–Published in Research & Degrowth, 18.4 2023–
Most of us see the world, inevitably, through hegemonic lenses. Even if wanting, or rather needing, to create something new, it is difficult to discern when we are reproducing old logics, and when we can disentangle from them, and to what point. Specifically, to imagine economies beyond the hegemonic narratives about «the economy», including all encompassing ideas about development and underdevelopment, can be quite difficult. As it has been said already, it may be easier to imagine the end of the world.
Concerning the notions of development/ underdevelopment, and in spite of decades of deconstructing these narratives (for example Arturo Escobar) –or of the possible realization that development is actually bad business for the Global South–, most of us (regardless of from the Global North or the South) still perceive humanity as neatly divided up into developed countries and «the rest». This amazingly heterogeneous «rest», i.e. the majority of the world, is seen as full of underdeveloped populations (!) which haven’t managed to catch up, with immature and archaic cultures. A world bursting in diversity is understood as consisting mostly of myriads of problems, which still have to be solved by the experts informed in the Global North. Experts who hold the true knowledge in Economics needed for future glories… which are always, precisely, in the future.
Modern industrial Western civilization’s (self-)perception as humanity’s forefront is pertinacious. Maybe as a first step to counter this historical outrage, it is important to «estrange» us (concept from E. Lizcano) from such «common senses». Or, inversely, from our narratives about the Global South’s inadequacies. I have described somewhere else how the Zapatistas bring us to a self-recognizing moment, startle us, when they offer to help Europe out, concretely the «rebellious Europe». We are inevitably surprised, that «they» could be helping «us». Or, another example of a resulting estrangement which distances us from our imaginaries: one can mention the amusing film or pseudo-documentary «The Feast of the Chicken», which reverses anthropology’s attitude towards the culturally Other: Austrians and their customs are «discovered» and interpreted by an African ethnographer.
A different way of estranging us from apparent timeless truths, is to discern their historical contexts. For developmentalism this has been finely done by post-development scholars (like the mentioned Escobar). Our economy’s regime of truth can also be brought to its revealing historicity and cultural contingency. K. Polany (2018/1946)brings us to fully realize the extent to which our modern market economy is a grain of sand in humanity’s history. He speaks of the appearance of «the market», and of laissez faire as a trauma in humanity’s history. For, before modernity, «all societies known by anthropologists and historians restricted the ‘market’ to merchandise in the strict sense». That is, labor and land were not included as merchandise, a view which today could seem bizarre, or rather: backward. This matter-of-factness actually had to be imposed, also globally, and not without violence. Further, as Polany points out, in the European context and until the second quarter of the 19th century, markets were still subordinated to society.
Today, that markets should determine all policies and politics has become a difficult to contest norm. As Polany maintained, «phenomena such as those strictly transitory and characteristic of the market era have come to be considered timeless facts, and therefore, transcending our own time».
It is actually fascinating to witness how easily we humans can come to live in myths created by ourselves, moreover in such a short period of time. And the myth, the powerful hegemonic imaginary, defends itself quite effectively: this is confirmed by the fact that contesting the truth of the markets today, of development, of growth, an ever present monologue, can appear quite menacing to the establishment.
Economics, the discipline, can be understood as being the product of local knowledges transmuted into global designsi, but which remain culturally and historically contingent. Its universalization, analogous to developmentalism’s, is not only abusive, it is also ambitious:
Classical political economy was a late entrant among modernist discourses, but its ambition was hardly modest. It proposed to do no less than layout ‘laws’ for human interaction in that domain of society in which the requisites of material well-bring and survival were regulated and determined.
John B. Davis
We spoke before of the economy’s «regime of truth», regarding the privileged positioning of the markets. Once more delving into history, we can see that this truth is only recently as monolithic as it seems today. For an inner plurality is not strange to economics. A. Heise explains how economics was in a state of paradigm plurality in the early XXth century, and how heterodox economics was marginalized by the mainstream neoclassical economics during the Cold War era. According to him «a plurality of paradigms must (…) not only be tolerated but also regarded as healthy for the discipline» given the characteristics of economics as a non-experimental science.
Further, fundaments of modern neoclassical economics have been profoundly questioned, revealing paradoxes and delusionsii. It could be, ultimately, not so difficult to estrange us from economic truths. They should actually be losing some of their solidity, as the present crises play their part in unsettling the established.
If questioning present economic dogmas is of vital importance, to do this profoundly, i.e. not reproducing our logics, would be essential. The plurality of the discipline, of which Heise speaks, is still an ethnocentric plurality. And the question remains: How can we reconvert globalized European designs back to their local contexts, to become once again one of many possible knowledges? How to penetrate the social science «economics», with its ideas around growth and development, in its common sensical truth, its hubris, and bring it to plurality? How can we widen the scientific approach to acknowledge Other knowledges, in the sense of the Pluriverse without arriving at an «anything goes»? Maybe one possible way is to go step by step, acting locally, as the knowledges are local (see for example Page West, 2018).
Humanity is so amazingly rich, in its history but also in its present. And economics is so amazingly poor in its vision of humanity, of history, of the living world. To return validity to non-western knowledges, localized, plural knowledges, could give us the opportunity to stop the destruction of life on this, our beautiful planet. For we need Other knowledges to counter the «common senses» of Economics and Development which have ultimately brought us to our present life threatening multiple crises. To «estrange» us from our contemporary truths is perhaps a first step towards an opening up in direction of pluriverses of possibilities.
iConcept taken from Walter Mignolo, see: https://academic.oup.com/princeton-scholarship-online/book/16103?login=false
iiFor an excelent review of these see Coscieme et al., 2019
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