Postcolonial approaches to understanding economies are of increasing academic and political significance as questions about the nature of globalisation, transnational flows of capital and workers and the making and re-making of territorial borders assume centre stage in debates about contemporary economies and policy.
Despite the growing academic and political urgency in understanding how 'other' cultures encounter 'the west', economics-oriented approaches within social sciences have been slow to engage with the ideas and challenges posed by postcolonial critiques. In turn, postcolonial approaches have been criticised for their simplistic treatment of 'the economic' and for not engaging with existing economic analyses of poverty and wealth creation.
Utilising examples drawn from India to Latin America, and bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, including Geography, Economics, Development Studies, History and Women's Studies, Postcolonial Economies breaks new ground in providing a space for nascent debates about postcolonialism and its treatment of 'the economic'.
Jane Pollard's research interests embrace geographies of money and finance and their intersection with regional economic development. Recent work explores the role of different financial intermediaries in regional economic development, entrepreneurs' construction and navigation of their financial networks and the diversity of financial and other knowledges that generate economic co-ordination in different social, cultural, religious and demographic contexts. Over the last decade she has published articles in journals such as Antipode, Area, the Journal of Economic Geography, Environment and Planning A, Geoforum, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and Urban Studies. Her recent book chapters include pieces in Pike et al. (2010) Handbook of local and regional economic development, Phillips (2009) Spaces of hope for Muslims (Zed Books) and Fuller et al. (2009) Interrogating alterity (Ashgate). She sits on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Economic Geography, Geography Compass and Growth and Change.
Cheryl McEwan's main research interests include the geographies of citizenship, democracy and transformation in South Africa, the lived experiences of postcoloniality in the global North and South, and the role of postcolonial theory within social science research. Recent work explores the potentially productive engagement between postcolonial theory and development studies, and the role of ethical trade in transforming working conditions and engendering empowerment in South Africa's wine industry. She is author of Gender, Geography and Empire (Ashgate, 2000) and Postcolonialism and Development (Routledge, 2008), and is co-editor of Postcolonial Geographies (Continuum, 2002). She has published numerous articles in a wide range of journals in geography and the social sciences. She is currently Editor (Development Section) of Geography Compass and sits of the Editorial Board of the RGS-IBG/Blackwell Book Series.
Alex Hughes is Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography at Newcastle University in the UK. Her research focuses on commodity chains, ethical trade and the spatiality of corporate responsibility practised through supply chains. She has written on the dynamics of ethical codes in the Kenyan horticultural industry, the corporate strategies adopted by UK and US retailers with respect to the responsible management of their supply chains and the knowledge economies constructing ethical learning in this sector. She is co-editor (with Suzanne Reimer) of Geographies of Commodity Chains (2004).
Cheryl McEwan is Lecturer in Geography at the University of Birmingham.
Alex Hughes is Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography at Newcastle University in the UK. She is co-editor of
Geographies of Commodity Chains.
