Cambridge Journal of Economics 2009, 33, 11131118

doi:10.1093/cje/bep067

Between political economy and

postcolonial theory: first encounters
Serap A. Kayatekin
Since the late 1970s, postcolonial theory has flourished across various disciplines, and has
evolved into an institutionalised force in academic life (Lazarus, 2004; Parry, 2004).
Although, at its beginning its perceived association was mostly with literary and cultural
studies, currently the influence of postcolonial theory can be said to encompass disciplines
such as geography, anthropology, political science as well as sociology. In short, in a period
of about three decades postcolonial theory has swept through the spectrum of social
sciences and humanities. In this period of significant intellectual transformation,
economics proved to be the discipline most resistant to change. This intransigence is
partly conditioned by the history of the discipline, its place in the evolution and spread of
capitalism through colonialism and imperialism, and, without a doubt, its self-perception
as a science, all of which need to be understood, theorised and transformed. This
symposium was inspired in part by that desire to push open the boundaries of the discipline
that it so fiercely defends to these interdisciplinary insights. The appropriation of central
insights of postcolonial works into economics requires a fundamental reworking of the
discipline into one that continuously reflects on its history, on its particular position and
role within the power structure of society and on its epistemological and ontological
assumptions. Each one of the essays in the symposium touches on some or all of these
dimensions.
The other motivation for this symposium is to fill a certain absence within postcolonial
theory itself. Although the economic structures of colonialism and/or postcolonialism
provide the background for all the works within this field, it can be said that, with notable
exceptions, there has been very little engagement with economic analysis, which has
rendered it susceptible to criticism.1,2 Thus, the essays in this symposium also address this
gap in postcolonial theory.3 It is in this double-sense that the articles here should be
considered encounters, as efforts for different lines of productive exchanges between
postcolonial theory and economics.
That postcolonial theory grew in tandem with poststructuralism, postmodernism and
feminism is a fact that explains the obvious influence of the intellectual traditions it contains;
1
Among these we can cite Ahmad (1992), Dirlik (1997), Hardt and Negri (2000) and San Juan (1999,
2002). Volumes by Bartolovich and Lazarus (eds) (2002) and Lazarus (ed.) (2004) raise this issue.
2
The first such effort is an edited volume by Eiman Zein-Elabdin and S. Charusheela (2004).
3
A pioneering theorist in the field, Gayatri C. Spivaks work on value (1985) is one of the handful of efforts
among which one can also count Subaltern Studies analyses of Indian peasantry (Guha et al., 198296) as
well as Chandra Mohantys (1991) and Spivaks (1999) analyses of gender in the postcolonial context.
Escobars (1995) work on development discourse, too, should be considered among those which point to the
intimate connection of political economy with postcolonial theory.

The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society.
All rights reserved.

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S. A. Kayatekin

a fact that often overwhelms its earlier sources (Brennan, 2002). Yet, despite its proliferating
heterogeneity, it is still possible to identify certain threads that traverse the whole field.
A central unifying theme in postcolonial theory is the analysis of constructions and
representations of culture and subjectivity in and through colonial discourse(s).1 Colonial
and imperialist hegemonies have relied crucially on the constructions of the conquered
cultures and of the subject populations as different from and in opposition to an assumed
norm of modernity, which may or may not be achieved, but nonetheless represents a more
advanced stage of development. One of the aims of the postcolonial project is to radically
challenge these cultural representations of the Other. It does so by conceptualising the
historical and social context of these constructions, revealing the distinct notions of race,
ethnicity, gender and class in their constitution, and by replacing them with alternative
ones.2 A postcolonial critique of economics, therefore, entails the recognition and
contextualisation of the modernism of its fundamental concepts such as rationality,
economic agency, economy3 and, of course, economics. For instance, the concept of
rational economic agent, a pillar of neoclassical economic theory, represents an individual
whose defining characteristic is benefit-maximising behaviour and, as such, is a product of
capitalist modernity. Postcolonial theory could likewise be inspiring in challenging the
modernism in different strands of feminist, post-Keynesian, institutionalist and a varied
and long tradition of Marxist political economy. The articles in the symposium are early
attempts at identifying the modernism in the different schools of political economy and
replacing them with alternative conceptualisations.
The critique of what could be called the ontological modernism of economics discussed
above is intimately linked to another critique within the postcolonial project. To the extent
that postcolonial theory situates the production of colonial and postcolonial knowledge in
the historical and social context of modernity, it also presents an epistemological critique of
modernism. What we call social sciences today and, for that matter, humanities, have some
of their roots in European history, but also have them in colonial history. The role
anthropology played in colonial/imperial expansion is well documented.4 The connection
of literature and literary forms, too, is one of the most prolific areas within postcolonial
theory.5 What is not so well known, nor acknowledged and documented, is the connection
of economics to colonialism. In one sense, this is ironic, since, as the discipline that aims to
understand the creation and distribution of wealth, its connection to colonialism/
imperialism should be obvious.6 The self-reflection through which economics needs to
accept and understand how it was constituted, in part, by the history of capitalist expansion
is one of the areas in which the discipline can draw inspiration from postcolonial theory.
The articles in this symposium try to address this fatal lack, among other things, by
critically scrutinising the modernist foundations in the discipline, through an implicit
epistemological critique.
1

