Economics, Culture and Development

Despite the tide of postmodernism, postcolonial critiques of hegemony, ecological threats, and the distances bridged by globalization, the concept of culture in economics remains under theorized or altogether absent. The aim of this book is to examine the place of culture in different schools of thought within economics, with respect to the question of development and thereby fill a conspicuous gap in economic literature. In postcolonial theory, culture is the primary analytical category whereas the problem of economy has been the weakest link in an array of path-breaking arguments. Although postcolonial theory has neglected the economic dimension of culture, it has succeeded in producing tremendous insights on issues of cross-cultural hegemony and the role of knowledge construction in this process. In this book, Zein-Elabdin carries the project further by borrowing some of the insights from postcolonial theory to call for a more profound rethinking of the place of culture and of currently devalued cultures in economic theory.