Identity in economics or identity of economics?
Note: Continuing the Miami Institute’s economics forum, Surbhi Kesar argues that: “While there is indeed a problem of identity in terms of a lack of representation of the Global majority in the discipline of economics, I submit here that the fons et origo of the problem can be found in the identity of the discipline itself.”
The discipline of economics has recently come under fierce critique both for a lack of diversity in terms of representation and for discrimination on the basis of race, gender, caste, and other group-based identities (see, for example, Wu, 2018; Sahm, 2020; Sanbu, 2020, Dutt, 2020). While there is indeed a problem of identity in terms of a lack of representation of the Global majority in the discipline of economics, I submit here that the fons et origo of the problem can be found in the identity of the discipline itself. This is to say that the issue of identity in the discipline of economics emanates from the identity of the discipline. Following this, measures to challenge issues of identity in the discipline, without a serious engagement with the identity of the discipline is partial and can, at times, be self-defeating. In this piece, I will try to unpack this argument and suggest some ways forward.
Economics is referred to as the ‘queen of the social sciences’ (see Fine, 1999; 2009 for a discussion on the imperialism of economics over other social sciences). Its rising to this status has been a result, among other things, of the discipline emulating the natural sciences in its claim to ‘objectivity’. Through this claim, economics has distanced itself from other social sciences that many view as subjective or partial. Instead, economics has been able to present itself as an objective science explaining the workings of the economy according to a set of ‘scientifically’ defined rules and principles, and laying down certain aims and objectives that are ‘universal’. However, despite the economic organization and interaction being embedded in widely varying social and political contexts, this ascription of ‘universality’ and ‘objectivity’ to certain specific understandings, has implied a dismissal of all other ways of organizing the economy and making sense of it. Of the many partial views of economics, that which is treated as ‘universal’ and becomes hegemonic, has been a function of global power hierarchy. It has often been, quite expectedly, the view of the powerful, i.e., the Global North. Given its political and economic power in the world, Global North-centric mainstream economic thought and experience have laid out the roadmap of what the Global South ‘needs’ to strive for; how that could be achieved; and, what forms of knowledge are ‘objective’ or ‘scientific’ enough to scrutinize and explain the world. On the flip side, the Global South has come to be recognized as the ‘other’ and the ‘deficient’ that ‘needs’ to be molded along the principles laid out by the dominant view in the North (see, for example, Spivak, 1996; Said, 1978; and Rist, 1997 for more discussions on the role of power in shaping knowledge and discourse across the world).
This hegemony of the North can be seen as a direct function of the development of capitalism. The North represents the essence of capitalism. It was here that capitalism flourished, making Global North the normative rule, while the Global South became the ‘lack’— not adequately capitalist like the Global North. However, by ascribing the status of ‘universality’ to the North’s ways of organizing the economy and the status of ‘objectivity’ and ‘scientificity’ to one specific method of understanding it, and reducing all other contesting ways of understanding economic life as ‘unscientific’ and partial, economics—to a large extent—has been extricated from the sphere of political contestations. In other words, the question of the Global South’s ways or other non-mainstream ways of organizing and analyzing the economy, which is a deeply politically motivated question, has been largely freed from its political moorings by disparaging all these alternate ways as non-scientific, thereby, reducing it to a non-question. Through this, there has been an active de-politicization of the discipline of economics through a deeply political project of the Global North’s dominance. This de-politicization has played a central role in ensuring the hegemony of dominant mainstream Global North-centric economic thought.
[A detailed discussion on the role of power and colonialism in shaping the discipline of economics can be found in a forthcoming book on decolonising economics (co-authored by Carolina Alves, Devika Dutt, Surbhi Kesar, and Ingrid H. Kvangraven)]
Given the power of the Global North as a former colonizer and an advanced capitalist economy, and, therefore, as a powerful player in the global hierarchy, it not only has defined why and how the rest of the world needs to be economically transformed, but also has demarcated the rules of this game. The rules of the game comprise expectations on what forms or kinds of knowledge about the ‘economic’ is ordained ‘scientific,’ and thus worthy of guiding economic transformations. The institutions that govern these rules are embedded in mainstream Global North-centric understandings and are located in these rich advanced capitalist countries. Similar to how one (partial) strand of knowledge in economics, by virtue of being embedded in mainstream Global North-centric thought and ideology, is celebrated as the universal, these institutions, by virtue of playing the role of upholding the power of this mainstream knowledge, are celebrated as value-neutral ‘top’ institutions in the world. Even several decades after the Global South countries achieved political sovereignty, the harbinger of these rules has remained more or less the same, and the power stays intact with these mainstream institutions in the Global North.
