Economics
Introduction
Trade and exchange of goods is a fundamental part of any cultural
group's activity. People exchange labour for food, material wealth,
favours and money. People produce things that others want and are
able to exchange those objects or services for objects and services
they want. Some form of economics is therefore a component of all
cultural activity.
The economics of the western world seems, however, to be the dominant
economic paradigm and is increasingly becoming the model by which
all other forms of economic activity are measured.
Think about:
- How did this happen?
- What made western economics the yardstick?
|
Other systems exist, however, they are not legitimised, they are
considered inferior, illegal or non-existent in the contestation
for power and access to resources controlled by economic activity.
What is at stake?
The legitimisation of one economic system over others demonstrates
the importance of this contestation as one that is carried out over
key epistemological issues. Your economics: what you consider to
be legitimate economic activity; is constrained by your ontology.
Who you are and what you consider to be true and right determines
your approach to economic activity. How you are placed within that
economic system determines how you deal, interact and relate to
other people.
On a broader scale, the use of one economic system instead of another
or one overlain across others that already exists, demonstrates
to important hegemonic
relationships between the different groups of people involved and
identifies the relations of power that exist.
Think about:
- How are power
and economics related?
- What epistemological questions are raised by the promotion
of one economic system over another?
|
What is the status quo?
Economists rarely agree on definitions of economics. It could
be said that 'Economics is what economists do' but it still begs
the question, 'What is an economist?' The Penguin Dictionary provides
a clue with the following definition
Economics is a science concerned with those aspects of social
behaviour, and those institutions, which are involved in the use
of scarce resources in the satisfaction of human wants. (p147)
Western economics has increasingly been built around core ideas
of self-interested individualism and contractual exchange
to satisfy wants. This sees the central character as the autonomous
agent who trades with other agents in order to maximise a utility
or profit function. Both micro-economists and macroeconomists explain
the economy in ways that are consistent with this core. Modern mainstream
economics is a way of explaining behaviour rather than trying to
collate and classify information or 'facts'.
What are the alternatives?
If you have a dominant form of economic activity being carried
out, now almost in a global sense, the question is:
- Which voices have been included and represented in this
construction of economics?
|
Proscribing what counts as economics
By proscribing what counts as economics, this silences serious
challenges to the primacy of the core ideas of self-interested individualism
and contractual exchange. It could be argued that such theories
reflect a distinctly masculine and western perspective on self-hood
and individual agency and how we see the economy.
Economics with higher status
A popular view is that the explanation of the core ideas has high
status because of their obvious logic or superior power of thinking.
The conceptual structure of modern economics appears natural and
obvious to the practitioners in the field. It is easy to forget
that the knowledge might be partial, that the economic models might
be highlighting certain aspects while suppressing others. We forget
that models that economists love to use are just that - 'models'
- which may help us to understand aspects of the world, which might
be 'true' in the model, but are not literally 'true' in the world.
They are all based on assumptions.
Innocent actions
Another problem is that economists tend to view the simplifications
and assumptions in the models as relatively innocent. Decisions
are made as to count some phenomena as being more important than
others thus underpinning the value judgements that are disguised
in making such decisions.
Strassman (1993) uses a number of what she calls 'stories' to illustrate
the problems.
The story of the marketplace of ideas [she argues] is a classical
example of economic imperialism - the application of economic
explanation to domains viewed as being outside the traditional
purview of economics, in this case the philosophy of science and
anthropology. In the marketplace of ideas the "best" ideas bubble
to the top, rising in value according to merit. Ideas are exchanged
as in a marketplace, their worth ascertained in a competitive
process of bidding and exchange. This story implies that the dominant
economic theories are valued because of their worthiness, with
no role for cultural values or institutional configurations (p56).
Questions remain:
- Who are the judges of the "best" ideas?
- Who selects the 'worthy' scholars to become the
judges?
- What happens (using the marketplace metaphor) if
there is imperfect competition in the marketplace
of ideas?
- Are the dominant practitioners simply protecting
their intellectual marketplace with exclusionary
practices?
|
Dissenters are easily relegated to the less important journals
or are simply not published. Women and culturally different groups
may well disagree with the standard models of economics but only
those who agree are going to be admitted into the ranks.
The benevolent patriarch
Another economic story of hers is that of the 'benevolent' patriarch.
In this story the patriarch makes economic choices in the best interests
of all members of the family. The patriarch may take individual
family members' preferences into account but he still makes the
decisions for their well being (which may or may not be linked to
individual well being). When the patriarch becomes the coloniser
the effects can be similar.
Colonisation of economics
When the colonisers arrived on the lands of Indigenous peoples
around the world, they were often completely blind to the economic
systems at work in the traditional societies. The disruption of
existing economic systems often caused social and cultural breakdown,
which was often interpreted by the colonisers as simply a sign of
depravity of primitive cultures and certainly not to any faulty
mainstream economic thinking - rather a case of the 'primitives'
not knowing their own best interests. Again this story is useful
in that it shows that often economists fail to recognise the limited
scope of application of models and concepts, a failure that can
lead to inadequate or inappropriate policies and practices.
What happens when different knowledges speak
to each other?
With other systems and other cultures all practising economic activity,
the dominance of one system over a range of others may make some
sense, but in other senses, the local economies reflect local conditions
and needs. The utility of the western system condenses to colonial
oppression and political domination. By speaking to each other,
systems of economics provide the opportunity to develop in ways
that prevent the benefits of local and regional economies to retained
and the location of power more legitimately remaining broad rather
than concentrated within the few who control western economic systems.
Think about:
- In what ways does a global western economy prevent local
sharing of resources and power?
- Is it possible to develop legitimate local economies?
- How would the resources and power be equitably shared
across a range of different groups?
|
Resources
There are a wide range of resources that you can use to develop
your understanding of economics and alternative economic philosophies.
Reading 5.3
Escobar, A., 1995 'Economics as Culture' in Encountering Development:
The Making and the Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton University
Press, New Jersey, pp 58 - 63.
Other References
Capra, F., 1982 'The Impasse of Economics' in The Turning Point:
Science, Society and the Rising Culture, Bantam, New York, pp
188 - 233.
Strassman, D., 1993 'Not a free market' in Beyond Economic Man:
Feminist Theory and Economics, eds. M. A. Ferber and J.A. Nelson,
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.
Strassman, D. & Polanyi, L., 1992 'Shifting the Paradigm: Value
in Feminist Critiques of Economics', paper presented in the
First Annual Conference of the International Association for Feminist
Economics, July 1992, Washington, D.C.
|