There is broad consensus in the field that the epoch-making work on colonial discourse is Saids analysis
of Orientalism (1978).
2
One of the pioneering works on this theme is by Homi Bhabha (2000)
3
Antonio Callari (2004), in a nuanced article, discusses how the economy was constituted in the political
economy traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He demonstrates how the changing
definitions of the economy also defined the ways in which the other was registered.
4
The works on anthropology have proliferated, but a first and seminal work is that of Asad (1995).
5
Studies on postcolonial theory and literary studies are, by now, too many to count. Boehmer (1995),
Chrisman and Parry (eds) (2000), Lazarus (ed.) (2004) are three important volumes in a proliferating field.
6
One of the few efforts that set out to explain the relation between economics and colonialism is
Goodacres analysis of Petty (2005). Also valuable is Dimand (2004).

Introduction

1115

Postcolonial theory is about the ongoing material and ideological legacies of colonialism,
therefore the postcolonial world, in a certain sense, is the world as it exists today. The deep
social disparities that marked the colonial era between the metropolis and colonies
continued into the postcolonial era. As the heterogeneity of the peripheral regions has
increased, at the start of the twenty-first century the social polarisations in the world are not
so clearly along the lines of the colonial era. Nonetheless, particularly after the unleashing
of the neoliberal revolution social polarisation between the advanced and developing
countries, as well as within countries, has increased. The uneven character of global
capitalism remains a fundamental character of the postcolonial world. This material reality,
together with the ontological and epistemological critiques of modernity, renders postcolonial theory not only a set of analyses relevant for the (previously) colonised societies,
but works equally well for metropolitan situations. A very good case in point is the
postcolonial analyses of the immigrant populations of the metropolitan countries.
The picture of a deeply-divided world is the backdrop to postcolonial theory; however,
there have been very few efforts to do postcolonial analysis within an explicitly political
economy focus. Postcolonial theory will become more substantive as it incorporates
insights from political economy.1
The encounters in this symposium are between postcolonial theory and institutionalist,
post-Keynesian, feminist and Marxist traditions, all of which are critical of the orthodoxy
within economics. The name political economy has been used in this broad sense.
Colin Danby (2009) aims to move us to a more robust and applicable postKeynesianism. He proposes that we think of a different time/uncertainty/institutions
problematique, which does not assert money, imperfect competition and government as
the fundamental modern institutions that meet the challenges of uncertainty and historical
time. This can be done, in part, by drawing on postcolonial theorys critical insights into
the constitution of modernity.
Danby unpacks the (Weberian) concept of modernity prevalent in most post-Keynesian
analyses: these analyses assume a powerful bureaucratic state vis-a`-vis which the society
comprises rights-bearing, legally-accountable individuals. Non-state institutions are
considered subordinate and the economy as part of the public sphere, where production
and exchange are carried out by rational individuals. In this vision, the firm is a rational
actor in a legally-regulated environment; the market is an impersonal, transparent,
rationalised space subject to law and regulation.
Danby argues that there are serious problems in the leap made from modernity as
a mental model to modernity as a reality. In this leap, he claims, there are two assumptions
which are made: one is that of social discreteness; that humanity divides into discrete
societies each of which can be analysed separately as an organic whole such as the national
economic units. The second assumption Danby finds to be problematic is that of
progression of history from primitive to inevitably modern societies. He concludes that
the hallmark of modernist thinking is this mapping of both time and space onto this
modern/traditional divide. Danby devotes the rest of his article to analysing the modernity
in post-Keynesian theory and uncovering points of inspiration in postcolonial theory that
can lead us out of that modernism. He argues that post-Keynesianism should look for the
diversity of ways in which people, and institutions, get enmeshed in broader social
1
The volume edited by Bartolovich and Lazarus (2002) explicitly intends to address this gap in
postcolonial theory through strengthening its links to Marxism. The same can be said of the volume by ZeinElabdin and S. Charusheela (2004) though the articles in this volume come from a broader set of
perspectives, which include Marxism.

