Understanding Sustainability Economics

Peter Söderbaum has exposed a range of interactions between economy and democracy with good reason: there is an inflation of authoritarian opinions, which do not hide any more that they reject both the concept and the practice of democracy as   „one of neoliberal fantasies“. This view is among many authors mediated by Jodi Dean in her book Democracy and other Neoliberal Fantasies. There are multiple reasons to criticize what is going on in the frames of  public democratic institutions: fundamental imperatives of democracy are increasingly just empty words, power is more and more concetrated in fewer hands.

The disappointment related to this process is wide spread, but not theoretically acceptable. More…

What were my motives for writing the book entitled Understanding Sustainability Economics. Towards Pluralism in Economics (Earthscan 2008)? This is a book that has had some success; it has been translated to Japanese for example but it is far from being a bestseller. I have recently written another book in Swedish Bortom BNP. Nationalekonomi och företagsekonomi för hållbar utveckling which in translation becomes something like ’Behind GDP. Economics and Management Science for Sustainable Development’ (Studentlitteratur 2011) and the latter book is already competing well in terms of sales with the Earthscan book.

The motives for writing a particular book are more or less conscious and what follows is a fragmented story of the more conscious motives. More…

Judith Dellheim at Rosa Luxemburg Foundation has instituted a blog for our workshop and some of us have already contributed. It would be nice if we can intensify our interactions in the days that remain until the start of the workshop.

I guess that my book Understanding Sustainability Economics. Towards Pluralism in Economics (Earthscan 2008) will be scrutinized in various ways and you are welcome to ask questions to me. I will do my best to respond. While my book is a starting point for our deliberations, the debate will hopefully lead to a more general discussion about needed social and institutional change in the future to get us closer to a path that can be described as sustainable. More…

I initially came across Peter Söderbaum’s work in the early 1990s.  I have maintained a strong interest in his writing over the years and drawn on it heavily in my own research endeavours – which combine an interest in pluralism and a strong sense of dissatisfaction with mainstream accounting theory and practice. Mainstream accounting is heavily influenced by neo-classical economics and this is recognized as a major problem by social, environmental and critical accounting academics.  Rather than purport to be an expert in economics, I would like to say something about the issues from an accounting perspective. More…

Manifesto

The World Economics Association (WEA) seeks to increase the relevance, breath and depth of economic thought. Its key qualities are worldwide membership and governance, and inclusiveness with respect to: (a) the variety of theoretical perspectives; (b) the range of human activities and issues which fall within the broad domain of economics; and (c) the study of the world’s diverse economies.

The Association’s activities will centre on the development, promotion and diffusion of economic research and knowledge and on illuminating their social character. To achieve these aims the Association constitutes itself as a new form of worldwide, democratic, and pluralist organization with the following commitments: More…

« Renewing the research and teaching in finance, economics and management to better serve the common good»

(Genève-Fribourg-Zürich mars 2011)

(1)    The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society.

(2)    This appeal is public and international and may be seen as part of a broader framework of convergent initiatives. More…

I would firstly like to indicate that, based on my work in different continents, the whole question of economic science and policy is viewed as part of a bigger picture.  This bigger picture views the present “king” of development, economics, as a subsystem, disconnected from a more profound and deeper universal system that includes the ecological and human world. As a result, we need to examine the big picture before being able to deal with the subsystem, sustainable economics.

This bigger picture involves “root values”, which are very different from the values on which present day neoclassical economics philosophy is based. Therefore, it appears that we need to look at the “roots” first to build a sustainable foundation on which to seat new economics thinking. More…

Peter Söderbaum starts our blog  preparing our RLF workshop 28.-30. 10.2011

THE ECONOMIST AS POLITICAL ACTOR

Many establishment actors and other people have become accustomed to think of science and politics as being separate and separable. In the case of economics, it is argued that the economist is standing outside society and the economy watching what goes on in an alleged value-neutral manner. This view is mediated in mainstream textbooks, such as Gregory Mankiw’s Principles of Economics (2008) and is connected with arguments about economics being no different from physics and other natural sciences.

The idea of objective science and the scholar as neutral observer is connected with positivism among theories of science. There is a role for positivism as a theory of science but limiting the view of theories of science to positivism is a problem. Even positivism as an idea of doing science has to be carefully scrutinized. In the case of economics, Gunnar Myrdal has pointed to the fact that “values are always with us” (1978 p. 778) as students of economic phenomena. The economist is faced with a large number of choices relating to the problem to be dealt with, theoretical perspective, method to be applied, ways of presenting results etc. and in the choices made values are implied. More…

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