New Books Network Devika Dutt et al., "Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction" (Polity Press, 2025)
Apr 14, 2026
Dr. Ingrid Parvold Kvangraven, economist who studies decolonizing economic thought and racial capitalism, joins to unpack the Eurocentric foundations of the discipline. She highlights how claims of neutrality, modeling practices, and development frameworks obscure structural power, race, and colonial violence. The conversation explores why mainstream methods misdiagnose inequality and how alternative traditions can broaden public debates.
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Eurocentrism Hidden In Economics Foundations
- Modern economics institutionalized Eurocentrism by treating capitalism as a European, internal development rather than a violent, global system.
- Ingrid Parvold Kvangraven notes this view erases dispossession, colonialism, and the transatlantic slave trade that built capitalism's global reach.
Authors United Through DECON Network
- The authors met during PhD programs and formed a network called Diversifying and Decolonizing Economics (DECON).
- Polity Press invited them to write the book, which they used to synthesize anti-colonial traditions into a decolonizing economics agenda.
How Economic Methods Depoliticize Power
- Core methodological choices shaped economics: methodological individualism and methodological nationalism remove structures and global relations from analysis.
- Kvangraven explains this produces representative-agent models and depoliticized market-focused theory that miss power relations between capital and labor.
