REIN Reading Circle REIN

We will be reading:

https://hbr.org/2021/05/what-the-west-gets-wrong-about-china

The dream of total information became a nightmare in postwar China | Aeon Essays

We will be reading:


Aiyar, Y. (2019). Schooling is not Learning. Centre for Policy Research.


Priya, L. (2020). How Does the National Education Policy Accelerate the Privatisation. Economic and Political Weekly.

Our goal for the first session is twofold: First, we aim to understand the origin and historical use of the theory of public goods argument that's frequently deployed in debates on the provisioning of education. Second, we aim to critically evaluate the claims the public goods argument makes in order to identify its limitations when informing education policy.

We will be reading: 


Daviet, B. (2016) Revisiting the Principle of Education as a Public Good. Education Research and Foresight Series, No. 17. Paris: UNESCO.
Williams, G. (2016) 'Higher education: Public good or private commodity?' London Review of Education, 14 (1), 131–42.

Session 15 of REIN Reading Circle.

Topic of discussion
We will discuss the idea of 'Indian Economics' that emerged during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. Scholars tried bringing in historical particularities and nationalism to their study of the Indian economy, set against the background of the emergent nationalist movement. Through this we will look at questions of development, education and pedagogy, and what are the implications of placing the nation as a central category of analysis in economic thought.


Essential reading


Ranade, Mahadev Govind. 1906. Chapter 1: "Indian Political Economy", in Essays on Indian Economics: Collection of Essays and Speeches. Madras: G.A. Nateson and Co. [the primary text which inspired a generation of economists to work upon a conception of Indian Economics, aspiring to induct history and the national interest in their economic writings.]


Goswami, Manu. 2004. Chapter 7: "Political Economy of Nationhood", in Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. Oxford: Permanent Black, pp.209-241.


Suggested reading (Optional)


Goswami, Manu. 2004. Chapter 8: "Territorial Nativism: Swadeshi and Swaraj", in Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. Oxford: Permanent Black, pp.242-276.
[this chapter looks at the early-twentieth century swadeshi movement and its quest to create an organic national community and national economy. It links up closely with the creation of a homogenous and singular national identity]


Karak, Anirban. 2020. "What was 'Indian' Political Economy? On the separation of the 'social, the 'economic', and the 'ethical' in Indian nationalist thought, 1892-1948", Modern Asian Studies.


Ambirajan, S. 1978. "Introduction", in Classical Political Economy and British Policy in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. [shows the importance of political economy to the administration of British India and sets a background to the importance of studying the history of political economy in a colonial context]

Session 14 of REIN Reading Circle.

The readings we will be discussing:


Lecture One - On the Great Divide in Economic Theory by Krishna Bharadwaj
Krishna Bharadwaj.pdf

Aspromourgos, T. (2017, July 6). Why History of Economics? Taylor & Francis. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10370196.2017.1339580?journalCode=rher20

Thomas, A. M. (2020, November 7). A History of Contemporary Economic Theories. Economic and Political Weekly. https://www.epw.in/journal/2020/45/book-reviews/history-contemporary-economic-theories.html

Session 13 of REIN Reading Circle.

Readings: Arguments for gig economy


Thornton, M. (2020, February 19). Legislation Should Help Rather Than Hinder the Gig Economy. Mises Institute. https://mises.org/power-market/legislation-should-help-rather-hinder-gig-economy
Schwellnus, C., Geva, A., Pak, M., & Veiel, R. (2019). GIG ECONOMY PLATFORMS: BOON OR BANE? OECD. https://fairgig.se/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/ECO-WKP201919.pdf

Arguments against gig economy


Lawrence, M. (2020, December 2). Common Wealth: To #MakeAmazonPay, Reimagine the Platform Economy. Progressive International. https://progressive.international/wire/2020-12-02-common-wealth-to-makeamazonpay-reimagine-the-platform-economy/en/

Zarkadakis, G. (2021, May 14). Do platforms work? Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/workers-of-the-world-unite-on-distributed-digital-platforms