Heterodox Economics Newsletter

Issue 332 September 15, 2024 web pdf Heterodox Economics Directory

While this Newsletter is typically sent out from somewhere in central Europe, it occasionally comes from elsewhere, e.g. when I am on vacation or traveling to conferences. As a result, I have sent Newsletter-issues from many different countries in the past decade, including countries far off from my home, like the US or Chile. However, this issue of the Newsletter is somewhat of a premiere as it is the first issue ever that is sent out from Africa, where I am co-organizing a Summer School on Wealth and Inequality Research in Africa at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, together with Howard Stein (University of Michigan) and Resty Naiga (Makerere University), that is financed by Volkswagen Foundation.*

For me, this is a great experience as I have done some research on wealth inequality, but all my efforts so far have been focused on countries in the Global North. However, reading a little bit into the literature on wealth dynamics in Africa suggests that while I can expect to revisit some familiar patterns, like the presence of differential rates of return or the power law distribution of wealth at the top, both, the exact composition of wealth as well as the associated mechanims governing wealth-dynamics seem somewhat different at first sight. One very basic insight, that probably does not come as a too big surprise, I already gained is that land ownership is a crucial dimension of analysis in Africa, while it is largely neglected in global North countries, where the respective variables are mostly coded as 'housing' and often do not even allow to analyze land ownership as a separate dimension.

Against this backdrop, I am really eager to learn a lot more in this Summer School about the nuances and differences and underly the reproduction of (wealth) inequality in African contexts – so while I will be contributing two talks myself for the rest of the Summer School I imagine myself as a curious student eager to get a grip on what goes on in this part of the world.

What intrigues me the most about this is the interplay between general mechanisms/patterns and context-specific realizations of these patterns. This hopefully allows me to develop a better understanding of how exactly power asymmetries and related positive feedback effects emerging from existing differences in endowments or positions play out in different contexts and which routines and modalities then underly concrete inequality-enhancing or exploitative practices. My very preliminary readings point to a striking parallel in this context, namely the dependence of agricultural producers on some 'middle men', that extract rents from the former as they provide access to markets. While in global North countries, this role is typically taken by large retail chains, in global South countries these middle-men are often a more informal character and only intermediate between local producers and local consumers, but also multinational corporations. In sum, what comes together here for me is the study of inequality and the notion of socio-historical specificity – two key ideas I have always been fascinated with. I sincerely hope you can share this enthusiasm ;-)

In addition, I am also very curious to find out whether and to what extent our very interdisciplinary group of local participants do have a basic intuition for the internal fault lines within the economic discipline and whether they will find heterodox concepts for analyzing wealth dynamics helpful and relevant. All in all, this should be a very exciting and illuminating trip.

All the best,

Jakob

* As we focused on soliciting student participants from Africa, this Summer School was never announced in the Newsletter. Just in case you think you overlooked it ;-)

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