These institutions comprise the ‘top’ journals, ‘top’ universities, ‘top’ conferences, and are viewed as the flag bearers of ‘objective’ ‘scientific’ knowledge, and most of what is produced outside these institutions is hardly viewed as knowledge worth engaging with. These institutions constantly act as gatekeepers for Global South-centric knowledge. On the one hand, scholars from the Global South, i.e., the Global Majority, as well as those trained in non-mainstream thoughts, are underrepresented in ‘top’ journals, ‘top’ universities and ‘top’ conferences. They also face stricter standards in hiring, and works on the Global South are likely to be rejected on the basis of having a ‘regional’ focus (assuming implicitly that works on a region/country in the Global North is not regional). On the other hand, any knowledge that questions this mainstream Global North-centric knowledge—both in terms of its idea and method – is deemed as not-objective. The exclusion, therefore, as I mentioned earlier, is not only an issue of identity, i.e., lack of diversity in the discipline of economics, rather it says much more about the identity of economics itself.
This hegemony of these select institutions has various impacts on shaping the discipline of economics at all levels, beyond an exclusion of non-mainstream economic thought and Global majority scholars. In that context, probably, the most influential impact is in terms of educational institutions in the Global South themselves being subject to this hegemony of the Global North. Their own curriculum is heavily influenced, if not completely co-opted, by dominant mainstream economic knowledge, emanating from the Global North. For example, texts such as Principles of Economics (1997) by Gregory Mankiw, rooted in neoclassical mainstream principles and now in its ninth edition, still forms the fundamental undergraduate-level introductory economics texts in several universities in the South, including Indian universities.
Given the global power hierarchies in the economics discipline, Global South scholars are under even higher pressure to emulate scholars in the North in order to be able to be recognized as legitimate creators of scientific knowledge. Over time, this emulation of mainstream economics has transformed from being a pressure that the South has to succumb to, to an internalization of these principles that the South begins to uncritically believe in. Such is the hegemony of the Global North-centric mainstream of economics. Those Global majority scholars who are successful in mastering these mainstream ideas and methods and are able to prise their way through the gates of these Global North institutions, are viewed as having ‘made the cut’ and are made out to be exemplars. The emulation only acts to further strengthen the power of the hegemon [see, for example, Ambedkar (1979) and Veblan (1899) on power and emulation]. On the other hand, the academic spaces, both in the Global South and the Global North, that promote alternate, non-mainstream knowledge and do not subscribe to dominant thought are often marginalized. For example, the heterodox economics department of the University of Notre Dame, USA, which struggled for decades for its academic freedom was finally forced to close down in 2010. This further increases the pressure on Global South institutions to train students in Global North-centric mainstream knowledge and make them worthy of Northern institution’s acceptance.
Furthermore, the discipline of development economics, which is viewed as dealing with the issues of the Global South, is perceived as a special branch of economics that studies the economies representing an ‘out of ordinary’ phenomenon and where the ‘objective’ rules do not apply. Even this ‘South-focused’ discipline views the Global South as an undesirable aberration that needs to be transformed, or rather, developed along the lines of the advanced capitalist economies in the Global North. As a result, the entire development discourse revolves around what can be done to transform these economies to better reflect these Global North economies so that the ‘objective’ rule of economic theory can be applied better there.
This has important implications. First, rather than students being taught critical perspectives on the global economic order, students are taught to ‘think like an economist,’ with an implicit assumption that economists are supposed to think according to a given set of ‘objective’ principles that are laid out in mainstream economics (a more expansive discussion on this is available on an on-going work that I am co-authoring with Ingrid H. Kvangraven). They are trained in only one set of methods that is deemed as ‘scientific’. This results in a censoring and marginalization of the wide range of critical schools of thought in economics. While this process of censoring happens both in the Global North and in the Global South, it takes a sharper form in the South since the South is under more pressure to emulate not just the North, but the mainstream and dominant paradigms of the North. This throttles the possibility of students to develop critical thinking through which they can question this hegemony of the Global North-centric mainstream and the narrow ways in which principles of ‘scientificity’ are defined. It also suppresses the possibility of Global majority scholars to understand the realities from a Global South-centric lens. Finally, those few from the Global South who are able to break into the ‘inner circle’ of the ‘top’ Global North institutions that informs and shapes what gets accepted as knowledge, more often than not, are deeply embedded in North-centric mainstream economic thinking. These scholars—even if they represent identity-based diversity in these ‘top’ institutions—are unable to challenge the structures that produce these hierarchies, and instead only become exemplars in legitimizing the hegemony of these institutions.
This is not to argue that fighting for representation in economics is unimportant. Representation is indispensable for this project of challenging this dominant economic thinking since it creates space for Global majority voices, and, through it, opens the possibility to challenge these ideas and understandings. Representation therefore is an important and even necessary step for this goal. However, in parallel, a broadening of the understanding of diversity is also indispensably needed - diversity beyond merely social identities of gender, caste, religion, race, and geographical positionality. What we also need is diversity of other non-mainstream and South-centric schools of economic thought that—despite being present in economics—are actively subordinated and marginalized. We need a space for pluralities, a space for distinct meanings of “economic progress” that are outside the narrow echelons of mainstream knowledge.
