[PeDAGoG] CORE (Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics)

[Steven J. Klees]

As someone schooled in neoclassical economics, I find both its neoliberal
and liberal variants bankrupt.  I find alternative approaches to economics
most significant in what is being done in economics in practice by groups
like GTA and others, as I have said in this blog:

https://evonomics.com/klees-neoclassical-economics-failed-what-comes-next/

There have been interesting attempts to break free of the neoclassical
straightjacket in approaches like ecological economics and feminist
economics, but too often they don't really break free.  However, sometimes
under the label "political economy" you have true alternatives that start
with the bankruptcy of capitalism ("political economy" is also used by the
right).  The World Economics Association takes a "heterodox" stance (in
opposition to "orthodox" economics which is another term for neoclassical)
and publishes a list of alternative texts, some of which offer more
sensible approaches to economics:

https://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/textbook-commentaries/alternative-texts/

Best,
Steve

On Sun, Jun 26, 2022 at 6:38 AM Ashish Kothari <ashishkothari at riseup.net>
wrote:

> This is interesting, friends. Though, does it not depend on what
> definition of 'economics' we are accepting as legitimate? Its original
> meaning (from 'oikos' ... and therefore also linked to ecology) is
> 'management of the home' ... so if ecology is put at the base
> ('understanding the home') and we relate to the Earth our home in ways that
> reflect a deep understanding, is that not something humans have been doing
> forever?
>
> So, do we accept the modernist westernised version of 'economics', or the
> much broader, deeper meaning of it ... do we discard it totally because it
> is badly corrupted/co-opted, or do we rescue it? This relates to one of my
> favourite pre-occupations, of understanding original meanings of words, and
> seeing if there is subversive/revolutionary potential in rescuing them, or
> are they so inextricably embedded in the system we are fighting against,
> that its best to abandon them and find alternatives? An eminently
> 'pedagogical' quest, I suppose.
>
> And in that spirit, note that the term 'pedagogy', at least according to
> my laptop's inbuilt dictionary, comes from a v. dubious origin: "late Middle
> English: via Latin from Greek paidagōgos, denoting a slave who accompanied
>  a child to school (from pais, paid- ‘boy’ + agōgos ‘guide’)." I found
> this out to my utter chagrin *after *having suggested PeDAGoG
> (Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group) as the acronym for this
> network!  So in this case, its not about rescuing the original meaning, but
> giving it a new, v. different, one! But sorry, let this observation not
> distract from the main topic of conversation here ... whether economics
> should or should not be in curricula, and it is should, waht should be its
> contours/substance (and *not *going further here into whether formal
> curricula should exist in the first place :):)
>
> ashish
> 
>
> New, for post-COVID dignified livelihoods in India! Vikalp Sutra
> <https://sutra.vikalpsangam.org/>
>
> FREE DOWNLOAD! Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary
> <https://radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/pluriverse>
>
>
>
> Ashish Kothari
>
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>
> On 26/06/22 2:08 pm, Aram Ziai wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> I agree and wanted to point out that Escobar has described already in 95
> economics as a cultural discourse imagining itself to be a science... but
> also that the 'problem' of population growth is usually focusing on poor
> people in the South (who use far far less resources and emit far far less
> CO2 than the global middle class) and of course on women (whose right to
> control their body is compromised) thus has racist and sexist elements.
>
> Best
>
> Aram
>
>
> On 25.06.22 22:37, Christine Dann wrote:
>
> 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
>
> On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 12:58 PM Christian Stalberg <
> cstalberg at mymail.ciis.edu> wrote:
>
>> 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*
>>
>>
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>>
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> --
> Prof. Dr. Aram Ziai
> Chair of Development and Postcolonial Studies
> Executive Director Global Partnership Network
> Faculty of Social Sciences
> University of Kassel
> Nora-Platiel-Str. 1
> 34109 Kassel
> Germany
> ++49 561 804-3023ziai at uni-kassel.dehttps://www.uni-kassel.de/fb05/en/fachgruppen/politikwissenschaft/department-for-development-and-postcolonial-studies.htmlhttps://www.uni-kassel.de/forschung/global-partnership-network/home/
>
> New video: Post-Development - Questioning the whole paradigm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsrK-XuSZZQ
>
> Open access article: Neocolonialism in the global economy of the 21st century: an overview, in: Momentum Quarterly 9 (3), 128-140. Open access: https://www.momentum-quarterly.org/ojs2/index.php/momentum/article/view/3478
>
> New edited volume: Beyond the master's tools? Decolonizing knowledge orders, research methods and teaching. London: Rowman & Littlefield (with Franziska Müller and Daniel Bendix)https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786613592/Beyond-the-Master's-Tools-Decolonizing-Knowledge-Orders-Research-Methods-and-Teaching
>
> New edited volume:  The Development Dictionary @25: Post-Development and its consequences. London: Routledge.https://www.routledge.com/The-Development-Dictionary-25-Post-Development-and-its-consequences/Ziai/p/book/9781138323476
>
> Open access book: Development Discourse and Global History. From Colonialism to the Sustainable Development Goals. London: Routledge.https://www.routledge.com/Development-Discourse-and-Global-History-From-colonialism-to-the-sustainable/Ziai/p/book/9781138735132
>
> Open access article: Post-Development: Premature Burials and Haunting Ghosts. In: Development and Change 46 (4), 833-854.
> open access: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dech.12177/full
>
> Open access article:  Post-development 25 years after The Development Dictionary, Third World Quarterly, 38:12, 2547-2558, https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1383853
>
>
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