Kia ora tatou
I wonder if it is possible for any
economics curriculum to be satisfactory. In Bruno Latour's view
(see the quotes from After Lockdown Metamorphosis, 2021,
below) 'economics' is an invention which has been and is still
imposed with force. It obscures reality at best, and destroys it
at worst.
It was interesting to see in the
philanthropy article which Christian provided the link to that
'philanthropy' now includes creating pro-capitalist propaganda.
This reinforces Latour's point that a lot of work has gone and
continues to go into creating the pseudo-reality of 'economics'
and the Economy. It can be 'soft' work, like the creation of
'philanthropic' propaganda; or 'hard' work, like the murder of
indigenous people and their supporters trying to prevent further
'economic' extraction of the life of their lands, and the minerals
beneath them.
It is still heretical these days to say
that the Economy is not real, and we should focus on what is, and
stop aiming to grow the Economy until it has devoured the Earth
and all on it. It has been heretical for 50 years now, since the Limits
to Growth report was published in 1972, and a very small new
party in a very small new-ish state (the New Zealand Values Party)
put out an election manifesto with two key policies - Zero
Economic Growth and Zero Population Growth. I don't know of any
political party which has been so bold since - and you probably
all know the connections between economic and population growth
and how problematic both are these days. Also the connections with
fossil fuel extraction and use.
If I were a teenager today and had a
choice between studying economics in a classroom or learning
gardening in a community garden, I know what the smart choice
would be.
Christine
p 59 “This time round, it’s not just a matter of improving,
changing, greening or revolutionising the ‘economic’ system, but
of completely doing without the Economy.”
p 60 “Homo oeconomicus has nothing native, natural or
autochthonous about him, as we’ve long known. Strictly speaking,
he comes from on high … from the top down, and not at all
from ordinary practical experience, from the ground up,
from the relationships that lifeforms maintain with other
lifeforms.”
p 60 “For the Economy to expand … as the bedrock of all possible
life on earth, an enormous amount of infrastructure building is
required to impose it as an obvious fact against the dogged
resistance put up by the most common experience in reaction to
such violent colonisation.”
p 61 [Without this infrastructure] “no one would ever have
invented ‘individuals’ capable of a selfishness drastic enough,
constant enough, consistent enough to not ‘owe anyone anything’
and to see all others as ‘aliens’ and all life forms as
‘resources’. Beneath the evidence of a native, primal Economy lie
three centuries of economisation….” [this preliminary embedding
requires extreme violence]
p 62 [In order not to stay in the economisation trap, the way out
proposed by Duzan Kazik] “… consists in never agreeing to
say of any subject whatever that ‘it has an economic dimension’!
Bowing to that dimension … always boils down to suggesting that,
on the one hand, there is a profound, essential, vital reality –
the economic situation – but that on the other hand, we could
nonetheless, if we had the time, take ‘other dimensions’ into
account – social, moral, political dimensions and even, why not,
if there’s anything left over, an ‘ecological dimension’… Well,
reasoning accordingly means giving the Economy a material reality
it doesn’t have, and lending a hand to a power that trickles down
from on high.”
pp 74 - 75 “As soon as you describe a territory the right way
round, you feel in your bones why the Economy could not be
realistic or materialistic …. Embracing the Economy means
interrupting the resumption of interactions by inventing beings
who won’t have to account for themselves on the pretext that
they’re autonomous individuals whose limits are protected by an
exclusive right of ownership.”
On 25/06/22 06:21, Steven J. Klees
wrote:
Dear Christian,
The CORE curriculum is an improvement over standard
approaches in economics departments but it is fundamentally
neoclassical. It moves away from neoliberalism but is
firmly ensconced in a liberal view of markets and
capitalism. Putting lipstick on a pig is, to me, an
appropriate characterization. Check out the attached New
Yorker article.
Best,
Steve
Sharing this resource. Would love
to hear reactions. My kneejerk response was that
this is simply putting lipstick on a pig (the pig
being the systemic structural violence of
capitalism).
https://www.core-econ.org/
…oh and if you would like to know
where this initiative got its start, read this
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/thinking-anew-about-capitalism
Thank you in advance for your
interest and attention!
__
Christian Stalberg
Doctoral Student
Anthropology & Social Change
CIIS, San Francisco, CA
"I am no longer accepting the
things I cannot change. I am changing the things I
cannot accept." - Angela Davis
“What
is it that we can do that addresses whatever the
problem is, rather than what it is that we’re
trying to get somebody else to do.” – Alice Lynd
“It’s better
to die for an idea that is going to live than to
live for an idea that is going to die.” – Steve
Biko
“We live in
capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but so
did the divine right of kings.” - Ursula K. Le
Guin
_______________________________________________
GTA-PeDAGoG mailing list
GTA-PeDAGoG@lists.ourproject.org
http://lists.ourproject.org/mailman/listinfo/gta-pedagog
_______________________________________________
GTA-PeDAGoG mailing list
GTA-PeDAGoG@lists.ourproject.org
http://lists.ourproject.org/mailman/listinfo/gta-pedagog