1116

S. A. Kayatekin

relations. Danby believes that a post-Keynesian theory that takes a critical look at its
modernist assumptions and draws from the insights of postcolonial theory, will be more
realistic and have a broader analytical purchase. In Danbys analysis we see how
postcolonial theory can be useful in revealing a modernist conception of capitalism and
of economic agents, and a teleological concept of history in which societies, as discrete
units, progress.
S. Charusheela (2009) directs our attention to the modernist and ethnocentric
foundations of a strand of feminist thinking that has been influential in development
theory. The article is a critical analysis of a thesis put forward by a well-known feminist
philosopher. Martha Nussbaum claims that with a careful construction of universals, using
Sens capabilities approach, we can save the universalist project of political liberalism at
the same time keeping it immune to charges of ethnocentrism. Charusheela develops her
critique working through what she calls a failure of conversation between Nussbaum and
the African feminist philosopher Nkiru Nzegwu, concluding that Nussbaums analysis
does not avoid the ethnocentrism it seeks to displace.
Nussbaums project is to develop a specific ontology that is universal yet culturally
sensitive working on a universal list based on an Aristotelian notion of core features of
human experience: this list contains the list of capabilitiesfunctioningsthrough which
all societies and cultures judge human life, discussing along the way the ways in which the
list will be sensitive to cultural difference. Charusheela situates her analysis of Nussbaums
failure in a theoretical discussion focusing on the role of womens education, one such
functioning, specifically literacy as it is discussed in the work of Nzegwu.
In criticising Nussbaums argument on the central importance of education for women,
Charusheela unearths the implicit social analysis, which ignores the other roles educational
institutions historically have played in excluding subaltern groups and privileging educated
elites. Nzegwus article disputes the idea of illiteracy as a fundamental cause of inadequate
incomes or unequal job access among Igbo women. Although Nzegwus position
fundamentally challenges Nussbaums idea that education sharpens the senses, thought
and imagination, this central claim of the article, Charusheela claims, is missed by
Nussbaum as a proud defense of ones tradition, which displaces Nzegwus argument
from that of a social analysis; Charusheela claims that the failure to understand this
fundamental aspect of Nzegwus work reveals the modernism of Nussbaums perspective.
In this analysis we see how postcolonial theory can guide us for vigilance against
paternalism even in those analyses that purport to be sensitive to difference.
Eiman Zein-Elabdin (2009), in turn, exposes the cultural modernism in economics in
general and in institutional economics in particular. Institutional economics is fertile
ground for such an investigation, especially due to the centrality of culture in institutional
analyses. In her exploration the main source of inspiration is the concept of hybridity
articulated by the postcolonial scholar, Homi Bhabha. Zein-Elabdin starts her analysis
with what she calls a double erasure (disavowal) of culture in economics: economics erases
culture by its conflation of modernity, considered to be superior, with development and by
insisting on the possibility of understanding economic systems outside the cultural context.
Drawing attention to modernist thinking in seminal examples of institutionalist thinking in
both its old and new forms, Zein-Elabdin argues for an altered institutionalism, which, by
incorporating the notion of hybridity, can make better sense of the complexity of
economies outside the dualisms of modern/traditional or developed/underdeveloped,
offering alternative interpretations of two texts on different African economies. This
alternative reading is full of promise of a change: in the ways development projects and

Introduction

1117

plans will be re-appropriated, synthesized, and reemerge in forms yet inaccessible to

current theory.
Postcolonial theory tries to conceptualise the conditions of existence of various and
changing forms of postcolonial hegemony. Using an overdeterminist Marxist class analysis,
Anjan Chakrabarti and colleagues (2009) offer an interpretation of the New Economic
Policy (NEP) in India as a programme, which further secures the postcolonial hegemony of
capital over the small-scale sector. They argue that the development perspective that
informs NEP is built on a capitalocentric vision, which takes the logics of capital and the
West as the norm, merges further with Orientalism in the context of the south and, through
its hegemonic symbolising processes, presents the small-scale sector as the homogenous
and devalued other of the modern capitalist sector and the NEP as a progressive journey.
NEP, in their view, is a manifestation of the synthetic hegemony of capital over the smallscale sector in which the metonymic signifiers of capital displace the heterogeneous and
complex class configurations of the former into a homogenous and devalued one from
which class disappears. Equally significant for this hegemony to be complete is the consent
coming from the sector itself to be tied to big capital.
Leading us through a history of economic policy-making in post-independence India,
the authors articulate that NEP represents the Indian version of the neoliberal agenda
aiming to transform India from a state capitalist economy to a private capitalist one, easing
its integration to the global economy. While still acknowledging the employment and
servicing (to big capital) potential of the small scale sector, the new policy, nonetheless has
started applying the criterion of efficiency to it, changing its relation to the rest of the
national and the global economies.
In a different attempt to enrich an overdeterminist Marxist class analysis with
postcolonial insights, Serap Kayatekin (2009) analyses the question of class subjectivity
applying the concept of ambivalence used by postcolonial scholar Homi Bhabha. She
undertakes a class analysis of the subjectivity of the sharecroppers in the context of the
feudal sharecropping relations that prevailed in the southern regions of the USA in the
postbellum era. Kayatekin starts her analysis with a review of the literature on sharecropping where she reveals the modernist concepts of subjectivity explicitly or implicitly
used in both the mainstream and the heterodox traditions. She argues that a postcolonial
notion of class subjectivity that is decentred and contradictory and can be captured by the
notion of ambivalence can better explain the rise and demise of sharecropping. Her
contention is that the analysis used here need not be confined to sharecropping, but has
wider implications for economic subjectivity.
One can ask whether neoclassical theory, too, can draw from postcolonial theory.
Although it is hard to envision the exact outcome of such an encounter, one can say that,
without a doubt, neoclassical theory would cease to be what it is today. And that in itself is
worth the effort. However, as the preliminary explorations of the kind in this symposium
indicate, just as postcolonial analyses could be more substantive in borrowing from
political economy, the latter can go (much) further than where it currently is, should it
open itself to some postcolonial insights.

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