The responses by Wæver & Buzan regarding #SecuritizationTheory being racist & methodologically white remind me a whole lot of how many economists react to calls to decolonize economics. These are not personal attacks, but structural critiques... 🙄
.. And while I get tired of economists using "rigor" as some kind of impregnable shield against these kinds of critiques, it seems like IR has reached a new level of methodological gatekeeping with this "deepfake" terminology 🧐
These debates are clearly much broader than just about #SecuritizationTheory. There are seemingly neutral but deeply Eurocentric categories employed across the social sciences. In Economics we might think of good governance, perfect competition, rational man, efficiency....
I still have to read both sides more carefully, but three things immediately struck me:
1) The hegemonic position is never likely to engage with the substance of such a critique. At its most extreme, it will try to have the critique retracted (as W&B).
2) These kinds of critiques are scrutinized much more than mainstream scholarship, therefore possibly disincentivizing further critique! Also increasing the "burden of proof" on the part of critical scholars. Not really the open and inclusive academia some people imagine.
3) I am somehow still impressed that such a critique got published in a prestigious IR journal and that "top" scholars from the field are even responding. Altho the debate is far, far from ideal, I still think it's much more than we could wish for in Economics. But let's see!
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After the intro by @pritishbehuria & @GoodfellowTom (linked to above), you can read the interventions summarized in chronological order.
I was up first, focusing my intervention on the problem of lack of South-centered theorisation in development studies devstud.org.uk/2023/02/28/the…
Next up was @Kamnatweets, calling for a deliberate deconstruction of our projections of 'development', picking apart the 'black box' & reckoning with the range of political causes UK Development Studies programmes serve, intentionally or unintentionally, devstud.org.uk/2023/02/28/loo…
Building on scholarship by Amin, Quijano, Sanyal, and feminist IPE, we see a radical decolonization agenda as one necessitates unpacking how dominant approaches may hinder the study of systemic processes associated with decolonization, such as structural racism and imperialism.
This entails analyzing and challenging Eurocentrism in economics, but also seeking to foreground theoretical frameworks which might be more useful for studying systemic processes that lead to various form of subordination.
We engage with 2 main camps in the financialisation lit: 1) largely descriptive studies of how financial institutions, actors, motives & practices have expanded in recent decades (e.g. Krippner, Epstein), focusing on quantitative changes.
We call it the 'expansion' view.
2) More qualitative studies of how finance has come to dominate other realms of the economy, which often see the productive marriage between finance and production as in severe crisis, as the golden age of capitalism has come to an end. We call it the 'divorce' view.
What happens when 7 scholars from different heterodox traditions, including Marxism, Post-Keynesianism & Dependency Theory, get together to work on finance?
It actually did not descend into total chaos 🤯
Check out our research agenda on international financial subordination 😊
We identify how different heterodox & disciplinary traditions bring different strengths to the table for conceptualising how developing economies remain in a subordinate position in the global monetary and financial system, and how this shapes the ways in which finance operates.
We argue that an agenda on international financial subordination (IFS) would benefit from a sustained engagement with heterodox traditions that have been the most explicit and systematic in their analysis of finance in the periphery: Marxist, PK & dependency theory scholarship.
Samir Amin critiqued cultural views of Orientalism and proposed alternative, structural analyses of imperialism, Eurocentrism, uneven development and ideology.
What can contemporary development economics and quests for decolonization learn from this? aeon.co/essays/if-you-…
In this piece I try to make Samir Amin's ideas more accessible to a wider contemporary audience (thanks @samhaselby for the push!).
Many already know Edward Said, who became very influential with his 1978 Orientalism. I therefore start with Amin's critique of Said from the Left.
With his ‘Eurocentrism’ (1988), Amin offers an alternative materialist understanding of how capitalism and imperialism have shaped global colonial inequalities and ideologies, which contrasts with Said's understanding based on discourse.