Economics and science fiction share many interrelations that are rarely recognised.

Firstly, a lot of economics is science fiction. Many economists believe in the fiction that they are practising ‘science’, while many also believe in the fiction that progress in ‘science’ (and thus technology) is the solution to virtually all economic problems. Saying that much of economics is science fiction doesn’t mean that science fiction itself is not useful for economics. It has been a powerful way to imagine alternative realities in which very different technologies have changed our institutions and even individuals, making us re-think our assumptions about economy and society. Extending this logic, we can say history is a dystopian science fiction even without memories of advanced technologies. Moreover, if studying history helps us to imagine other realities, so do comparative studies. In trying to understand the world, we can be immensely helped by science fiction, history, and comparative studies, because they allow us to see that the existing economic and social order is not a ‘natural’ one, that it can be changed, and, most importantly, that it has been brought about only because some people dared to imagine a different world and fought for it.

Speaker

Ha-Joon Chang teaches economics at SOAS University of London. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, he has published 16 authored books (five co-authored) and 11 edited books. His main books include The Political Economy of Industrial Policy, Kicking Away the Ladder, Bad Samaritans, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, and Economics: The User’s Guide. His new book, Edible Economics – A Hungry Economist Explains the World is to be published in October 2022. His writings have been translated and published in 44 languages and 46 countries. Worldwide, his books have sold over 2 million copies. He is the winner of the 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize and the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize.

Discussant

Sinéad Murphy's research focusses on Arabfuturisms and theories of world literature; she completed her AHRC London Arts and Humanities Partnership-funded PhD in Comparative Literature in 2019. Alongside independent research she works as Manager for Conferences and Events at the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE), where she manages a suite of conferences, training, special interest networks, and professional development programme. Prior to this she held roles as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Freie Universität Berlin and Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at King’s College London. She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a happy member of the interdisciplinary research collective Beyond Gender. She has publications forthcoming with Routledge and Palgrave, and her writing can be found in places like Science Fiction Studies, Strange Horizons, Wasafiri, and The Literary Encyclopedi.

Chair

Duncan Green is Senior Strategic Adviser at Oxfam GB, Professor in Practice in International Development at the London School of Economics, honorary Professor of International Development at Cardiff University and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies. He is author of How Change Happens (OUP, October 2016) and From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World (Oxfam International, 2008, second edition 2012). His daily development blog can be found on www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/.

This talk is part of the Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice 2022 series, a high-profile lecture series run by the Department of International Development at LSE and organised by Dr Laura Mann and Professor in Practice Duncan Green.

The Department of International Development promotes interdisciplinary postgraduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change. 

Twitter Hashtag for this series: #CuttingEdge2022