Decolonising Economics - Does Economics need to be decolonised?
Channel: Tour de Lorraine
Date: 01/07/2021

Talk by Carolina Alves on how Economics can be decolonised. The event was part of the Tour de Lorraine 2021(https://www.tourdelorraine.ch/tdl-21/).

Carolina Alves, Joan Robinson Research Fellow in Heterodox Economics, University of Cambridge

The lack of diversity in terms of gender and race in economics has received increased attention in recent years, but events following the death of African American George Floyd have caused economists to reflect and rethink how they study long-simmering, systemic racial inequities. Economics is now having its #BlackLivesMatter moment, where the discipline has also been challenged about its eurocentric nature. Questions such as “What are the benefits of increasing racial and ethnic diversity for the economics profession?” have been complemented by “How does economics theories explain racial economic inequalities?. Is colonialism a major explanation behind today's differences in economic inequality? How does economics understand the links between racial inequalities and systemic racism?”. Addressing these questions take us to a frank discussion about both the knowledge production dynamics in our field and the issue of whether or not economic theories have been informed and developed together with assumptions regarding racial and civilisational hierarchy that justified colonial rule in in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.