LatCrit X: Critical Approaches to Economic In/Justice Introduction

Abstract

The Tenth Annual LatCrit Conference, Critical Approaches to Economic In/Justice, marked the beginning of LatCrit’s effort to launch a concerted inquiry into the processes of economic theory as an instrumentality of subordination. Although LatCrit symposia have included works concerned with the relationship between LatCrit theory and economic ideology, LatCrit X was the first Conference with a deliberate focus on ways in which economics, and in particular, orthodox economic theory, provides an intellectual rationalization for policies which perpetuate the economic and financial marginalization and subordination of those parts of the world who lack the economic and political power to determine the rules that govern international finance, trade and the other processes of contemporary globalization. This introduction discusses and considers the papers constituting the Economics Sub-Cluster of the LatCrit X Symposia: Steven A. Ramirez, Endogenous Growth Theory, Status Quo Efficiency, and Globalization; Kristen A. Sheeran, Ecological Economic: A Progressive Paradigm?; Francisco E. Guerra-Pujol, Cornel West, Meet Richard Posner: Towards a Critical-Neoclassical Synthesis; Carmen G. Gonzalez, Deconstructing the Mythology of Free Trade: Critical Reflections on Comparative Advantage; Ruth Gordon, Contemplating the WTO from the Margins; Patricia Michelle Lenaghan, Trade Negotiations or Trade Capitulations: An African Experience; and, Larry Catá Backer, Economic Globalization Ascendant and the Crisis of the State: Four Perspectives on the Emerging Ideology of the State in the New Global Order.

Keywords: LatCrit, Economic Injustice, Subordination, Orthodox Economic Theory, Political Power, International Finance