Crises and the Global South
Paper Session
Friday, Jan. 7, 2022 3:45 PM - 5:45 PM (EST)
- Chair: Faruk Ulgen, University Grenoble Alpes-France
'He says, She says': Sexism and Sexual Harassment in Higher Educational Institutions in India
Abstract
The MeToo movement and the List of Sexual Harassers in Academia (LoSHA) have initiated debates in public forums on the issue of sexual harassment in educational institutions only recently. However, academic writings on sexism in Indian universities are relatively scarce. Our study contributes to this literature in the Indian context and aims to bring to light various experiences of sexist practices and instances of sexual harassment, and also looks into institutional interventions to address these issues.Furthermore, based on our empirical findings, we built a theoretical model using game theory in an attempt to link the working of power dynamics, cost associated with sexual harassment, and institutional intervention. Accordingly, there are three players in this game: male (faculty or student), female and the institution. Conditions have been derived such that the expected payoff of the female for not complaining is higher than that of complaining instances of assault. The results of our theoretical model highlight that institutions need to ensure that the legal cost of not taking up a complaint is greater than the cost borne by them for going through the requisite proceedings and taking necessary action against the perpetrators. However, this necessitates simultaneous and extensive structural shift towards a more gender equal society.
Colombia's Peace Process: A Case Study of a Vexing Society Struggling for Institutional Adjustment
Abstract
After more of fifty years of guerrilla warfare, Colombia is enduring a peace process with the most important guerrilla group through a peace agreement signed by the end of 2016. Despite this achievement, the basic conditions determined by John Fagg Foster´s for institutional adjustment were not fulfilled, affecting the implementation of the accord and facing strong opposition from conservative sectors. The resistance of the institutional matrix of this country´s elites show the difficulties and resistance to even moderate institutional changes in a society with a deep divide in political, social and economic conditions. The case is unique, despite the obvious economic and social advantages of the peace deal and reveals the deep crucial role of traditional and ceremonial institutions in blocking social progress. The pandemic and the more conservative political orientation of the present government just worsened the difficulties amidst the current conditions, increasing the distance from the requirements established by J. Fagg Foster. An evaluation of the current process is presented and conclusions about possible outcomes are explored given the present upheaval and social movements we endure today.Rai Stones and Banknotes: An Institutionalist Understanding of Micronesian Stone Money
Abstract
The debate around money’s origins is alive and well. The ‘metallist’ tradition that has dominated economists’ thinking on the history of money alleges that the value of money is driven by its intrinsic qualities. This intrinsic value is found most readily in money coined from precious metals. Money, therefore, has its conventional origins in being developed as a transactions-cost-reducing technical achievement that eases barter transactions. The ‘chartalist’ view of money, which arises counter to the metallist vision, contends that money is a ‘token’ or symbol of a debtor and creditor relationship that is founded upon social hierarchy. Money, therefore, does not arise from precious metals, but rather, the precious metals were one of many tokens that could have been used to symbolize the debt. This paper will discuss the famous Yapese Rai Stone, the famous “stone money” discs found on the Island Nation of Yap in the Pacific Islands. The history of the Rai will be discussed, followed by a discussion of the role the Rai played in Yapese society. The paper will then consider the Rai and attempt to consider it in the context of the metallist/chartalist spectrum. Did the Rai arise through a need to eliminate barter and move toward more efficient transactions? Or, was the Rai based upon complex social debt and credit arrangements? Or, is the Rai best understood apart from either of these conceptions of money? What can we learn from the Rai and Yapese culture that might illuminate the debate on the nature of money? Are there similarities between the Rai Stone Money and a modern monetary system?Between Stability and Liberty: The Transformation of China and Its Controversial Impacts on the Global South in Times of Crises
Abstract
China’s transformation from a cultural and moral society to a market economy since 1980 reminds the footprints of the nineteenth-century Europe as explicated by Karl Polanyi in his Great Transformation (1944). This involves the process of commodification of labor, land and money, as well as the traces of double movement in a society. Nevertheless, I argue that China’s transformation follows a different trajectory which is unique to its contextual settings. To a large extent, progress of the Chinese economy represents a particular instituted process which is shaped and guided by a planned system as mapped out by its government from the outset. Evidences show that throughout this process, degree of liberty possessed by the markets is largely encapsulated by the government’s priority to maintain social stability through embedding the economy in its society.Therefrom, I further analyze the evidences to demonstrate that the government’s inclination to attain a balance between stability and liberty in its economy provides a unique dimension to reveal China’s controversial impact on the Global South in times of crises. Specifically, its respective roles in the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997/1998; the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003; the Global Financial Crisis in 2008/2009; and the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020/2021 are examined. I explicate that China’s efforts to promote its trade and social linkages with the other Global South countries do generate an internal force which mitigates/stabilizes the shocks from these crises by different degrees.
Remaking Economics in the Global South: Mapping the Neoclassical Counterrevolution and Its Consequences to the Pandemic Related Crisis
Abstract
The rise of the dominance of neoclassical economics and its consequences in the policy domain have been well documented in the global north. In contrast, there has been far less written about this transformation in the global south beyond critical views of Chile’s “Chicago Boys” and Milton Friedman’s Hong Kong fantasies. Yet, these changes have had a profound impact which is particularly manifest in the current pandemic generated crisis. Development economics which was once an eclectic, pragmatic mix of a range of theoretical schools including institutional economics, often with deep roots in the local context and history has been replaced by the mainstream monoeconomics of the north. Only recently have authors begun to document the forces behind this transformation and the consequences to policy formation, the capacity to respond to the currenty pandemic and the trajectory of economic development in various country and regional settings (e.g. Cohn, 2017, Offner, 2019, Stein, 2021, Weber, 2021). However, we lack a comprehensive understanding of cross-regional connections, as well as commonalities and differences across case studies. This paper develops a framework to analyze what John Toye’s coined in his path breaking 1987 volume as the “counterrevolution against development theory and policy” (Toye, 1987). Based on this we analyze two contrasting cases: the African continent and China. In the African context the mainstreaming of economics has resulted in a fundamental overhaul of the development policy paradigm. In contrast, economics as an academic discipline has undergone a similar kind of transformation in China, however, this did not translate in an assimilation of Chinese economic policy making with the Washington Consensus in the ways we observe for Africa. We analyze the role of major donors and local political and academic elites and investigate the instruments, ideologies, vested interests and consequences of the institutionalization of neoclassical economics.JEL Classifications
- B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches
- O0 - General