Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction

Decolonization has long been debated across the social sciences, but the economics discipline has so far avoided such critical engagement. This book provides a much-needed intervention.

Dutt, Alves, Kesar, and Kvangraven uncover the deeply Eurocentric foundations that shape how economists study the world today. These have rendered the discipline ill-equipped to tackle critical questions, such as structural racism, uneven development, the climate crisis, labour relations, and how structural power shapes economic outcomes. Decolonizing economics entails challenging the norms of neutrality and objectivity that economists claim to speak from, while fostering alternative ways of understanding the economy that take seriously structural power relations and contemporary processes of economic development. Readers will come to understand the political stakes of decolonization and the wide range of scholarship that already exists that can help us grasp economics from non-Eurocentric perspectives. Through such scholarship, we can gain an enriched understanding of capitalism and its relationship to exploitation, colonialism, and racialization.

The author order is randomized. All authors contributed equally to the book.

Carolina Alves is Joan Robinson Fellow in Heterodox Economics at Girton College, University of Cambridge.
Devika Dutt is Lecturer in Development Economics at King’s College London.
Surbhi Kesar is Lecturer in Economics at SOAS, University of London.
Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven is Lecturer in International Development at King’s College London.