What decolonising economics can look like
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Economics shapes many aspects of our daily lives, from the prices we pay to the policies governments adopt. Yet many of the ideas taught as universal principles of economics emerged from a narrow historical context and have rarely been examined through a decolonial lens.
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A recently published book, Decolonizing Economics, argues that economics is long overdue for decolonisation. Its authors contend that the discipline has largely overlooked how colonialism, empire and unequal power shaped the development of modern economies and the economic theories used to explain them.
Decolonising economics means rethinking how we understand economic development and inequality. Rather than explaining prosperity through technology, markets and scientific progress, it examines how colonisation, resource extraction and exploited labour shaped today’s wealthy economies while contributing to underdevelopment elsewhere.
At its core, it’s about shifting away from an economy that benefits the elite to one that builds people’s capabilities.
As an economics professor, I’ve been restructuring my teaching based on my scholarship on critical microeconomics, critical macroeconomics and alternative ways to build the economy.
Questioning Eurocentric assumptions
Many foundational economic theories were developed by wealthy European men during periods of colonial expansion. Yet these ideas are often treated as universal principles rather than products of a particular historical context.
Eurocentric economic thought tends to position European economic development as the norm while presenting Indigenous and Global South economic...