invite posts that not only critically examine the problems within the discipline but also explore alternatives to the Eurocentric foundations of mainstream economics. This critical examination is not just an academic exercise, but an attempt to challenge the status quo and pave the way for a more radical and transformative framework for understanding the world. We also welcome contributions that explore how the process of decolonising economics or economic development has been pursued thus far, the implications of these efforts, and what it would take to decolonise economics (if it is possible to decolonise it at all). Throughout the series, we aim to address various facets that relate to economics, such as climate change, the state, reparations, law, and financial technologies in development, all within the context of decolonisation debates.
- Is It Possible to 鈥楧ecolonize鈥� Economics? By Eiman Zein-Elabdin. We are honoured to kick off this series with a piece by one of the trailblazers who was among the first to connect economic debates to post-colonial theory, namely Professor Eiman Zein-Elabdin. Zein-Elabdin sets the stage by posing a fundamental question: Is it possible to 鈥楧ecolonise Economics鈥�? In a thought-provoking discussion, the author takes us to one of the most contested concepts in economics: value. The piece interrogates the problems with how value is theorized in economics today (and how this came to be) and proposes that what the discipline needs is an awareness of how culture (as a broad common, though always contested, frame of reference) shapes economic behavior and thought in order to better theorize value. Zein-Elabdid firmly states that in a world entrenched in persisting exclusion, oppression and injustice, thinking of value, power and justice as a mutually constitutive problem becomes imperative for any meaningful project of decolonisation within our discipline.
- Anti-Colonial Solutions to climate change. By Max Ajl. This post digs into an important policy issue in the field of economics, namely climate change. Ajl unpacks what is considered the common discourse, which rests on technical solutions, and puts forward a more radical alternative resting on decolonization and national liberation.
- Decolonising for Whom? Recentring grassroots struggles and voices in the 鈥榙ecolonising fintech鈥� narrative. By Serena Natile and Joy Malala. This is a mini-series within the Decolonising Economics series, especifically on debates about the application of digital technologies in retail finance (fintech). In this opening post, Natile and Malala discuss how decolonisation debates are also relevant for fintech, not only because of the ways colonial and neocolonial structures define patters of uneven development and value extraction, but also because of the ways in which critics claim to employ ‘decolonial’ approaches to fintech while being disconnected from contextual details and accuracy of how digital finance interacts with local practices, activism and resistance that inform grassroots demands for decolonisation. This raises the fundamental question of the purpose of a decolonial approach, and in whose interest decolonisation is being pursued.
- On recentring women鈥檚 grassroots struggles to decolonise fintech narratives. In this post Serena Natile argues that ‘decolonising’ fintech should be a contextual purposive action rather than a cosmetic claim, and that it would require historicising the analysis of the fintech infrastructure and its institutional arrangements with a clear commitment to building grassroots power to create anti-colonial futures.
- On recentring people鈥檚 voices to decolonise fintech narratives. In this post Joy Malala discusses what it would mean to center people’s voices in research on fintech, rather than seeing Africa as a “lab” for research extraction. Drawing on her work on the fintech sector in Kenya, Malala reflects on what frameworks exist to shape how we produce knowledge regarding politics, strife and struggles related to ethnicity, gender, and class in digital 鈥楢frica鈥�, or even Kenya, and how these discussions navigate power dynamics, and manifest forms of resistance, when talking about digital finance in Africa.
- What is the impact of international economic law on developing countries? By Celine Tan. This post brings the decolonising debates to the issue of international economic law by uncovering how law, regulations and institutions are located within a longer historical trajectory of colonialism, inequality and exploitation, and how law continues to support imperialism.
- The state in Africa is a colonial state. By Everisto Benyera. This post challenges Eurocentric conceptions of the state that sees it as an exogenous, neutral and universal institution. Benyera specifically goes into how the African state evolved as a colonial project and the implications of this for understanding the role of the state on the continent.
Blog series editors:
- Carolina Alves, Associate Professor, University College London, London
- Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, Senior Lecturer, King鈥檚 College, London
References
Alves, C. and Kvangraven, I. H. (2020). 鈥楥hanging the Narrative: Economics After Covid-19′. Review of Agrarian Studies, 10(1), pp. 147-163.
Amin, S. (1988/2009). Eurocentrism: Modernity, Religion, and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culturalism. 2nd edn. Oxford: Pambazuka Press.
Dutt, Devika, Carolina Alves, Surbhi Kesar and Ingrid Kvangraven. 2024. Decolonizing Economics – An Introduction. London: Polity Press.
Kay, Crist贸bal. 1989. Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment. London: Routledge.
Kvangraven, I. H., and Kesar, S. 2023. 鈥淪tanding in the way of rigor? Economics鈥� meeting with the decolonization agenda.鈥� Review of International Political Economy 30(5): 1723鈥�1748.
Milonakis, Dimitris and Ben Fine. 2009. From Political Economy to Economics Method, the social and the historical in the evolution of economic theory. New York: Routledge.
Patnaik, Utsa. 2022. 鈥淥n Political Economy and its Fallacies: Why Critiques and Rethinking Matter.鈥� Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy 11(3): 333鈥�351.
Rodrik, D. 2021. 鈥淓conomics has another diversity problem.鈥� Project Syndicate. August 7, 2021.
Zein-Elabdin, Eiman and S. Charusheela. 2004. Postcolonialism Meets Economics. London: Routledge.
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