New Books in Critical Theory Devika Dutt et al., "Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction" (Polity Press, 2025)
Apr 15, 2026
Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, an academic economist focused on political economy and critiques of Eurocentrism. She discusses why economics must be decolonized. Short takes cover how economics became depoliticized, limits of agent‑based models, structural power in development and climate debates, and why diversity alone cannot fix epistemic biases.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Eurocentric Origins Skew How We See Capitalism
- Modern economics is built on a Eurocentric story that treats capitalism as an internal European development rather than a global system shaped by dispossession and slavery.
- Ingrid Parvold Kvangraven highlights that this narrative hides colonial violence and falsely implies the Global South can simply copy a European development recipe.
Models Hide Structures By Assuming Isolated Actors
- Mainstream economic modeling rests on methodological individualism and mythological nationalism, which remove structural power and global relations from analysis.
- Kvangraven explains representative-agent models and market-focused frameworks obscure class, colonial connections, and political choices behind 'neutral' theory.
Use Power-Centered Theories To Repoliticize Economics
- Repoliticize economic theory by making structural power relations the explicit vantage point for analysis.
- Kvangraven recommends drawing on Black Marxism, Marxist feminism, and Third World approaches to link underdevelopment and marginalization to global capitalism.
