READINGS & RESOURCES

The following resources were very useful in my own journey to teaching for social justice. Initially I wanted to comprehend what social justice is and I was also interested in how, as a university lecturer and specifically as an economics lecturer, I could incorporate social justice and a social justice pedagogy into my teaching.

Why I’m no Longer Talking to White People About Race
Reni Eddo-Lodge

I found this book to be accessible and challenging. It changed my perspectives on race and whiteness.

Teaching Community: a Pedagogy of Hope
bell hooks

This book – particularly the chapters on democratic education and teaching with love – was one I kept returning to. It was unapologetic in its central themes of placing the student and her concerns and experiences at the centre of learning and teaching.

Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? A Story of Women and Economics
Katrine Marçal

I read this book before I became a project advocate and I use a Ted Talk by Katrina Marçal in my teaching. The book did a lot to prompt my interest in the challenges from feminist economics to orthodox economic thinking. It is at the same time simple and profound. Once those scales fall from one’s eyes it opens one up to many of the new challenges to our discipline – motivated by social justice issues – that have been absent or unheard in our classrooms.

I used many different resources in my module, which I include in the course outline shared elsewhere.

I used several videos shown in class to challenge orthodox narratives on economics and these have informed my own thinking on the subject and how it relates to the world in practice. These include Michael Sandel’s video on why we shouldn’t trust markets, Katrin Marçal’s video on how economics forgot women, and Dambisa Moyo’s video on the challenges of economic growth. The Institute of New Economci Thinking also provided challenging material for me and the students.

I sought to include videos featuring people of colour and women, and it struck me how few are represented in mainstream economics. Economics, like much of the academy, has a problem of representation and we must do more to make it a welcoming place for under-represented identities. Part of this is ensuring that the “experts” we present look like the students we hope to engage.