A Research Agenda for Critical Political Economy

247 Pages·2020·2.501 MB·English

by  Bill Dunn (editor)

A Research Agenda for Critical Political Economy
A Research Agenda
for Critical Political
Economy
Edited by
BILL DUNN
Associate Professor, Department of Political Economy, University
of Sydney, Australia
Elgar Research Agendas
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading
scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and
map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary.
Forward-looking and innovative, Elgar Research Agendas are an essential
resource for PhD students, scholars and anybody who wants to be at the fore-
front of research.
Titles in the series include:
A Research Agenda for Digital
A Research Agenda for Climate
Politics
Justice
Edited by William H. Dutton
Edited by Paul G. Harris
A Research Agenda for
A Research Agenda for Federalism
Environmental Economics
Studies
Edited by Matthias Ruth
Edited by John Kincaid
A Research Agenda for Academic
A Research Agenda for Media
Integrity
Economics
Edited by Tracey Bretag
Edited by Alan B. Albarran
A Research Agenda for
A Research Agenda for
Entrepreneurship Policy
Environmental Geopolitics
Edited by David Smallbone and
Edited by Shannon O’Lear
Friederike Welter
A Research Agenda for Studies of
A Research Agenda for Family
Corruption
Business
Edited by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and
Edited by Andrea Calabrò
Paul M. Heywood
A Research Agenda for Critical
Political Economy
Edited by Bill Dunn
© The Editor and Contributors Severally 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or
photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Published by
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
The Lypiatts
15 Lansdown Road
Cheltenham
Glos GL50 2JA
UK
Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.
William Pratt House
9 Dewey Court
Northampton
Massachusetts 01060
USA
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020942922
This book is available electronically in the
Social and Political Science subject collection
http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781789903072
ISBN 978 1 78990 306 5 (cased)
ISBN 978 1 78990 307 2 (eBook)
Contents
List of contributors vii
1 What makes critical research in political economy? 1
Bill Dunn
2 The political economy of inequality: research to
deepen understanding 19
Frank Stilwell
3 Economic growth and the ideology of development 35
Benjamin Selwyn
4 Money, finance and the state: potential routes for
further development of research 47
Sheila Dow
5 Knowledge, power and the Global South: epistemes
and economies after colonialism 61
Nour Nicole Dados
6 For a critical political economy of international trade 77
Bill Dunn
7 Sweatshop economics, the poverty of trade theory
and the making of inequality across scales 91
Alessandra Mezzadri
8 Structure and agency: themes from experimental
economics 107
Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap
9 Time, space, geographical scale and political economy 121
Andrew Herod
v
vi A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR CRITICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
10 Uncertainty, the modern financial market and the
real economy 135
Fernando Ferrari Filho and Fábio Henrique Bittes Terra
11 The capitalist space economy: uneven geographical
development, value and more-than-capitalist
contestations 149
Eric Sheppard
12 Reclaiming local contexts: disrupting the virtual
economy 165
Sabine U. O’Hara
13 Urban political economy 181
Franklin Obeng-Odoom
14 The political economy of displacement governance:
the case of refugees in the European Union 195
Ali Bhagat and Susanne Soederberg
15 Thinking beyond capitalism: social movements, r/
evolution, and the solidarity economy 209
Julie Matthaei
Index 225
Contributors
Bhagat, Ali, Lecturer in International Relations, University of Manchester, UK
Bittes Terra, Fábio Henrique, Associate Professor at Federal University of
ABC, and Researcher at National Council for Scientific and Technological
Development, Brazil
Dados, Nour Nicole, Research Fellow, Macquarie Business School, Centre for
Workforce Futures, Macquarie University, Australia
Dow, Sheila, Emeritus Professor, Division of Economics, Stirling Management
School, University of Stirling, UK, and Adjunct Professor, Department of
Economics, University of Victoria, Canada
Dunn, Bill, Associate Professor, Department of Political Economy, University
of Sydney, Australia
Ferrari Filho, Fernando, Retired Professor of Economics at Federal University
of Rio Grande do Sul, and Researcher at National Council for Scientific and
Technological Development, Brazil
Hargreaves Heap, Shaun P., Professor of Political Economy, King’s College,
London, UK
Herod, Andrew, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Geography,
University of Georgia, USA
Matthaei, Julie, Professor Emerita of Economics, Wellesley College, USA
Mezzadri, Alessandra, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, Development
Studies, SOAS, UK
Obeng-Odoom, Franklin, Associate Professor, Development Studies and
Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki, Finland
O’Hara, Sabine U., Distinguished Professor, College of Agriculture, Urban
Sustainability and Environmental Sciences, University of the District of
Columbia, USA
vii
viii A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR CRITICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
Selwyn, Benjamin, Professor of International Relations and International
Development, International Relations, School of Global Studies, University of
Sussex, UK
Sheppard, Eric, Distinguished Professor and Alexander von Humboldt Chair,
Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Soederberg, Susanne, Professor, Department of Political Studies and
Department of Global Development Studies, Queen’s University, Canada
Stilwell, Frank, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Economy,
University of Sydney, Australia
1
What makes critical research
in political economy?
Bill Dunn
Nobody thinks of themselves as uncritical. So there is no neat definition of
what constitutes critical political economy. The field is unbounded and fecund.
There are diverse schools of critical political economy – classical, Marxist,
institutional, Keynesian, feminist, ecological, to name just a few – with each
having many strands. Some research draws on several traditions or refuses cat-
egorisation. And while it will be suggested below that a useful understanding
of what constitutes critical political economy can be approached through the
negative, through opposition to the economic mainstream, some critics raid
behind enemy lines to acknowledge and engage with insights from orthodoxy.
Many researchers draw on different academic disciplines: on history, sociol-
ogy, anthropology and political science. Research areas range across issues
and across time. Some studies explicitly focus on the global economy, others
on specific local contexts, with important work done at all sorts of scales in
between. Therefore, critical political economists differ from their mainstream
counterparts not only in terms of method, but at least as much in terms of the
questions they ask, the nature and breadth of the research agenda. Neither
the themes discussed in this introduction nor the chapters in this book can
possibly be comprehensive.
But to begin with the negative, critical political economists believe that eco-
nomics in the form that dominates university departments, at least across the
Anglophone world, is profoundly flawed and profoundly conservative. At best
it provides an insufficient basis for understanding complex economic realities.
At worst it amounts to a crude and fanciful apology for the existing economic
system. It is therefore useful to begin by offering some broad outlines of a crit-
ical research agenda in contrast to the approaches of this orthodoxy. There
are now many useful books which provide much more thorough overviews
and critiques of conventional economic thinking (e.g. Green and Nore 1977;
Heilbroner and Milberg 1995; Lawson 1997; Milonakis and Fine 2009), and
1