The first step towards ensuring this diversity in economics warrants recognizing the politics of knowledge creation in the field, recognizing that the exclusion is systematic, recognizing that the exclusion doesn’t merely represent an exclusion of identity, rather an exclusion of non-mainstream strands that challenges hegemonic economic thinking. The task, therefore, is a re-politicization of the process of knowledge creation. The re-politicization is not an easy task. It entails, laying bare the political biases that inform the process of knowledge creation. It entails a radical questioning of the ‘hegemony’ of these ‘top’ institutions.
As part of this questioning, various important initiatives have emerged calling out this gatekeeping; questioning the insular structures on Western institutions; and attempting to create an alternative space for economic thinking. Some of these initiatives, such as Bahujan Economists, The Black Economists Network, and Sadie Collective, seek to diversify the field of economics in terms of identity representation, while others such as Rethinking Economics (with its local chapters in several countries) and Exploring Economics, among others, have been actively pushing for diversity in schools of thought in terms of pluralist economics teaching. Furthermore, initiatives such as Diversifying and Decolonising Economics (D-Econ) have been seeking to diversify the discipline in terms of identity and plurality of thoughts, while also raising voice against the existing power structures that systematically exclude non-mainstream and Global South-centric understandings in economics. These initiatives have played important roles in highlighting these issues of domination and discrimination in economics, while providing practical ways to deal with them. D-Econ, for example, has been involved in curating diverse economics reading lists as a counter to the heavily West-centric, male-dominated mainstream reading lists. The initiative has been actively pushing for curriculum reforms. It also has been raising voice against how biases in the economics discipline is linked with race-based and gender-based atrocities in the social sphere, and why movements against these atrocities also call for a re-examination of economics from a critical race / gender lens.
However, the project of dismantling the power structures embedded in this process of knowledge creation in economics does not end here. At a more fundamental level, the task is to displace the locus from the Global North. For any idea, institution, or region to be powerful, it needs to constantly create the ‘other’, which is representative of the ‘lack’ or deficiency. The ‘deficient’ ‘other’ is the object on which the powerful exercises its power and through this exercising of power establishes its power [see, for example, Spivak (1996) and Zein-Elabdin (2004) for the nature of the process of ‘othering’; also see, Rist (1997]. The task, therefore, is to break free from the status of the ‘other’. The task is also to move away from seeking acceptance of Western institutions. The task is for the post-colonial Global South - the geographical location of the Global majority - to assert its intellectual sovereignty. The task is not simply to seek recognition, but to assert oneself as existing and not seeking, as complete and not deficient. To assert oneself also calls for a radical rethinking of what we, i.e., the Global majority, recognize as knowledge. However, in this shifting of the locus, one cannot risk creating the same structures within the Global South where only a few privileged groups have a voice. The task is to rethink the process of knowledge creation itself including that within the Global South; to look beyond the select institutions as loci of knowledge production; to move beyond the narrow conceptions of scientificity; and to redefine the goals as well as the rules of the game.
To borrow from Eric Olin Wright, the project is emancipatory, social, and scientific (Wright, 2010). It is emancipatory because it aims to go beyond the discursive oppression, the oppression that is created specifically by a systematic marginalization of the non-West centric strands and scholars based in the Global South. It is social because it goes beyond the recognition of individual scholars, to focus on a process of social transformation that challenges the domination of Mainstream Global North-centric knowledge. And, finally, the project is truly scientific. Scientific not in the narrow sense where a partial form of knowledge is ascribed the status of being value-neutral and objective and is projected to be the universal, but rather, as rooted in radical critiques challenging the biased understanding of knowledge.
-Surbhi Kesar
Surbhi Kesar is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the School of Arts and Sciences at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. Her research areas include political economy, development economics, labour economics, particularly informality, exclusion, and structural transformation and capitalist transition in labour surplus economies. She received her PhD in Economics from South Asian University, New Delhi and has been a Fulbright Fellow at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a coordinator for the Economic Development Working Group of the Young Scholars Initiative of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and is a Steering Group member for the Diversifying and Decolonising Economics initiative.
Acknowledgements: Much of what I write here is based on numerous critical conversations on this issue with Snehashish Bhattacharya. I am truly indebted to him for sharing his knowledge and for being so generous with his time. I am grateful to Ingrid H. Kvangraven, Carolina Alves, and Devika Dutt, discussions with whom in the course of writing a book on decolonising economics have broadened my knowledge and understanding of the issue. I am grateful to Ihsaan Bassier and to my colleagues and comrades at D-Econ, including Farwa Sial and Paul Gilbert, for discussion on these issues, and to other fellow scholars across the world fighting this rather important fight.
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