Colonial legacies and racial hierarchies in the global economy: a review article

TY - JOUR

T1 - Colonial legacies and racial hierarchies in the global economy

T2 - a review article

AU - Kvangraven, Ingrid

N1 - Funding Information: I am grateful to Maria Dyveke Styve for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this review article and to Ariane Agunsoye, Surbhi Kesar and Hanna Szymborska for fruitful discussions on the opportunities and limits to stratification economics. All errors remain my own. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Institute of Race Relations.

PY - 2022/1/11

Y1 - 2022/1/11

N2 - This article reviews two recent books on persistent inequalities in the global economy and the role of colonial legacies and racial hierarchies in explaining them. Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire (2019) and Franklin Obeng-Odoom’s Property, Institutions, and Social Stratification in Africa (2020) draw on the Black Radical Tradition and stratification economics respectively to challenge mainstream understandings of racial hierarchies. After first outlining the strengths and key insights of each book, the author discusses how they could be expanded in a more radical manner, along the lines of anti-colonial, decolonial and black Marxism. She argues that in order to understand how racial hierarchies are connected to the development of capitalism, further engagement with radical scholarship that sees race and class as co-constituted would be required.

AB - This article reviews two recent books on persistent inequalities in the global economy and the role of colonial legacies and racial hierarchies in explaining them. Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire (2019) and Franklin Obeng-Odoom’s Property, Institutions, and Social Stratification in Africa (2020) draw on the Black Radical Tradition and stratification economics respectively to challenge mainstream understandings of racial hierarchies. After first outlining the strengths and key insights of each book, the author discusses how they could be expanded in a more radical manner, along the lines of anti-colonial, decolonial and black Marxism. She argues that in order to understand how racial hierarchies are connected to the development of capitalism, further engagement with radical scholarship that sees race and class as co-constituted would be required.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85122951001&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/03063968211060325

DO - 10.1177/03063968211060325

M3 - Review article

SN - 0306-3968

VL - 63

SP - 103

EP - 108

JO - Race and Class

JF - Race and Class

IS - 3

M1 - 7

ER -