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

Sun Jun 26 18:46:22 CEST 2022

Friends, I am pleased as punch with this discussion. To be reductionist for a moment, it seems like it comes down to the age old debate of “reform vs revolution”.  

Steven, one of the comments to your cited blog entry suggested the writings of Henry George. Also, this book was suggested, which sounds tempting: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Corruption_of_Economics.html?id=5vjs_O6cRMAC <https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Corruption_of_Economics.html?id=5vjs_O6cRMAC&source=kp_book_description> &source=kp_book_description 

I tend to wonder whether or not existing systems will be capable of pivoting in the time required for ‘reform’ given accelerating climate chaos impacts and neoliberal capitalist accumulative savagery. The revolution may be forced upon us simply in order to be able to eat.

What has this got to do with pedagogy? A lot I’m afraid. If we assume centralized supply chains are toast we have a very different looking world then at present and we will have to teach to it accordingly, no?

Thank you Steven, Christine, Aram, Ashish & Michel. Keep going all!

__

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

From: GTA-PeDAGoG <gta-pedagog-bounces at lists.ourproject.org> On Behalf Of Steven J. Klees
Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2022 7:16 AM
To: PeDAGoG: Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group <gta-pedagog at lists.ourproject.org>
Subject: Re: [PeDAGoG] CORE (Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics)

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 <mailto: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> 

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Global Tapestry of Alternatives  <http://www.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/>   

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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 <mailto: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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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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