In this episode, I’m joined by critical development economist Jayati Ghosh to discuss the complex relationship between imperialism and international development. In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore the problematic assumptions underlying mainstream ideas of ‘development,’ why GDP is a profoundly inadequate measure of a country’s economic well-being, and how the globalization of the international economy has shaped the structural dynamics of imperialism as a world system—as well as some of the ways that the global economy needs to be restructured in order to deliver genuine justice and sovereignty for the Global South.

Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.

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Sources and helpful links:

• Amiya Bagchi — Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital (Bloomsbury, 2008)

• Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, Surbhi Kesar, and Devika Dutt — The Colonial Origins of Economics (Economic and Political Weekly, October 2024)

• Jostein Hauge — This year’s Nobel prize exposes economics’ problem with colonialism (The Conversation, October 2024)

• Benjamin Selwyn — Walt Rostow’s Development Theory Shows That Capitalism Relies on Brutal Violence (Jacobin, June 2023)

• Walter Rodney — How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972)

• Daniela Gabor and Ndongo Samba Sylla — The Global South Must Be at the Center of the Making of a Just Global Economic Order (interview in Jacobin, February 2023)

• Jayati Ghosh — Let’s Count What Really Matters (Project Syndicate, June 2022)

• Jayati Ghosh — Globalization and the End of the Labor Aristocracy (Dollars and Sense, March 2017)

• Jayati Ghosh — A Life in Development Economics and Political Economy (Real World Economics Review, 2022)

Social links:

Return to Bandung:

• Twitter: ⁠twitter.com/returntobandung⁠

• Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/⁠

• Website:

  https://www.returntobandung.com/

Pranay Somayajula:

• Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/p_somayajula⁠

• Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/⁠

• Website: ⁠https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/⁠

• Substack: ⁠https://www.culture-shock.xyz/⁠

Jayati Ghosh:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jayati1609