Category: Decolonizing Economics

An Alternative Economics Summer Reading List, 2019

Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven2 Comments

pasted image 0.pngThis summer, we take stock of the most interesting economics-related books that have been released over the past year. Every year, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times makes a similar list. However, by his聽, he only reads within the tradition of his own training in mainstream economics. While聽聽includes several excellent books, such as聽聽by Frances Coppola and聽聽by Victoria Bateman, we are still struck by the strong white-male-mainstream-Western bias in Wolf鈥檚 list, with the books almost all written by white (20/21) men (18/21) about topics mostly focused on the US and Europe.聽

To complement Wolf鈥檚 list, we have put together an Alternative Economics Summer Reading list with authors from across the world, with more varied backgrounds 鈥� and writing about more wide-ranging topics, and from a wider variety of critical perspectives. Our alternative list also reflects our belief that issues such as structural racism, imperialism, ideology and the philosophy of science are central to understanding economics.聽

It is not that we think that Martin Wolf is in particular responsible for the lack of diversity and monism in our reading decisions: other curators such as the Economist (for example,聽) also perpetuate the myth that the books worth reading about economics are mostly those written about the US and Europe, by white men trained trained in mainstream economics.聽Read More »

An Alternative Economics Summer Reading List

Carolina Alves10 Comments

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by Carolina Alves, , and Ingrid H. Kvangraven

This is a response list to recommending Economics books of 2018 for summer reading. While there are many good books listed, we were struck by the consistent monism in his choices, as the books are all by scholars based in either the UK or the US, 12/13 of the authors are men and most of them come from the same theoretical tradition. Such lists perpetuate the strong white male – and mainstream – biases in our field (the recent list by suffers from the same biases).

To counter these biases, and with the purpose of broadening our field to become more inclusive of diverse approaches and perspectives, we have put together an alternative list. We deliberately chose books by scholars approaching Economics with alternative theoretical frameworks and by scholars from groups that tend to be excluded from the field, namely women, people of color, and scholars from the Global South. We recognize that no one is exempt from biases, which is why we are providing an explanation for the motivation behind our selection. Due to institutional and language barriers we were unable to include as many scholars from the Global South as we would have liked. For example, we would love to read the new book by Laura Carvalho, but we are still waiting for the English translation. We hope you enjoy it and welcome more suggestions in the comments section.

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